Hello everyone, I am a 29 year old male looking to get into tech (specifically maybe something in IT), but I don’t have any formal education/experience in the field and have only worked in marketing for a year. Was wondering if there was anyone here that has been in the same boat as me and would be able to give me some advice? Would like to be able to avoid further education to save money and would like to take online courses (coursera, udemy, etc). For now, I have just been researching articles on what responsibilities somebody in IT does and watching a day in the life videos to see if it’s something that I would like to get into and so far I’m interested. What course did you take? Did you have to get an internship first before getting a full time job? Please, any advice is valuable! Thank you!
Those days are over, go away
At the current market, without a degree youd have to be exceptionally good at programming to even get a chance. I suggest at least doing some bootcamp and pile up as many UDemy or Coursera certificates that you can afford to stand out amongst the pile of applications currently available. My advice would be to be Patient as its a complex environment right now and apply to as many places as possible, even if just to get your foot in the door.
FWIW, I was literally you about 10 years ago. I was 28 at the time, had no tech experience and my only post-secondary education was around a year of unrelated studies at a local college. After some research, I decided to go the more traditional degree route, which I don’t regret at all. Having the credentials of a computer science degree matters less and less as your career goes on, but it’s immensely useful in getting your foot in the door W.R.T. early work experience. There are trade-offs here, of course. Getting a degree meant I wasn’t in a full-time role until I was around 32. If you’re seriously disciplined, hard-working, and have a high tolerance for risk, I’d say the self-taught route is a reasonable way to go. You may be able to reach your goal faster this way. That being said, the degree is a much safer, more “paved road” approach (albeit with a longer time horizon), at any age IMHO. More generally, you will need to check your ego. You are going to be a 30 year old intern, who is likely going to be broke for a while and surrounded by people who are younger, smarter and richer than you. If you can deal with that, and are passionate about the field, then 100% go for it my friend.
Same, also went back for a MS in comp sci, and started an entry level role after a data structures course.
Thank you! Yeah, I am aware that there will be people way more capable than me and they will be my manager but I can look past that. Do you think that going the online school route is the same as just doing online courses on coursera? Or will I really have to go to a 4 year college again to have a chance?
Bootcamps ( try checking your closest university )+ practice (you need to make it habit to write code every single day until you crack an interview )
Thank you! I know it’ll be a grind especially since I’m trying to go the unconventional route
Not gonna lie it would be very difficult to break into an engineering role right now without a degree and experience. Do you have an idea of what type of role you'd be targeting? This would help a lot with a strategy.
Agreed, but I think working in IT would be up my alley. Do you think that the landscape of tech will ever be consistently good? I know there’s constant layoffs right now so I know it would just be a time of learning and taking courses for somebody like me. If avoiding further education is not possible, I have at least thought about just enrolling for an online university since I figure it’s better than nothing.
Things are cyclical and i'm optimistic things will get much better this year, and there is early evidence of that, but ultimately nobody knows. I think you should keep doing some research about the job markets for specific roles such as QA and test automation, support engineers, etc that might be an easier entry point into tech if you don't want to slog through a CS degree. I would pay special attention to the trends concerning the future of these roles, you don't want to retool into a role that might not exist for much longer. I'm a SWE and i'm not too familiar with these types of roles. Maybe creating another post to the effect of "what non-SWE roles are easy to break into without a CS degree or tech background" would give you more info.