To ask about career options in tech?

[GingerAle1]

Hi. Put this here as the Work topic doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic.

I'm not techie at all but looking at a career change/development. Clearly the future is tech but I'd be starting from zero and looking to work part time. (47 and have family responsibilities).

Does anyone have experiences of doing free courses and building a career? I don't know where to start, but my normal work in marketing is being revolutionised and I'd like to get trained up to make the most of that. Or perhaps it will be lost to Chat GPT? I need to future proof my career where possible.

Also, how does this work for a woman my age? Are people mostly looking to hire youngsters? Is there home working potential? I guess essentially I'm asking if the dream that is sold is really true - can you work from anywhere? Is the market saturated already?

I have so many questions! All advice welcome. I have time to learn but I don't have spare cash to put into training.

Thank you.

Do you work at the moment? Where/in what industry/kind of role?

Have you looked into apprenticeships eg data science, data analytics, programming etc? You can do degree level apprenticeships while working these days.

Have a look at Decoded.com

Marketing, three days a week. I can devote some weekend time to learning as well. I'm old enough to have started with print promotions. I have some experience of doing the back end of a website, I didn't enjoy it but I feel like there's going to be so much change, I want to make sure I don't fall off the career ladder altogether!

Also, I don't know how I'd be with coding. I thought at first I would be too sociable for that but now I'm not bothered about that, plus I need to make sure I can keep earning money when algorithms start doing marketing plans!

Google “shortage of data skills uk” - will give you an idea of the skills gaps the UK is facing.

Tech companies do marketing too!

In your shoes I'd probably try a sideways move by looking for a marketing role in the tech industry. That would at least put you in situ where other opportunities may arise.

That's what I did (not with marketing but with another non-tech specialism) at the age of 40. Others in my team did the same in their late 40s. No regrets

Would you not want to do tech marketing? It's a great role. Loads and loads of work from home potential. High salaries.

What's your current type of marketing?

Marketing for SaaS is in huge demand so get on LinkedIn and move your career sideways :) pay is very good and roles tend do be data heavy! (Tech data analytics etc)

I'd look into linking in with what you already do rather than starting fresh.

What sort of marketing do to you do?

You could look into something data/analytics based. Rather than something computer science/coding based.

Have you looked at project management?

I'm 43 and have worked in tech for 15+ years. I will be honest, coding is a young person's game - mostly for the amount of hours you will need to put in to get up to speed with even the most average graduate.

However, there are other routes: infosec is HUGE, data analysis and visualisation has a lot of opportunities and you can be quite a niche specialist quite successfully (i.e. Microsoft PowerPlatform), Agile PMs are always in demand and, as PPs have mentioned, tech companies need marketeers, too!

@AffIt Would you mind me asking how one would train in project management for Infosec?

Tech marketing is reasonably well paid, and plenty of wfh options.

You could do a CIM certificate in Digital Marketing. All the knowledge you already have will come in handy as well.

Short courses in SEO, Google Ads and Analytics all help.

Code first girls

Thanks for all the replies.

Currently marketing what I call schmooze events. I would be surprised if we don't have redundancies coming. Very much collapsed in lockdown, then had a resurgence but going forward, who knows? Also, I have reputation experience mgmt but that tends to be something that doesn't lend itself to an inhouse role - more likely to get called on as a consultant and doesn't fit with regular part time.

Re tech marketing - that would be fine, though I am tempted by a complete change, I'd sooner follow cash. But I imagine I have a lot to learn before tackling tech marketing, any recs on how to start? Any journals I should be reading? I feel like I need a "for dummies" book. Today I came across a company dealing with the future of parking logistics. It's not a company I would know existed so applying for a job somewhere like that, just as an example, seems very daunting. Are there any journals I should read?

Re SEO skills, I have experience there but again, is that a task that will literally just be fed into a computer rather than needing human input?

Take the point re competing with grads.

Project mgmt - missed a trick there as thought Prince 2 looked so boring. Was offered training in previous role. Is that still in demand?

I know the government are offering some free training options but atm I don't even know what I need to know, so to speak. If there's any free training that can be fitted in flexibly that would help my earning power, that would be great.

Couldn't you do events manager at a tech company? It's a huge part of the strategy, the ones I've worked at do loads of smoozy events. I'd say salary was about £55-75k. So it depends what you are looking for. You couldn't walk into this salary as a coder without any experience. 🤷‍♀️

I don't know what you mean by journals but tech crunch, marketing week, econsultancy etc are all sites which share jobs and you can easily access lists of the top 500 tech startups in the UK for example. Most jobs are available to apply through LinkedIn now. Or there are loads of digital recruitment agencies.

What about account management if you have old style marketing skills? Account directors within agency can earn £50k plus and plenty of flexible working options.

