“Where The Hell Do I Start?”

My Background  Richard Renshaw  Social Worker For 10 Years.  At age 29 I decided on a career change.  Keen gamer.  Photoshop, Html, Css, Javascript & Java in my spare time before this.  Decided that I wanted to make my hobby my job – the dream was to work in games.  Reason I wanted to change?

Practicalities To Consider First  Finances: How To Fund The Transition?  Wage Expectations? Graduate (£23,000+)  How Fast Do You Want To Make The Change? (Months/Years).  The Role You Desire: Marketing, Design, Coding, Business Management (More on these in detail later). Business Analyst  Developer (UX/Front End, Middleware, DBA)  Infrastructure (Server management, Pipelines, Tech support)  Tester (Manual or Technical)  Outside Commitments & Distractions: Time to do what your committing too.

Personal Attributes  Ability To Learn: Digital moves so fast that every few years you will need to skill up again.  Business Analysts – New Philosophies, ways of working. (Agile & Lean: Good Examples)  Developers: New Coding Languages & Techniques.  Infrastructure: Servers, Maintenance, DevOps.  Testers: New Frameworks, Tools & efficient test strategies.  Continuous motivation to look at what is new and interesting.

Where To Start? Options Available  Undergraduate degree (Expensive – Full-time/Part-time up to 4 years)  If you have a degree already there are 1 year masters courses in Computing Available – MSC Computing MMU/Manchester. (£3600)  Code Boot Camps: Short Intense Schools that allow people to learn & get into a career fast. Generally between 3 & 6 months (£6000+) Example Locally: North Coders – Speak with Claire.  Certifications & Training: 10 Day courses which give an overview then a certification. (£3000+)

Where To Start? Options Available (continued)  Distance Learning Companies: Computeach – Subscription Model Where you do it in your own time. (£100-£200 a month, or module cost basis)  Apprenticeships: Watch this space as there is currently more in the pipeline for Mature apprentices from the government (Get paid as you train).  Teach Yourself: Richness of online resources free/paid such as Code academy, Pluralsight, Digital Tutors, Code school. Apply For a role after this or apply to companies in the north west asking for training on the job (lower wages but gets you in the door and earns money).

Funding Available  Career Development Loans. Offered by the Co-op Bank & Barclays. Borrow up to £10000 then start to pay it back after 1 year (9.9% APR typical).  Government Grants via skills companies: City & Guilds, ILM. Various Agencies, make money from you and may have to pay back. es/default.aspx actually quite good. es/default.aspx  No funding: Pay your own way, pay for yourself.  NOTE: More available each and every day so use the internet and research as there is a shortage of digital skills.  I took a mix, 1 Year Masters, Some money saved up and took a career development loan.

Landing Your First Role: What To Expect From Interviews  Differ from company to company (Sorry this will be focused more on development here).  Telephone Interview: Where your at, projects you worked on, experience (Some technical questions).  Technical Test At Home: Coding, exercise.  Face To Face Interview around you as a person (not just you technical ability).  A lot of the time the technical test & the face to face are done as part of an assessment day.  Some places also do aptitude tests (general IQ based testing).

Tips For Interviews  Be Yourself  If you don’t know a technical answer admit you don’t know. In technology winging it can cause issues (Integrity to say you don’t know is actually valued).  Research the company.  Have some questions for the interviewer.

Resources To Teach Yourself  : Lots of video courses available (£20 per month for videos, £30 per month with resource files). Digital Tutors is part of this too.  : Some free courses on lots of languages.  us/subscriptions/aa aspx : MSDN subscription for learning the Microsoft stack. us/subscriptions/aa aspx

Key Texts On Industry Techniques.  TDD By Example: Kent Beck: Driven-Development-Addison-Wesley-Signature- Series/dp/ http:// Driven-Development-Addison-Wesley-Signature- Series/dp/  Growing Object Oriented Design Guided By Tests: Freeman & Pryce Software-Guided- Signature/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=growing+object- oriented+software+guided+by+testshttp:// Software-Guided- Signature/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=growing+object- oriented+software+guided+by+tests  Refactoring: Martin Fowler Existing- Technology/dp/ /ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qi d= &sr=1-1-spell&keywords=refectoring Existing- Technology/dp/ /ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qi d= &sr=1-1-spell&keywords=refectoring

Key Texts On Industry Techniques.  Clean Code: Robert C Martin Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsmanship/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qi d= &sr=1-1&keywords=clean+codehttp:// Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsmanship/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qi d= &sr=1-1&keywords=clean+code  The Lean Start-up: Eric Ries Startup-Innovation-Successful- Businesses/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=the+lean+startuphttp:// Startup-Innovation-Successful- Businesses/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=the+lean+startup  Domain Driven Design: Eric Evans Complexity- Software/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=domain+driven+design Complexity- Software/dp/ /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1&keywords=domain+driven+design

QUESTIONS