There's an old saying - those who know, do. Those who don't, teach. In essence, you might have the knowledge, but you have no practice. That makes you mostly unemployable in tech.
But good news is that many companies want to fill some quotas and they require degrees, so you'll likely find some place in a larger company where what you can do means less than the letters that go before or after your name.
A situation from a personal experience - some years go, in a company where I worked at(advertising agency, i handled the websites), we were looking to hire someone. I do not rememebr what position it was. We were small company, 15-ish people. We got a ton of CVs. I rememebr one specific CV - there was a guy who had THREE university diplomas and was in his 30s, but had no work experience. This guy had 0 chance of being picked and his CV went straight to the trash bin. In tech, this is 10x more prominent as this sector is about what you can actually do and what you did in the past. Not what you know in theory and whatnot.
It is what it is. Good luck with your search. Definitely pick some popular language though, to broaden up your pool of opportunities. Don't be looking for Rust jobs or any of that nonsense. And don't expect large salary either. You have to earn it.
Best answer I have, find some volunteer work that supports what you want to do. Do it for 6 months, add to resume. Possibly find an open source project to add to. Be sure to professionally document your changes.
it would be handy to pick atleast a type of role you want to focus on, at first, this might not need to be where you want to end up eventually (can learn from the road).
also for people who might want to recommend jobs it could help to give a lower limit for compensation. what do you need atleast. and work hours.
i think coming from teaching there's a lot of work in research that might be an easy match up but that might not be the type of role you want.
for programming there are also different kinds of programming roles. automations, applications, mobile, desktop/server, embedded etc.
what makes you tick when you think of work or what keeps happy when ur doing it, regarding what you think you wanna do?
Yeah that's a solid point you've broken it down well. I think it just seems overwhelming on where to even start with those different roles. Suppose research is my best friend and should see what I should be focusing on first.
I'm definitely one that enjoys the creative/technical mix of coding and design. I assume that I should be learning new tools too as in 5 years, a lot can change in the programming world.
I know I'll have to enter at entry/junior level too which is fine as long as there was growth potential.
I've thought about the research side of things but definitely want to be more hands on.
This might sound stupid, when building the project, focus it on something interesting to me or should I aim to make it more accessible to show off skills if that makes sense?
There's an old saying - those who know, do. Those who don't, teach. In essence, you might have the knowledge, but you have no practice. That makes you mostly unemployable in tech.
But good news is that many companies want to fill some quotas and they require degrees, so you'll likely find some place in a larger company where what you can do means less than the letters that go before or after your name.
A situation from a personal experience - some years go, in a company where I worked at(advertising agency, i handled the websites), we were looking to hire someone. I do not rememebr what position it was. We were small company, 15-ish people. We got a ton of CVs. I rememebr one specific CV - there was a guy who had THREE university diplomas and was in his 30s, but had no work experience. This guy had 0 chance of being picked and his CV went straight to the trash bin. In tech, this is 10x more prominent as this sector is about what you can actually do and what you did in the past. Not what you know in theory and whatnot.
It is what it is. Good luck with your search. Definitely pick some popular language though, to broaden up your pool of opportunities. Don't be looking for Rust jobs or any of that nonsense. And don't expect large salary either. You have to earn it.
Question: what did you teach? Can you teach tech?
Best answer I have, find some volunteer work that supports what you want to do. Do it for 6 months, add to resume. Possibly find an open source project to add to. Be sure to professionally document your changes.
I teach Computer Science at GCSE/A-Level so if that's what you mean by teaching tech I guess so!
Top advice though thank you.
it would be handy to pick atleast a type of role you want to focus on, at first, this might not need to be where you want to end up eventually (can learn from the road).
also for people who might want to recommend jobs it could help to give a lower limit for compensation. what do you need atleast. and work hours.
i think coming from teaching there's a lot of work in research that might be an easy match up but that might not be the type of role you want.
for programming there are also different kinds of programming roles. automations, applications, mobile, desktop/server, embedded etc.
what makes you tick when you think of work or what keeps happy when ur doing it, regarding what you think you wanna do?
Yeah that's a solid point you've broken it down well. I think it just seems overwhelming on where to even start with those different roles. Suppose research is my best friend and should see what I should be focusing on first.
I'm definitely one that enjoys the creative/technical mix of coding and design. I assume that I should be learning new tools too as in 5 years, a lot can change in the programming world.
I know I'll have to enter at entry/junior level too which is fine as long as there was growth potential.
I've thought about the research side of things but definitely want to be more hands on.
i would forget the online courses. pick something to build and ship it. if you're familiar with python you could start with a flask app + sqlite.
Yeah fair play I don't think that's a bad idea.
This might sound stupid, when building the project, focus it on something interesting to me or should I aim to make it more accessible to show off skills if that makes sense?