I was looking to do something less people based. I don't want toschmooze any more.

re marketing for a tech firm, I feel I need to educate myself about tech before I do something like that?

example - on Site stuff here, there's a thread where people say things like "what script are you running that makes the site so slow". If I want to get work marketing software, wouldn't I need a basic working knowledge of it?

As others have said, you will not be able to walk into a highly paid career as a coder or as the latest MN meme of cyber security, free online courses offer the bare minimum, same as the gov or the basic A+/N+ type exams.

There is huge competition and whilst the job being 'sold' of work from anywhere with high wages is achievable it requires a lot of experience with a lot of competition, and more often than not you will be entering at the lowest level to build experience.

ChatGPT/AI is also going to make a lot of low level dev jobs redundant as it can already write low level procedures with related functions and classes at a very clean level and write the unit tests around it!

If you want to go down the Cyber security route (as it is the latest to pop up all the time on these threads), you can take the exams which will get you a foot in the door but you will need to spend time on real systems, and the usual route is via helpdesk, so you will be spending a few years sorting out printers/general AD admin before you get loose on the domain controllers and firewalls

That's not to say don't go for it or to rubbish the idea, but be aware that it isn't the road to riches that it is often perceived on MN , I work in tech for one of the big four, I write algorithms and work with petabytes of data. I don't have a degree and have worked myself up to being senior and have been a champion for bringing women into tech for a good few years now, one thing I always highlight is that the job isn't as glamorous as the shiny LinkedIn/Tiktok posts, it is often mundane and frustrating, the burn out is a huge factor.

Look for what transferrable skills you have to bring into an IT environment, but be aware that making a full on career change to chase the money is not going to be simple process, especially if you have commitments.

I am not trying to shit on your dream, and I have waffled somewhat, english is my second language and had a glass of wine :)

Justanotherlurker no worries.

That's why I posted here. I have this awareness that I'm not keeping up with tech but don't know how to do that in order to make my next step the right one. So it looks like coding isn't the right thing for me to learn, which is good to know. Unless it's going to be a useful skill generally.

in terms of it being mundane, at 47 I am rather tired of having my bubbly personality switched on, worrying about my appearance etc. I thought perhaps coding could be done from home and if I actually became good at it, it could be something that's doable without the strain of coping with pleasing big egos? More of a measurable output than my current role?

so to be clearer, mundane is okay with me. If there's much in freelancing, would people make, say, £15 ph at the start? Then potentially I could do it alongside my current job and make a gradual transition?

Cyber security wasn't on my list at all, it sounds as if it shouldn't be really, as I hope to be less people-focused.

Have you looked into Digital Marketing? Look on LinkedIn for the type of skills you need. Plenty of free courses out there too.

example - on Site stuff here, there's a thread where people say things like "what script are you running that makes the site so slow". If I want to get work marketing software, wouldn't I need a basic working knowledge of it?

Depends because the question itself is not coherent and not someone who works in or understand tech.

If we are to take it at the face value, if they knew which script it was that was causing the issue they would look at fixing it, but to work out which script it was (which makes no sense) you would have to do testing and step through lines of code, but before that you would look at the multitude of factors at play, it could be at database level, it could be network related, it may be hosting, it may be a specific end user issue that is related to any many of factors of configuration or a simple case of something like a free adblocker or free browser add on.

If you go into Marketing you will just be a specialist in that software, you will not need to understand what it is under the hood, you will be an expert in how to use and showcase it, you will pick up the correct terms and oversell what it actually is and make the devs life hell (speaking from experience of our marketing department) and maybe gain superficial understanding of how it is built, but learning Python on a free course will not give you any basic knowledge of a product you won't see the code base of and if it is written in C# and Node.js will be absolute jargon to you.

Just your last para made me laugh. I completely recognise that scenario from a previous job, so I do have some experience of what you're describing.

Hairy yes, perhaps I need to look at that route. It might be a confidence issue. I do look at tech and think "what on earth is this". I have probably been more on the PR side of marketing and I've never been a fan of drilling down into data but perhaps that's the way to go.

i just remembered - a colleague with Prince 2 said she found most jobs were full time and quite full on, presumably because discrete projects, by nature, are often on deadlines. Not sure whether to try that or not.

food for thought, thank you all.

ginger don't let lack of confidence put you off! At least have a look and do some research.

I left teaching profession recently. I'm 55! I've taken a temporary admin job whilst I look around a tech based career. I might decide it's not ultimately for me (or I'm not for them!) but it's better to be informed, right?

I work in UX / User Research (researching and designing digital services) and have done for about 6/7 years, I started with no experience and after a few perm positions I now do contract work and earn roughly £100k working 4 days a week fully from home. Your marketing experience would be useful for something similar, though a course or something would be useful too, you could also look into digital marketing, becoming a delivery manager or account management at a digital agency?