Advice for Starting IT Career

Manion · 20-04-2022 7:46pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953125#Comment_118953125

Looking down on people seems to be an important aspect of your world view. Working in IT won't make you better than anyone, it won't make you a good person nor a happy person if you otherwise are not.

johnboy92 · 20-04-2022 7:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953160#Comment_118953160

Well at the moment Im pretty much the poorest of the poor. 30k salary, renting. So the entire country is basically above me

Manion · 20-04-2022 7:54pm

You say that, at a time when we have thousands of refugees in the country fleeing for their life's with nothing but what they can carry. I'm not entirely sure you're not trolling and a previous poster suggested professional help. It won't change your situation but will change your perspective on your situation. You look down on people who rent, that's the truth, so you assume others look down on you, it's a really toxic attitude.

20-04-2022 10:21pm

Lewis_Benson · 21-04-2022 5:36am

You need to seek professional help.

You have created this "stigma" for yourself.

There is no shame in renting

dxhound2005 · 21-04-2022 10:41am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953125#Comment_118953125

It did not happen by accident for these people. There were very strict lending rules, and not just a big deposit required, but that had to be achieved by a consistent history of savings. No point in giving out loans which will expect a monthly repayment for 25 years, unless someone could demonstrate their ability to do that for at least a couple of years with no defaults. Mortgage rates were very high and very volatile. The equivalent now of a monthly repayment going from €1,000 to €1,600 in the space of a few months.

They key to your failure is in post #41. You could have chosen to make an effort to save but instead you squandered the chance.

(So why do people in Ireland, and on boards, act like a 30 year old on 30,000 is a failure?

I was thinking that because I did arts and working in marketing I was after **** up my life and was poor but from what you are all saying 30ish grand and renting is normal? I never see that on prime time or in the Irish Times. And FG talk as if we are the richest nation in the history of the world)

YellowFeather · 21-04-2022 11:11am

Look into ediscovery or eforensics OP. It’s a field where you can get money thrown at you, although it can be stressful at times.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the house - you’ll get there if you need to, but it really isn’t a status symbol.

Sleepy · 21-04-2022 11:16am

You're really not getting it OP. The only person who views renting at 30 as abnormal in this day and age is you. Looking at the home ownership data on https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp1hii/od/ and the level of those between the ages of 25 and 34 in the last census (so data from 2016) was 37.2%. That figure takes no account of relationship status (the drilldown doesn't appear to be provided) but since the majority of homeowners are couples, it's safe to assume that it's a much smaller percentage of singles in that same age group who are property owners. So, looking at facts instead of the BS spouted on social media and to use your own terminology, the "abnormal" people of your age are the ones who own their own home (particularly if they do so as a single person). It might make you want to think of emigrating but I'll bet you a pint you'll find similar statistics on any other country you might consider moving to: home ownership in one's early 30's is the exception in 2022, not the norm.

The comments section on thejournal.ie is a cess-pit of the perpetually miserable, attention seeking morons and shills for political parties and other vested interest groups (Twitter and Instagram are no better). I'm astonished that you're on anti-depressants but haven't had a therapist advise you to avoid them, tbh, it'd make me recommend thinking about finding a better therapist.

You're in a much better position than you think you are. With your previous experience as a head of marketing in the Hotel industry and your foot in the door with Meta you should be building a really strong skill base and network which you can leverage in a year or two to gain a higher salary (tbh, you're only a few months away from the first step on this - you should be getting a raise of some sort once you complete your first year with them).

kippy · 21-04-2022 11:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953176#Comment_118953176

Wage is an awful way to measure "success" and to be fair, you've absolutely no grasp of what or who the "poorest of the poor" are by the looks of things.

Your attitude isn't helping you here.

rom · 21-04-2022 1:06pm

So back when the dot com bubble burst I started in IT. It was doing mech eng first but dropped out of that as hated it (thanks career guidance teacher). I gravitated towards IT mainly because I was good at it. So when I went back I did my degree and got a 2Xk a year job. There was very little jobs at the time. Even with a degree I had very little options and I had to do loads of up-skilling. Now anyone can do this but only those who have an interest will see it through. If you want to go into a certain field to make money then it's going to be hard. If you have an interest that is more than that then you might do well. From that first job 99% of the people I worked with are still there, happy out but none of them would dream of up-skilling as most have close to zero interest.

