Getting Started For Career Swap?

Career Advice
#1

Greetings! I am mid-career and am looking to do a career swap. I am just burned out. I have always loved computers, gaming and building things/solving problems and wish I had gone to school for it. I’d like to switch to a tech based role in my current company as it is a massive fortune 50 and I’m sure has opportunities.

With that said, for someone with no coding experience at all, how do you recommend getting started? Do I literally start with Responsive Web Design and work all the way down through Machine Learning with Python Cert doing each one? I just want to ensure I am getting the most bang for my buck to get started.

Also, as I go through it, I understand it is more of a framework then a teach all. If I have an interest in say the security side, I would then branch off and jump into that more and more after completing my certs?

Lastly, I am not the creative type, so web development isn’t necessarily what I want to get into. I am very interested in data sciences, automation and application development.

In looking at the jobs posted at my current company in tech, most seem to have Python (AI focused). I am truly a bit overwhelmed and want to get the ball rolling and begin to learn without paying for a bootcamp up front and felt this is likely an incredible resource to teach myself while working. It just seems like a lot of items are covered in each of the certs and I want to ensure I don’t have a false start somewhere.

I truly appreciate your time in answering this!

#2

Hey @RajinCajin!

The FCC curriculum teaches full stack web development. Even though you are not interested in that area you could still look into the python sections. But to start off with I would take an intro to computer science course so you can learn the basics of programming. I am currently finishing up CS50 and it has really helped me out a lot.

Here is the link for the free course.

You can enroll at any time and it is a completely self paced course. If you don’t finish the course by December 31st some of the problem sets might be a little different but the majority of them stay the same so you don’t have to start over from the beginning in 2021.

The first 6 weeks are in C and then they switch over to python, then sql and then from there you can choose a track for the final project. (Web dev, game dev, mobile apps) The course really focuses on problem solving and computer science basics. The course isn’t meant to turn you into a master of C or python but rather use those languages as tools to help you solve problems. It is challenging but they have a great community for support.

And then when you finish that course, then you can come to FCC and do the python sections. MIT also has an intro computer science but that doesn’t start up again until the new year.

Hope that helps!

Good luck on your journey!

2 Likes
#3

This is great stuff. Thank you so very much!

#4