Advice on breaking into IT with poor work/education history

I see your point and I sometimes worry about that myself. However, for a lot of reasons I've decided that making my actual "dream" into a main source of income just wouldn't be viable, at least for now, which is why I feel the need to get into a more potentially lucrative career and IT just happens to fit the bill.

Re: Linux specifically, I wanted to go down that road because I understood it was a potentially quite lucrative niche and I do enjoy installing and using it. Plus, just on a moral level I really respect the ideals behind open source software like that, especially compared to how Microsoft and Apple seem to be treating their respective OSes these days.

To me, that all sounds like as good a reason as any to pursue it as a career when it's already my "get a day job" option, but if you're saying I need to be somebody who really eats sleeps and breathes Linux to get anywhere in the field then yeah that might be a problem actually. I'm still for sure studying for the MS-900 (decided against the AZ-900 at Josh's reccomendation, it really does seem like it covers a lot of the same stuff anyway) and going for tech support jobs but I'll hold off on committing to Linux until I know more about what working with it professionally would entail.

Once again, thanks for the advice everybody. You've all been a massive help.
 
You need to start at the bottom and gain experience really. That's the most valuable thing in IT, forget qualifications, most are a waste of money.

IT job market is pretty crap at the moment though. Companies asking for a lot, but not paying a lot. So things have sort of reached a stalemate.
 
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yup and i expect its only going to get worst with more AI being introduced, a push to cut ££ as a possible recession is on cards. its not a great time unelss you have key skills in certaina reas like AI were its booming.
 
I have a somewhat similar story

graduated with a 2:2 in computing in 2010

9 years in university admin jobs

Then i hit a point where i started to feel like okay, i its good that i have a job but i'll never earn more than 35k in these roles and thats when i get to the top band, i was on about 26k at the time. I got a job for a bit less money but as an administrator in an MIS team at FE college. Although my role was mostly admin stuff my manager did reintroduce me to SQL and i got better at Excel. That really made me want to get into an analyst role so after 2 years i got a data analyst role at an insurance company but it was pretty much all excel and a little bit of power bi. T

Two years later i get my current job which is power bi developer. I've been there just over a year and i really enjoy it, DAX has certainly been a challenge at times. I've also used Power automate in this job which is very handy. Unfortunately, i have no SQL access as so all of my work is in PowerBI/Power Query.

During covid i started learning python, i did a course on udemy (python hero to zero). I made a Doctor/Patient booking system with an sqllite database using PyQt which is a GUI framework. I want to start using python in this job although not sure where , maybe just do do some data analysis stuff. As for the future who knows? Data Engineer looks like a logical next step for me.
 
If it helps anyone I got a Foundation Degree in acting.

About 10 years ago I went into a first line support for one firm, learned some SQL at home when I got bored, moved to a Tier 2 role in 2018 that did data fixes on sql servers.

As I got bored of that I learned some code (c# MVC stuff) and progressed internally late 21 to a jnr dev.

Now a working full stack web developer, still learning as I go.
 
Nasher said:
You need to start at the bottom and gain experience really. That's the most valuable thing in IT, forget qualifications, most are a waste of money.

IT job market is pretty crap at the moment though. Companies asking for a lot, but not paying a lot. So things have sort of reached a stalemate.
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To have an ambition is more valuable than any qualification.
 
montymint said:
If it helps anyone I got a Foundation Degree in acting.
[...]

Now a working full stack web developer, still learning as I go.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, I suspect that foundation degree could be quite valuable if you ever decided to pitch yourself as a consultant or wanted some developer relations role at a vendor.

They typically want someone with technical skills who also has soft skills, can handle in-person presentations and webinars in front of an audience confidently etc. and an acting background is perfect for that. At the first tech firm I worked for they literally hired professional actors to coach us all for that sort of thing but a few days in house training isn't really a substitute for someone who has formally trained and done it full-time.
 
dowie said:
Funnily enough, I suspect that foundation degree could be quite valuable if you ever decided to pitch yourself as a consultant or wanted some developer relations role at a vendor.

They typically want someone with technical skills who also has soft skills, can handle in-person presentations and webinars in front of an audience confidently etc. and an acting background is perfect for that. At the first tech firm I worked for they literally hired professional actors to coach us all for that sort of thing but a few days in house training isn't really a substitute for someone who has formally trained and done it full-time.
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It was something my last place offered as a role (go out on site to train trainers) back when I was on T1.

I turned it down in the end due to the travel commitments and a desire to become more technically focused.
 
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