Who am I?
My name is Chris, I live and work in Glasgow in a boring retail job which I cant name due to boring stuff. I've been living in Glasgow now for six and a half years and have a degree in 3D Computer Animation from Glasgow Caledonian University. I've been struggling to get my foot in the door even though I've worked freelance gigs in the industry using my degree for the past three years now. In this post im going to talk you through why I believe this move is right for me and why if your interested in tech it might be a great career change for you if your not satisfied with where your at in you professional career.
Bit of context
Over the past three to four months I've been looking into options to begin an intensive 16 week coding boot-camp as the overall consensus from online searches and the general YouTube software development community seems to be relatively favorable to intensive training style programs. The interesting thing about bootcamps is they offer a very immersive and practical approach that you don't really see anywhere else. Seeing as this is the main focus of their camps is their unique approach to learning, which sounds much more appealing than spending the next four years in a university type setting although I would agree there would be a much more in-depth education at that level it fails to immerse you in as quick a time frame. After digging through hours of video, blog posts and articles I found only a small amount of criticism but overall the ability for these camps to give you a broad enough understanding & experience using a variety of different technologies and languages seems to be their pros when it comes to learning to code in a relatively short period of time.
Whats the current situation in the tech industry right now?
Living in Scotland myself there was statistics posted by the Scottish government in September of 2016 stating that there was a current shortage of 11,000 jobs in the digital tech sector, further research shows that that has stayed steady as in February of 2015 the independent talked about a shortage of around 13,000 Java developers. Just to restate that 13,000 Java developers that's not even factoring the other languages and technologies that are becoming more and more relevant by the day.
"There were 105,760 jobs advertised in the IT sector in February 2015, jobs listing website Adzuna says, a rise of 6% in six months. More than 13,300 of those required Java skills." (May 2015) - https://goo.gl/s1rl44
To combat the growing problem the Scottish government has begun to setup digital incubators such as codeclan, codebase and a few others and counting to try and fill the job market with capable and interesting people with the introduction to coding for kids all the way up to career changers. This got me interested as I've always wanted to learn to program but never had the time due to my full time job that i'm still currently which has made it difficult to try and teach myself. looking ahead I applied for a company based in Glasgow called codeclan and was accepted which was fantastic.
What i'm looking to achieve?
When it comes to tech, simply put I cant get enough of it. Seeing the whole advent of crypto currencies the tech behind the coins taking note of the fundamental thing running all these coins and keeping them in check the blockchain, is one of the main reason I want to get into programming seeing as the future of blockchain technologies is looking very bright and is definitely here to stay. That's just the start but secondly having the opportunity to pretty much go into any industry and have the potential to shift the way it operates (Transport, Logistics, Space, Economy's, to pretty much anything you can think of someones coded it) is really why I want to make this exciting change, Plus the ability to use my problem solving skills on a daily basis would be great.
Hope Ive inspired
Be nice i'm new to the platform and looking forward to posting more content every now and again. Once i'm stated on the bootcamp I will be writing regular posts to show where i'm at and if they really will benefit you in getting that job you really want.
What to do next?
If you are interested in looking into bootcamps have a look at the site below to find local bootcamps near you and get in contact.
https://www.coursereport.com/
Please,
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I look forward to the comments.
