Mid Life Career Change - *coding*!

[Jittlelo]

Im having to leave my (slightly dead-end) job due to incompatibility with family life, and am considering investing in a coding course. One of which claims to take to you from zero to employable in 4 months... I know so little about it all and the more research I do the more there seems to be to learn. Anyone out there tried this? Or teach?
TIA!

I think that it's a great area to get in to, but be wary of spending LOTS of money on courses. Some are good, but it's hard to evaluate them as a newbie. What I would recommend first is looking at free material and doing some self-study.

There is a fantastic amount of free, and very good material out there to learn coding. There are also (depending on where you live) a lot of groups out there of people getting together to learn to code together, again entirely free. (Some online groups as well).

Don't be put off by the "more research I do, the more there seems to be to learn" - the surprising thing about coding is that nowadays, it can start being useful a lot earlier than you would think.

More later, DS dragging me away...

I'd start with free online courses - there are courses just to learn a single programming language, or you can do something more in-depth, like a MOOC computer science course. This also gives you a chance to see if coding is for you - if it really clicks, it's great - but I am not the only one who works in IT but not in coding, because it can also be frustrating, debugging it. Having said that, having the background in it is very useful, so you will lose nothing by gaining an understanding of how it all works, even if you don't go on to be a coder forever.

I agree with those who say don't spend too much; there is a lot to learn, but that's one of the good things about IT - there's always new stuff to learn. Once you've got a job, a good employer will pay for you to have training, if you need more training. (Having said that, you'll not often find someone who works in IT who won't complain about training budgets!)

It really doesn't take long to get started with coding, and then you build on that. Make sure you work with a language for which there are jobs - Python, Ruby, Java seem most in demand currently, from what I have seen, but it's not an area I follow closely.

There are loads of other jobs in IT - customer service, project management, change management, problem management, user experience design, testing... It's also a fairly buoyant market at the moment, at least for sys admin.

Be aware that development is one area companies can cut back on when there's a downturn - you need to maintain the existing systems running in production, but you can stop development for a year. Or outsource it to India or Eastern Europe or somewhere that employees will cost less. But we do also have a skills gap in most of Europe.

Definitely worth considering, but look into it before jumping and consider alternatives as well.

There is incredible demand for good coders, but I would also try to learn as much as possible online and see if somebody will take you on learning on the job. Good luck!

Thanks so much everyone. I would really love to hear the experiences of any who have changed to this mid-career.

Or anyone who teaches / tutors this sort of stuff?!
Happy Easter!

I know DH is hoping to get into this field and currently he's getting a lot out of the open source Unreal Engine stuff. Might be worth a look? He's learning C++ with it - he knew a bit before but he's picking up more.

I've been interested in the past but despite being good at maths for some reason coding goes right over my head, I have a mental block about it.

I did, by taking 1 year conversion Msc Computer Science course.
it was 15 years ago and helped me to start career in IT.

Have you considered something like that?

Have go at free courses on www.codecademy.com/learn

It will give you some flavour of what writing code is about. It will take a couple of weeks to get into it.

What language/s is that course you are planning to take list?

I started in libraries, and also did an MSc conversion on the grounds that I was only committing myself for a year, and if it turned out I hated it, knowledge of computing would be helpful for whatever I ended up doing. But that was 20 years ago - today I would advise people to start out with free online courses before committing to the cost of a masters course. Also, I think it was the hardest I've ever worked in my life (I had to record my hours for the funding I got.)

There was an interesting programme on Radio 4 today, first in a series of 5 -Codes that Changed the World. It's more history than about current computing (though as today's programme on Fortran pointed out, Fortran programs are still used extensively in certain fields.) The next one will be Grace Hopper and Cobol.

Do you knit at all? If you can, then the sort of logic used in knitting patterns is exactly the same as used in computer programming. If you can't knit at all, then just ignore this post.

Why are you interested in coding? What's your background and have you looked into any of the free resources that are around?

I write a lot of code in my job, and I also wouldn't advise one of those crash courses. I think they're expensive and promise too much! I've heard good things about Coursera and code academy.

I did a bit of FORTRAN coding about twenty years ago, but no recent coding experience, and none in Object oriented languages. I've gone from that to being able to write apps in Java, and I'm going to teach myself Swift/C++ next. I've not spent a penny on courses - I've done a MOOC course, and watched a lot of youtube tutorials. I also played around a lot with app inventor first (which is based on Java). I'm only doing it because it's awkward for me to work at the moment, my DH earns plenty anyway, I got bored during the day once my youngest started school, and I felt like my brain was turning to jelly. It's took me about 6 months to get to the stage I'm at, but I only work on it between 9-3pm, in term time, and not 6 hours a day, because I've got housework to do, or friends to meet or stuff going on at school. Not sure I'd get a job in this field with the level of knowledge I have though? It can be really, really hard at times. Sometimes, I have absolutely no idea how to get something to work, and I've spent days searching the net to try to work it out, but then I'll watch a youtube clip or read something, and suddenly it all clicks. I absolutely love it though, to the point where I think I'm getting a bit addicted...

Some big companies run programmer trainee courses. They take on dozens of people at a time and fund the training for the roles they need to fill. You'll find a huge range of people are chosen after the selection tests, not necessarily those with experience of IT or similar. Obviously you get paid during the training period too.

