Another 'retraining into tech' questions....

[solosunflower]

Hello...

Not a AIBU as such, just need some traffic.

I'm looking at retraining into tech, but I've read so much now that my head is a shed! Basically, what is the most suitable route in for a beginner, please? I would ideally like to find a niche area to specialise in and hopefully one day I'll be able to do some freelance work. For reference I have no coding experience. But I am determined and willing to work hard! Can anyone please point me in the right direction. I see there are hundreds of bootcamps, although I don't know which one to choose or where to start. Once I have some direction, I'm sure I'll be fine. Thank you in advance!

Build things that show what you can do and you can talk about in an interview

You get a github account (free) so potential employers can look at the code you write and what you've built.

Contribute to some open source projects to show you know how to work on a shared codebase.

If your YouTube/Udemy tutorials don't include setting up a github account and creating and contributing to a repository, find different tutorials. Personally I think they should also include unit testing and test frameworks but that doesn't seem to be common.

I'm a former software engineer and I now work in tech investment. I would second the "business processes/CRM" path for your experience, goals and personal situation. There's a lot of advice out there for how to become a software dev, and it is better paid, but the culture is one that rewards hustling and doing projects in your free time and being Really Passionate About Tech and knowing the in-jokes and blah blah blah.

Definitely don't join a startup. Go for big companies with proper leave policies and regular, sane working hours. I'm generalising, but these companies often look to universities (or amazing stand-out open-source work) for their devs but are more flexible for business process roles.

If you want to find out more about Salesforce before committing financially to anything, try some of the learning paths on www.salesforce.com/uk/learning-centre/?bc=OTH .

There are a couple of different competitors in this space, e.g. Microsoft (Microsoft Dynamics/PowerBI ecosystem, which I really like and probably gives you the widest base if you want to eventually expand beyond CRM), SAP, ServiceNow etc. I would pick one and learn it / get the relevant intro certification. There's no benefit as a junior to knowing all of them.

Search on LinkedIn for job titles "junior salesforce/SAP/etc administrator" and have a look at what qualifications they are looking for, then line that up with what's already on your resume.

I think many jobs require a degree, but not necessarily in tech. This may be changing though!