The time has come. I live in a rural area and job opportunities are scarce.
I have a rather introvert personality. I still remember my manager saying “You are an introvert” on the day of my interview. Yes, that I am, and I hate to boast, but I can do my job very well. I have implemented so many solutions, deployed servers and network devices with ease. Any issue that comes my way, I am all over it until it is resolved, which is typically quick.
In my past, I enrolled with a few Universities. I completed 1 year of CS at a University, 1 year of Mathematics (Secondary Ed. Teacher), and finally 2 years (Associate) of Information Technology w/ Networking Concentration.
Upon initial consideration of my education, it would appear that I should know SOME programming, and I do. However, I do not know enough to contribute to programming projects at work. We have a team of developers who heavily use C, JQuery, ASP.NET (but no MVC)…and Microsoft SQL with very complex queries.
My dream is to land a job that can look past the whole “You don’t have an outrageously expensive degree, so you aren’t qualified.” I am so tired of this mindset employers have. I’m a manager myself and I know upon initial review of applicants, I find myself looking at the college they went to; they get a few extra gold stars if it was a well known institution with an aggressive education program.
However, I think examples, internships, and volunteering to USE the skills and then placing this into a portfolio seems to be the way to go.
Before I found FCC, I was about to spend $10,000 on an online training course for Front End Web Development…not sure I need to lose that amount of money. I’ve read the same thing; alternative education paid or free can cause some additional hurdles when trying to get a job. From my experience, it seems like employers want to know where your internship was and want you to gain years of experience before they will hire you for a sufficient wage.