VinLieger · 21-04-2022 1:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953125#Comment_118953125

The world and Ireland has changed a lot since you were growing up. The only person attaching a stigma to renting and having a 30k salary is you. TBH it also sounds like a lot of this is coming from comparing yourself to your siblings who grew up in very different economic times to yourself as well so trying to compare yourself to them is pointless. If they and your parents are actively still pushing this bad comparison narrative on you then they are really not clued into how hard things have gotten for people of your generation and id really consider limiting your contact with them and trying to hang around with more of your own age group as they are who will help open your eyes to see how normal your situation is. I know plenty of people in their 30s-40s who are nowhere near the salaries you consider a symbol of success and they all still are renting. I definitely wouldn't consider them failures looking at their lives and i doubt they would either.

Pussyhands · 21-04-2022 1:52pm

I was browsing r/programming one day and I saw this guy post that he is doing free software boot camps.

This was his second time doing it. The thread was full of people who said they did the previous one, that the course was amazing and that they got good jobs out of it. I subbed to the youtube channel and the playlist is there. He's doing a live bootcamp now, I think he's about half way through.

I plan on starting this sometime but haven't had the time.

Worth reading the youtube comments etc.

Link to Youtube playlist. It's pretty full on.

Free Software Engineering Bootcamp - #100Devs - YouTube

Also here is the reddit thread advertising it

I ran a 100% free full stack web development bootcamp for those laid off by the pandemic. 65 people got jobs and we are doing it again! I would love to have you join us! : learnprogramming (reddit.com)

Trigger Happy · 21-04-2022 1:55pm

To make decent money in any career you need some/all of hard work, luck, dedication, talent/skill, a liking for what you do and a fair dose of self-motivation.

There are tech support centres all over the world full of people who 'did IT' only to find it was not for them and be trapped.

Best advice in your case OP is to get proper help to sort your head issues out and then get professional career guidance on what your next move should be and take realistic steps to achieve that.

Measure your success by self fulfillment and not the comments section of The Journal.

chrissb8 · 21-04-2022 7:51pm

Yeah, IT is not some magic career path where you will be making 6 figures magically. That happens at very few select places. In 5 years you can realistically be on 60-70k though. The difference is that in IT your rate of pay does go up quickly enough, as your skills get better you will be in more demand. Switching jobs means higher pay and is generally the done thing in IT in order to bump wages up.

But you have to put in the work, lot's of it. Coding is dense and requires dogged patience and perseverance. You'll be preparing for a career of constantly learning too. Do not take it as a light career path, you will need to have a relative interest in it or you will end up hating it.

Ubbquittious · 22-04-2022 1:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118957928#Comment_118957928

What are you on about? IT is a great industry and anyone can make it big. There is such a shortage of workers that some places don't even bother with interviews anymore. One place I was at recently they run a simple competition where they see who can connect an ethernet cable with their hand furthest back from the plug.

There was a bunch of nervous college graduates in shirts their mammies ironed for them that morning lining up for the test nervously wiggling less than a foot of cable into the socket hoping for a green light and next thing this one scruffy looking lad steps forward after having done a couple of uDemy courses and having spent most of his working life on building sites.

The graduates' jaws drop as he confidently unfurls over two metres of cable before shaking it around violently through the air and smacking the end straight into Port 13 of a Netgear GS752. Few weeks later he's sending back TikToks of him partying with the company top brass in the most expensive hotel in San Jose

Roxxers · 22-04-2022 2:56am

total shite

22-04-2022 8:51am

Get yourself checked for autism, OP. And that's a genuine piece of advice. You are so focused on this idea, you're letting it ruin your life. Or you're just trolling. Regardless, you think renting is for failures, and it would do you well to get that out of your life.

As for the topic at hand, try CS50. It's the online introduction to computer science by Harvard. Totally free. I've been programming for eight years and recently started it out of curiosity and it's great.

You said you don't have any interest so why not double check to make sure. All you're doing in here is whinging and insulting people. Go try it instead of being the actual definition of a failure.

dxhound2005 · 22-04-2022 9:45am

Judging on what they wrote before, they must have had some interaction with mental health services. Could autism be misdiagnosed as depression? Even trolling could indicate some mental illness.

(I am depressed. Im on pretty strong dose of Lexapro for it (15mg). I am depressed because my life has not at all ended up how I expected it to be. I expected at 30 to have a ok ish car like a polo, own my own apartment somewhere like Saggart. That was it. And I cannot get those things. Not much, not glamour just normal. I would literally do anything to own a box room in Dundalk so I could be an owner. So I can make it. I work hard but Im finding it difficult to keep motivated in work because Im so far from making it and even my managers are renting.)

Kermit.de.frog · 22-04-2022 8:50pm

OP appears to expect to saunter in to a 60k + job (with his Arts degree). The entitlement is strong with this one.

I do hope you're trolling OP. If not you need to examine your attitude.

You are only in your 30's. You can have a degree and be on a really good trajectory within 4 years.

