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Career change into I.T. - any advice from people working in this field?

44 replies

sterlingcooper · 28/11/2016 07:07

I have an Arts degree and since then have worked in office management type jobs for small companies. The part of my job I have always most enjoyed is to do with using IT to improve efficiency and insight, mostly Excel, databases etc. I've been able to dabble as have worked for small co.s and taught myself some stuff like basic SQL, lots of Excel stuff, the ins and outs of various databases that have been used. B I have no formal IT equals or training.

I'd really like to refocus my career on IT proper, the bit that most interests me is data analysis / BI. But I have no idea how to go about making this move. I'm mid 30s as well, it concerns me that Id be seen as too old.

Do any mumsnetters have any advice? I'm currently trying to teach myself more SQL in my spare time, but apart from that I don't know where to start. Are there any part time qualifications I should take? Are there any companies who would train me on the job? Given that my only work based IT experience is with Excel and mostly front end database stuff, everything else like the SQL has just been dabbling...I need some kind of solid plan and focus ! What should it be?

OP posts:
EBearhug · 28/11/2016 15:31

It was this thread.

AlwaysLookOnBrightsideOfLife · 28/11/2016 16:03

Another female in I.T. here, although I came from an I.T. background in to industry (and I've also worked in academia for a number of years too).

It is a male dominated industry, but I disagree with females having glass ceilings compared to their male counterparts and that's not my experience at all.

If software development is what interests you then unless you're going somewhere that they're going to fully train you up then you need a concrete understanding of the language you're wanting to work in. Most jobs are looking for either graduates (usually in I.T., but some look at others too) or people with X years experience (usually 5 min). There are obviously exceptions to this. The interview process usually involves a technical assessment as well. Whether that's one given in advance that you bring with you and discuss, or one that is blind and you usually have to answer with pen and paper.

If it's Big Data that you're interested in then that's a massive area and you might be best looking at the technologies used in it as well as the foundations, architectures etc.

If you've an idea of a specific area that you might be interested in I can help further with requirements.

slug · 28/11/2016 16:18

Another conversion MSc person here.

This one can be done part time

DontAskIDontKnow · 28/11/2016 17:17

It is definitely a male-dominated industry, but I've found that has led to me being treated very fairly.

I had no trouble taking full maternity leave and changing to part-time work, unlike people I know that work in female-dominated professions. Several of the men I work with do a 4 day week since having children.

The only trouble I've found is that I sometimes look at the men around me and assume that they know better than me, simply because our culture has ingrained that idea in my head and there aren't many female role models.

silverduck · 28/11/2016 17:26

From the extra info you've given I'd agree an MSc conversion is not a bad idea. I know a couple of people who did this one: www.kent.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/243/computer-science That with the industrial placement option would probably get you on a graduate scheme if you interviewed well.

EBearhug · 28/11/2016 18:00

I think it depends a lot on the company - and also the department. I find there's rarely a problem with things like working from home because of childcare problems or child illness - or because the car needs it's MOT, or someone is coming round to check the boiler or whatever. I think all my male colleagues who are parents do quite a bit of childcare like that. At least one has a formal flexible working agreement to ensure he can be do the afternoon school run every day. Mind you, a manager did comment that a male Swedish colleague who took a year's parental leave wasn't really dedicated to the job... (Equality in the wrong direction.)

But I have had people assume I'm the secretary more than once (like anyone has secretaries these days, unless they're as high as God or so.) Pretty sure that's never happened to any of the men I work with.

They did change the "beware of men working behind doors" sign in the datacentre when I pointed it out, but I've still had supplier's engineers commenting on how unusual it is to see a woman in the datacentre. They don't mean it in a bad way, but it's just conversations my male colleagues don't have to bother with.

I got cheered when I arrived at a storage admin course at a vendor site, because so few women do it. It's appreciation of a sort, but my male colleagues don't have to be treated like a rare zoo creature.

I did pull my manager up when he said I am the emotional one in the team - ignoring the man who stood up and swore in a meeting - that's just passionate or something, not emotional.Hmm I do feel angry at times, but I've never expressed it that way. My favourite is the colleague who said, "you can think logically because you don't have enough female hormones." He said it aloud, but I reckon there are plenty who think women are actually a bit crap (despite the evidence,) and just won't think of involving a woman on that project to give her a chance and so on. It's probably not even conscious mostly (unconscious bias), they just think of Dave and Paul before they'd ever think of Joanne. It means that when the company is doing good stuff like hold a session for women in leadership, some people won't be put forward for it, because you have to be nominated by your manager, and he doesn't recognise someone as a potential leader if they don't have testicle.

There is still a lot of that in IT - none of it that big a deal in isolation, but these micro-aggressions happen all the time, and it's death by a thousand cuts - it does take mental energy to ignore it, mental energy which male colleagues don't have to waste. (And some is not limited tech.)

But as I said, it does depend on the company. The last job I was looking at, their website showed one woman among all the men on their board and senior managers. I suspect it wouldn't be that supportive an environment. I don't know - I didn't proceed with the application because of their lack of women (not the only reason, but it was the main one.) I have been doing this for two decades - I'm tired of working with just men, and I want workplaces where there's more balance, and I am in a position where I can be picky about the jobs, so why not tell companies with too few women that's a problem.

Don't mean to put you off - all jobs have their downsides. But some companies are better for women in tech than others.

olderthanyouthink · 28/11/2016 18:26

I'm (female) web developer.

I work with SQL a fair bit and obviously HTML all the time, btw you'd need to update your HTML knowledge to use it these days.