Look at the recruitment pages of any institution dealing with a huge volume of data.

Sometimes, I have absolutely no idea how to get something to work

This sounds perfectly normal!

It is great when it clicks, but can be very frustrating when it doesn't.

The BBC has been recruiting a lot for front-end development recently, so it might be worth checking the sort of jobs they've got going.

DriftingOff - try to develop an App you can actually put on the apps market.
That would be an excellent part of your CV should you want to look for a job. Or try to develop an app for someone's business or club/charity to try to get real life experience.

The Life Scientific with Dame Stephanie Shirley was good this morning, too. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pmvl8

Thanks once again all.

The reason Ive chosen to try this is because my 15 years in print production have left me seemingly unemployable but I need to move on; the jobs that want the skills that I do have, always ask for web packages too and I wont get that experience / training here. Im in my 40s and I just want the security of some bankable skills to start me on the road to retirement
Ive been dabbling in loads of free bits and pieces including codeacademy for nearly a year now, but I can only manage an hour here and there I dont get the bigger picture. And of course as DrifitingOff says - you get stuck and it wastes loads of time.

slightlyeggstained a study group would be just the ticket, any idea how to find one?!

What's incompatible in your current job with family life?
I know of very few people who work in IT on less than 35 or 40 hour week.

If you are interested in learning what's at the core of functionality of computers I think this is good series of videos:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLDC70psjvq5hIT0kfr1sirNuees0NIbG

I work part-time in IT, and so does my DP. It's more possible than people think, and sometimes people you never realised were part-time are (e.g. a senior project manager in a previous workplace - was two years before I realised he had an afternoon a week off for childcare!).

It's absolutely possible, but a lot of IT managers are remarkably inflexible. Most of our Dutch colleagues do 4 day weeks, and a lot of people do one or more days working from home, or finishing early to do the school run or whatever. But it's very dependent on your department, and some managers aren't that imaginative when it comes to managing time and flexibility.

Re: study groups, depends where in the country you live. If in London area, there's lots of choice - CodeBar is one group, also Women Who Code, may well be others.

Elsewhere in the country I know bits but I find Meetup.com a good way of looking for study groups. Other places to look might be skills centres, any organisations that support start up tech businesses will sometimes offer groups a venue for meetings. If you PM me I can see if I know of anywhere specific to try?

Also worth considering online study groups. Maybe we could do a MN one

Are there any skills/background you could leverage from your current role to give you a head start? One way of moving into IT can be to look out for roles that let you gradually pick up a bit more technical knowledge (I don't know how feasible this is with what you do).

have look at www.wfh.io/jobs

there are various home based jobs there and some are part-time

I hope this trend develops because many of the stuff I do from my office desk I can easily do from home. Can I do it on regular basis - not really because management feels they are loosing control if employees are working from home methinks.

Stanford university do some good lecture courses that they've recorded, on beginning programming (which covers Java) and also on C++. You can get them on iTunesU. I think there are others as well, but not explored any further yet. Derek Banas on youtube is good for Java and Appinventor. There are other people on youtube who've done a series of tutorials on Java - just do a search e.g. 'Java Tutorial'.

slightlyeggstained - is either of you or your DH doing technical roles?

By that I mean programming, applications support or infrastructure/devops/IT admin jobs?

Hmmm. While I'm really happy that coding is getting SO MUCH attention lately, with even Karlie Kloss claiming that she is learning to code (in this month's Porter magazine), I have to be the odd one out that claims that actually, it is not that easy. I came to it the traditional way via an MSc in Computer Science, and it took a lot of hours and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to feel even mildly comfortable. But - I am on the most technical side of the coding spectrum (C, core Java, Python).

I guess first I would suggest you try to find out what is it exactly that appeals to you, or are you just looking into it because it seems like a good career move? As EBearhug has mentioned, there isn't actually that much flexibility in terms of part time work, and you might find yourself competing with 20-something "brogrammers" willing to macho out 20 hours working days.

I am aware that I sound very discouraging and I don't really want to be; personally, I love working in IT and it has been a truly rewarding career for me. I just want people to realise that it actually takes quite a bit of work, and in four months in my honest opinion, you might know how to code a bit, but you wouldn't be anywhere near employable (then again, I might be having high standards here).

FibonacciSeries - from what I've learnt so far, I completely agree. I'm Ph.D. qualified in a science subject, and my Ph.D. involved coding (in FORTRAN), and I have a very logical mind but as I said in an earlier post, sometimes even I find it really, really hard. I've mainly been teaching myself Java, but the more I learn about it, the more I realise how little I know. The number of libraries that can be accessed in Java alone, just seems mind boggling, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I also agree that if I wanted a job in IT, I'd need a lot more experience/knowledge than I currently have (I don't particularly want a job just yet anyway, so this doesn't bother me). Also, the Stanford University lectures go at some speed, and are obviously aimed at students with high IQs (so i assume computer science courses in this country are the same?). I enjoy them, and I'm finding coding as a hobby a fun way to fill my time while my kids are at school, but to do it as a job?? - Hmmm, not so sure. I think maybe you would need a degree/M.Sc. in computer science, as other posters have done.