Whatdoesitmatter · 22-04-2022 10:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118962719#Comment_118962719

Kermit accuses another poster of trolling. The irony

IamMe33 · 23-04-2022 10:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953130#Comment_118953130

This is the best advise you've gotten yet and you've ignored it OP.

You'll pull together a deposit for a house outside Dublin in 3/4 years - a lot quicker than any other sh!te notions you've been wittering on about.

No need to go back to education first either.

screamer · 24-04-2022 8:20am

Look into doing some kind of tefl course and emigrate over to some of the Middle Eastern countries to earn money. You’ll have to stay at least 3 years though. But just in a point outside of all that your obsession with home ownership and the tie to your own sense of worth or accomplishment is unhealthy. There are thousands in the same position, and realistically your feelings towards this issue is actually what is driving your depression. Have you sought out councilling to help with that as it’s no good for you. Lastly buying a home brings its own problems it’s a debt that will have to be paid for a very long time, and I know of people who lost their homes in the last recession. In short the home you have does not equal your value or worth as a person.

one armed dwarf · 24-04-2022 5:23pm

I took this path back when I was 25, had an arts background and did the conversion course. 32 now earning 70k working remote for a US company in web dev, though that was a big step up from what I was earning in my previous role as other interviews were more in the high 50k role before I accepted this one

I will say though I had an interest in learning the technology and for the first few years sacrificed a lot of social outlets to get to a foundation level of knowledge that I was actually employable. There's also the fact that your longevity versus serious comp sci graduates won't be the same, even if you spend a lot of free time catching up on your algorithms and learning the theory that colleges will teach. Even saying that, I definitely don't regret the decision I made. I do get anxious about the constant changes in the industry however, I think the market is very generous currently but it also felt like that in 2015. I'll just have to do my best

Put any thought of owning a house in Dublin out of your mind, even if you were in a substantially better position than you are currently it just wouldn't be a reality for you and I say that in kindness not malice.

whomitconcerns · 25-04-2022 5:18am

What a nonsense thread and a laughable op troll..🤣🤣🤣🤣

riclad · 26-04-2022 1:55am

You are competing with couples who want to buy who are on 35k plus. There's simply not enough homes to meet demand , it's not your fault, it's bad planning by governments since 2007, plus economic planning by EU central Bank to stimulate economy's has pushed up asset prices, stocks, bonds, houses , you could buy maybe buy a 1bed apartment outside Dublin

Are you interested in coding programming I think it's like music you need a certain type of innate skill to play music , programming is not like learning French it's a set of mathematical skills plus a sense of logical thinking I think coding is like music you need the basic skill to even have a chance at doing it

I read articles on hacker news everyday some coders have skills on paper java c plus etc but when they go for an interview they have to solve problems write code analyse it and they can't do it or the code they write is mediocre

I'm fascinated by tech but I don't think I'd be any good at programming buy a book on java or basic c and see if you can understand it or find it even interesting

Im over 50 i remember when anyone working 40 hrs a week could buy a house Joe bloggs working in Tesco

There's various levels of programmers people who write new code people who look for bugs or just check apps to make sure they work properly I read about Google programmers who live in trailers parks because they can't afford to buy a house in san Francisco usa a tiny house is 1 million dollars plus

Pussyhands · 26-04-2022 9:32am

Would anyone advise going to a career advisor? Are they any good? Where'd you find them?

Ash.J.Williams · 26-04-2022 9:45am

families are toxic , don't listen to them

Donald Trump · 26-04-2022 10:58am

OP, have you considered maybe taking up the soccerball and going to play for Real Madrid or one of those places? Those lads are on great money altogether.

Does the FAI run any kind of soccerball equivalent of the GAA "Cul Camps"? You could sign up for one of those over the Summer and then head off to Spain before the end of the Summer. I presume their league season starts around then

funkypumpkins · 26-04-2022 8:11pm

Honestly OP, as an arts graduate who is trying a basic IT java course, I am doing a Springboard course and I find it is just not for me. I am sitting through a teams class during this and it is all going over my head. I also have personal issues happening in the background.

I guess my message is to say that IT really does attract a certain 'type', not to give into stereotypes. I see many of my classmates are avid gamers and really get the concepts and I am miles behind. Yes, they have maybe being in domains like a job or just playing with tech all day. But, I would say I would be living a miserable life if I pursued a career in this. I will try my best to pass the course and maybe it will come to use.

I worry for your very fixed mindset. Unfortunately, family are going to think such and such a thing is the done thing. But, you are not alone in being 30 and not owning property. Most of my friends, except 1 who is in a stable job and married, have a mortgage. I could easily envy you for working for Meta. I am 31 and I have only ever had a permanent part time job without want of trying for better. We always want what we do not have.