With a background in arts you might find that is a bonus, if you do development.

I did an apprenticeship in software/web development, the job was good (might have crushed a school leaver though) but the actual course was a bit crap, but it got my foot in the door and I now have a bunch of contacts - coincidentally most of them are in a BI software company.

I plan to learn app development at some point but have been putting it off because I don't feel too well atm, but I know I will likely need to expand what I can do.

Oh and I was the only female member of staff in the office (out of about 12 of us) during the apprenticeship and am the only female dev at my current job (out of 6 of us)

StarCrossdSkys · 28/11/2016 18:43

You absolutely do not need to be good at maths to be a developer. I am one and my maths is shocking. Just scraped a C at GCSE with tutoring. Some interview problems may assume reasonable maths skills but they are not needed for the actual job at all. I agree it's a brilliant field to work in. Well paid, in demand, good work life balance and you can wear jeans a hoodie every day. Yes it's male dominated, but they're the geeks not the alpha male types and you will be judged on ability.

Fluffsnuts · 28/11/2016 18:47

My husband has switched from primary teaching to software developing. He had a degree in philosophy the did his PGCE, taught for 7 years then did a masters in IT, it was specifically aimed at those wanting to change career.

He found a graduate job easily and is loving it. His manager is younger than him but no one seems to care, including him.

karalime · 28/11/2016 18:57

I'm in a similar boat to you and I want to point out that there is quite a lot out there for free.

I've just had a weekend intro to coding course that was totally free for women AND had free meals and snacks! Have a look on meet up as well in London at least there are quite a few events.

StarCrossdSkys · 28/11/2016 20:18

You absolutely do not need to be good at maths to be a developer. I am one and my maths is shocking. Just scraped a C at GCSE with tutoring. Some interview problems may assume reasonable maths skills but they are not needed for the actual job at all. I agree it's a brilliant field to work in. Well paid, in demand, good work life balance and you can wear jeans a hoodie every day. Yes it's male dominated, but they're the geeks not the alpha male types and you will be judged on ability.

sterlingcooper · 28/11/2016 22:30

Drip feed: I currently live and work on the continent. I didn't mention it in OP as just wanted broad range of advice & perspectives. In the country where I live it is very hard to make career changes, and there are fairly rigid expectations of having precise degrees/Masters that correspond to precise jobs. And getting onto any meaningful IT courses (like a Master's) here when I have a totally non IT/science/maths background would be impossible as far as my research has shown. I couldn't even get onto an IT BSc as I don't have the right A level equivalents!

But I realised I was prepared to temporarily move back to the UK to break into the sector either via getting experience or getting quals, and then hopefully come back to this country in a better position to find an IT job here. Hence I started this thread and I am so grateful for all the replies.

I really think the MSC conversion in IT could be perfect as a) it can be done in a year, which is a feasible amount of time fir me to spend back in the UK and b) the word 'Masters' is like magic here and would open up lots more doors I think once I had it. Plus c) I don't know exactly what kind of IT role would be best for me so doing Masters would give me the opportunity to learn about lots of different areas of IT and not have to specialise too soon.

I'm not going to rush into anything as it's a big decision, but I feel very encouraged that this possibility is out there and I would never have thought if it without you all.

Next steps I think:

  • research the different MSc programmes available with a view to applying for Sept 2017
  • continue trying to teach myself as much as possible on my own. Next thing possibly Java or updating my HTML skills. Play around more with SQL server.
  • look at some of the other links people have shared on this thread eg the women in IT site
  • try to do more research into jobs that could be open to me specifically here in this country, with a MSc in IT. This is the tricky part...
OP posts:
EBearhug · 28/11/2016 22:58

My department is spread across a number of European countries, and the company is in even more countries. I have lots of contacts through the women's network - feel free to PM me. I have links for women in tech organisations in lots of EU countries, and probably some links to articles, too.

daisychain01 · 30/11/2016 20:58

Re self-teaching, sterling, take a look at MOOC platform providers that deliver free online courses on different programming languages, IT Essentials, system development lifecycle etc. There are lots of great courses on these sites (there are others, just Google massive open online courses):

Coursera
EdX
FutureLearn

sterlingcooper · 01/12/2016 14:01

I've got so much stuff to look at this weekend, thank you so much everyone for all the links and advice.

I'm going to ask Mumsnet HQ to move this thread to somewhere more permanent, as it would be a shame for it all to disppear in 30 days. Other people mind find it useful as well as me.

OP posts:
daisychain01 · 02/12/2016 05:01

I don't think this board is a 30 days only

I've looked back at threads that go back 2-3 years.

SummerLightning · 02/12/2016 05:53

Coursera is really good ime. Lots of the courses say you have to pay but if you poke around there are ways to sign up to get the content for free, you just have to pay if you want to get the course signed off to put on your CV.

I've only done the Stanford Machine Learning one and some data science ones, but there are loads of different programming ones on there.

I also have a conversion Msc in Computer Science, it was bloody ages ago now though! It was definitely a good way to get into programming jobs at the time.

BWatchWatcher · 02/12/2016 06:08

Hi, I'm a project lead in an IT company.
I have an arts degree and no real maths background.
I agree with those upstream who say you don't need maths or science, just a logical mind.
I recently attended a women in it session at my company and sat at a table with 5 arts graduates. The younger members had done 1 year MSc conversion courses. I did a reskilling program for graduates 15 years ago :)
Coursera and Code Academy are good.
Also if you're interested in analytics look at Tableau.

EBearhug · 02/12/2016 07:43

I don't think this board is a 30 days only
It's not, but the thread started out in Chat.

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