Career Development Path

[CodedFire]

Hello everyone,

Ive been studying vb as a hobby for about 6 months now and finding it quite fun and fufilling!

Ive been setting out goals for myself and one is to gain some sort of qualification in order to persue programming as a career.

I have a few issues that are making this abit difficult though:


I dont have a leaving cert (Irelands equiv to maybe SAT's)
Im in full time employment by a big telecoms company, 5 days a week
Ive purchased my own house
The only "part time" course require me to be over 23 (im 21)


Some or all of these present a problem trying to get into a standard college, if i sit the leaving cert i still can't go to college because of the full time job and 35 year mortgage!

Ive seen on MSDN that there are exams microsoft offer but im unsure how to study for them.

What im looking for is a way to self study or distance learn in other to gain one of these microsoft qualifications.

Has anyone ever followed this path of development or have any input into how it works

Thanks!

[Pasvorto]

I can't speak for anyone but myself. I took 3 programming classes in college (FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal). I have not used any of them (except a brief bit of COBOL) in a work environment. I am self-taught in Basic (started before QuickBasic... a long time ago).

All my programming at work is in VB6 right now. I am in the process of moving some apps to VB2005 and some others to C# 2005. In both instances, I am "teaching myself".

I read that the certifications (from M$) aren't all they are hyped up to be.

Learn what you want to and try to get some practical experience. Employers are more interested in how you did on your last job than how you scored on an exam.

That's just my humble opinion.

[FunkyDexter]

Having a qualification would certainly make getting into programming professionally easier but it's not the only way. I'd agree with Pasvorto that MS certifications probably aren't for you (they're pretty expensive to sit). And my suggested aproach is free (if quite hard work):-

My advice would be to put together some simple applications to prove you know what you're doing. Create a web site and post the code and exes on it. Then go through the yellow pages and phone up every software development house in a 50 mile radious of your home and ask to speak to the development manager. You'll be amazed how well this actually works and, if you can speak to a development manager, how happy they are to speak to you. A couple of warnings:-
1. Alot of the companies will be one man bands so they won't be interested in hiring you, mind you, if the stuf on your web site is good enough they might give you a few bits of contracting work.
2. Receptionists will try to block you from speaking to the manager.
a. If they do just ask if they have an email address. That email address will almost certainly contain the managers name. Send a quick email to the manager with a link to your site saying you're a developer looking for work. Key point here - you're not someone who wants to be a developer; you ARE a developer, how you view yourself is how they'll view you.
b. In a weeks timephone back and ask for the manager by name. If the receptionist asks why just be honest, say you sent in your details and are following up on them. Receptionists will tend to let a follow up call through but won't let a prospective call through.
3. The manager won't actually check your site. That doesn't matter, he wouldn't have read your CV either. The point of the site wasn't atually to impress him, it was purely to give a bit of meat to your aproach and to be there in the off chance that he does bother to read it.
4. Once you speak to the manager be honest and freindly. Everything else leads up to this point and was really just a ploy to get you into this conversation in the first place so don't blow it. You're a developer and you're looking for work. You've got ability even if you don't have quals and he can check your web site if he wants to see the proof of that. Be confident in your abilities, if you can write an app then you can do something that they'll find useful.
5. You'll get alot of knockbacks but you're only looking to get 1 or 2 interviews out of 100+ calls. If you can get an interview you're a shoe in. Why? because you're the only person being interviewed at this point. You're not competing with anyone else and they've invited you in because they're genuinely interested in seeing you.

This is exactly what I did when I left uni and a year or so later when my career hit the skids. I had a degree which probably gave me an edge over you but this aproach has found me a job within 1 week before now so you should be able to get something with no quals but demonstrable skills with a month at most. The whole aproach hinges on talking to the development manager, he's the guy that'll hire you so everything preceding that is just a ruse to get you into that conversation. Once you get that conversation you'll be amazed that they actually seem quite happy to talk to you, even if they don't have a job to offer.

One last warning, because this aproach tends to find you a job with a company that wasn't particularly looking for a developer at the time you tend to find they don't have much for you to do when you start. Don't be surprised if you get made redundant after six month or so (I speak forom botter experience here) but that's fine, just rinse and repeat. After 2 short jobs you're CV will have enough experience on it to be able to get jobs by the more standard agency routes.

[CodedFire]

Thanks for the information guys, i suppose its just a pain self learning, its very solw and overwhelming but i enjoy it so i think i will push on!

Thanks again!