The future is uncertain, so try to live in the present and immediate future. I would love to own a home one day but I realise especially with a foreign born partner, that I may have to emigrate to progress in life or be comfortable with renting in the interim. Focus on what you can control and enjoy life.

26-04-2022 9:54pm

Arts degrees are where it's at- when WW3 starts, we'll need vocabulary - all electrics will fail.

riclad · 26-04-2022 10:17pm

i think it requires a certain type of person to study programming ,to understand abstract concepts, someone on 60k,

like it takes a certain type of person to be a chef or professional piano player

will likely need to know, javascript ,c plus, and maybe another programming language , http://blog.thefirehoseproject.com/posts/14-tips-to-successfully-start-a-career-in-coding/

Watch technical conference talks on YouTube
Follow technical influencers on Twitter
Listen to podcasts about learning to code

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeo3PHKdFQw

26-04-2022 10:18pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118981456#Comment_118981456

Can I stick pins in my eyes first? PLEASE?

n0minus1 · 26-04-2022 10:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952207#Comment_118952207

True, even though a lot of people actually working in IT are just as deluded. E.g. Many do a pointless course that doesn't provide them with anything tangible to offer in their roles and they expect to get promoted just because they did a course.

OP, There's no shortcut or substitute for hard work, just ignore the time wasters and spoofers who try to tell you otherwise.

26-04-2022 10:32pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118981518#Comment_118981518

Or else- Don't stop, belieeeeev'in

sam t smith · 26-04-2022 10:40pm

Java? Is that some coffee crap?

n0minus1 · 26-04-2022 10:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118981547#Comment_118981547

Hilarious

26-04-2022 10:43pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118981597#Comment_118981597

Ah no- Java's good coffee usually

rob316 · 26-04-2022 10:52pm

What about sales OP? Virtually unlimited earning potential there.

I'm in my early 30s and most my friends would be earning around 40k, the 2 standout earners are a spark who is printing money and another who is in IT earning north of 150k.

None of them bought homes on their own though, all as couples.

26-04-2022 11:16pm

You are not poor.

Your youth didn't end at 22.

The college you went to has nothing to do with renting, two of the lectures I know who work there rent as do a wide variety of the population.

The Irish media don't stigmatise people who rent.

You are however sounding like a spoilt brat, living under a bridge.

antimatterx · 26-04-2022 11:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058242551/advice-for-starting-it-career

I'm 26, working as a software engineer for the last 4 years post college making almost 60K if that's any use to you.

sam t smith · 26-04-2022 11:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118981616#Comment_118981616

Never tried tea or coffee. Too late in life to try them now.

JustJoe7240 · 27-04-2022 9:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118967722#Comment_118967722

How many hours a week is that? Have yet to hear of gen ops on trade money anywhere?

Ush1 · 27-04-2022 9:12am

If you don't have an engineers brain, work in IT sales. More money normally and quicker to move up the ladder.

skinny90 · 27-04-2022 9:16am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118982434#Comment_118982434

This. I made the leep and have never looked back

Mike Murdock · 27-04-2022 11:39am

Honestly @johnboy92 with your work experience in Marketing, you'd be better off looking at Professional courses at the Marketing Institute of Ireland. Or, at the very least, look at a PG Diploma in it.

You work for one of the biggest Tech companies in the world. Talk to someone in the Marketing department there about their career path and ask them their advice. Arm yourself with a knowledge of Meta and their Marketing campaigns before you talk to them. See if you can shadow someone or be mentored by someone within that department. Maybe even see if there is a project or projects you can get involved with.

Marketers can earn good money if you are good and a professional qualification is always a way of getting in the door. Don't try re-inventing the wheel by doing IT just for the money.

https://mii.ie/

johnboy92 · 27-04-2022 2:05pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118983115#Comment_118983115

My manager is one of the team heads within EMEA marketing and rents as he cannot afford to buy in Dublin. So even at the top of the game, like 55k salary he cannot buy a house. Thats why I was going to move into IT. The only think that matters to me is becoming a homeowner. Nothing else at all in life matters to me.

NedsNotDead · 27-04-2022 2:09pm

Folks. Stop feeding

antimatterx · 27-04-2022 4:17pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118983780#Comment_118983780

55K isn't great though.

johnboy92 · 27-04-2022 8:58pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118984555#Comment_118984555

exactly, that's why I want to move into IT to earn enough to buy a property in Dublin

IamMe33 · 27-04-2022 11:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118982405#Comment_118982405

With shift allowance and working as much OT as offered you would to start pull that money immediately.

If the OP wants to earn the money to get the deposit relatively quickly, in order to alleviate the overbearing depression of not being part of the landed gentry, this is the fastrack.

He'll have to be prepared to put in the hours for it though.

Advice for Starting IT Career

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