Careers in IT

Rusko187

Rusko187

Rusko187

Associate
Joined
3 May 2011
Posts
1,045
Location
Leicester
Hi All,

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm 30 years old and have been working at management level in the Transport industry for the past 6 years. I've stumbled into this job but I get no satisfaction and I need a change in my life.

My question is I love computers, have built them, been around them all my life and have a good understanding of them but would love to work with them. In what capacity I'm honestly not sure but I'm after some advice on a potential career change.

What courses are best to study in my own time to help get a job in IT? What roles are available which pay a reasonable amount? Any sort of tips really.
 
dowie said:
do you have a degree?
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I don't, I'm looking at Open University courses and have seen a BSc Honours Computing and IT Course.. didn't know if it was worthwhile.

Richdog said:
Have you done a search? There are probably around 100 threads like this in the last 6-12 months.
Click to expand...

Really sorry I didn't, just gandered about on the forums but didn't really do a search.
 
What I'd do is look into courses from a good institution that has a proven track record of placing students into the role that you want. If you don't have a degree - then get one. Age shouldn't matter too much within the area of computing.

Target maybe a consultancy (Big4) to get your foot into the door of a major company. From there you can move to a major tech firm.

Alternatively - you could go directly to a tech firm. No harm in trying.

All that said, your approach is strongly influenced by the 'kind' of computing role that you want. Development? Architecture? Data? Management consultancy (IT)? Business Analysis?
 
Rusko187 said:
I don't, I'm looking at Open University courses and have seen a BSc Honours Computing and IT Course.. didn't know if it was worthwhile.
Click to expand...

yep you could get some form of entry level role and do that at the same time

there is also udacity.com, coursera etc.. though those are more for knowledge, they're not official academic quals

the reason I asked if you had a degree is because there are conversion masters courses that might have been suitable... also some specialist masters courses might also have been worth considering

thing is it depends what you actually want to do 'IT' is a broad area
 
What is a reasonable amount?

Look in to service delivery manager or IT supervisor jobs. There are many jobs in IT that don't require technical knowledge, just managing people on a support desk for example.

http://work.chron.com/job-description-service-delivery-manager-24247.html

If you want to go in to actual technical work, at your age, i would recommend specialising and skipping support desks completely. Probably pick a certain technology and focus on that alone, whatever it ends up being. example, exchange, vmware, voip, mobile devices, switches, firewall. Some are a lot easier than others.
 
Aside from GCSE my only other qualifications is accreditations within the Transport industry, not checked if they have any merit for anything else though.

I like the programming and software aspect of computing, in my youth I messed about with Visual Basic and made a couple of programs but never did anything more with it. Preferably would like something like this but no idea where to start.
 
To be frank, if you have not been developing none stop since your youth and kept up with technologies your past development experience is not going to be very useful.

I also studied a bit of development and know basic php, javascript, css, html and would never been able to work in development, you might be different. You could study DBA as that it is a bit easier to pick up and they are in demand and earn a lot.

If you have management experiences but want to work in IT, then id use that if i was you. Most mangers in IT don't know that much about technical work. You might have to start off as a helpdesk supervisor but eventually you can work your way up to managements and service delivery. One benefit to gaining experience in IT, doing any job, be it management or technical, is that the experience can be moved across to other industries. Ie you can work in legal as IT manager, then move to another industry doing It management, which keeps things interesting while still being about IT.
 
What exactly do you want to do in IT? The vast majority of IT jobs have nothing to do with "computers" per say. If your interest is the hardware side of things, you might struggle to find something meaningful.
 
I used to work on a helpdesk, and it used to really wind me up when managers didn't know anything about computers.
It totally defeats the point of it.

You're best off looking for smaller company / school that needs an on site tech.
Then you get experience of lots of different technologies, servers, desktops, laptops, networks, VoIP etc.

Unless you go down the management route right off the bat, what you need more than anything else is experience.

Especially once you have a few years experience no one will really care that much if you have a degree or not, it's basically just another device to get you an interview, and show you have commitment to something.
 
I've been looking at getting into programming or something to do with graphics design drawing etc photoshop blah blah.

I have a degree in biology myself(no idea why I did it... just sort of told pick something and do it 18 is too young to make life choices) but from what I can gather you can get proficient enough to land a job without a degree in the field.

My friend who did computer science at university said most of programmers he works with have no degree.

I'm not entirely sure how to proceed though myself, so keeping an eye on this thread. Computers are second nature to me... no idea why I never did a degree in it. Well I sort of know, it just wasn't as big as it is now compared to 10 years ago. I mean if you said for example you wanted to work in pc gaming as programmer it'd have been considered more of a long shot.

Now days it's everywhere.
 
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acemastr said:
You don't need a degree, it helps but don't need one.

I started off as helldesk and I'm now a consultant, show you know what you're doing and find the right company.
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Agreed about the degree. I started off as 1st line support and I've moved up over the years and I'm now an IT Manager looking after staff, servers and network infrastructure. All achieved with hard work and self improvement, and no degree in sight. I'm at the point in my career now where I think a degree is irrelevant, as I have the experience and skillset to prove what I can do.
 
Rusko187 said:
Hi All,

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm 30 years old and have been working at management level in the Transport industry for the past 6 years. I've stumbled into this job but I get no satisfaction and I need a change in my life.

My question is I love computers, have built them, been around them all my life and have a good understanding of them but would love to work with them. In what capacity I'm honestly not sure but I'm after some advice on a potential career change.

What courses are best to study in my own time to help get a job in IT? What roles are available which pay a reasonable amount? Any sort of tips really.
Click to expand...

You don't need a degree, but as above it could help, especially if you don't want to work up (as much) and want to specialise (for example, forensics would be harder to get in to without a degree).

I don't have a degree, in fact I don't have any GCSEs and am a full time senior programmer (a few people under me) and recently completed a MCSD which was paid for by the company :)

Also, have a good hard think about if you want to do it full time or if you want to keep computing as a hobby.
 
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