Hi, could be the first of many posts!!

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Hi, I'm Tony and found this very handy little forum whilst trawling through the bewildering array of IT training providers out there! My current situation is that due to a recent (most would say misguided!) relocation I am unemployed and looking, at the rather less than tender age of 32, to start again in the field of IT. I do have some experience having completed a number of courses in the past, most notably an MCP some five years ago, but my motivation is more for a sustainable and relatively lucrative career rather than a deep seated love of bits and bytes. I did study for an HNC at foundation level (again several years ago) and as a part of that sampled programming (Turbo Pascal!!) which I enjoyed and am leaning towards. Not sure what I'm looking for here but if anyone can offer any words of advice then I would be grateful. The distance learning approach with Computeach(!?!?!) and the like is appealing due to it's tailored simplicity (but not it's price tag!) but I have been impressed with the talk of self study on here and would love to hear from anyone who can offer practical advice for a newbie like me wanting to make a career for himself in programming via this method. Also (and apologies is this is 'off-thread'!) has anyone here ever used www.freeskills.com? This looks an interesting and relatively cheap way of gaining a foothold but I'd be interested in any experiences and/or opinions that others may have. Thanks for reading and good luck with whatever you're doing.

 

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Welcome to CF Tony.

 

Welcome to CF! Take a look here if you havent already done so
http://www.certforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11831

 

Thanks Raffaz, may your love of Kebabs never show!! That's a good post and has certainly got me considering the merits of home study, which is sort of what I was going to be paying Computeach 2 to 3 grand for anyway!! Just got to choose a path now - like that's the easy bit!! Anyone got any suggestions?!?! Cheers again

 

The path you choose all comes down to what career you plan on doing mate.

 

Hi and welcome to CF!

 

Hi Tony, welcome to CF.

In response to the above my advice would be, bluntly, forget IT. The former will never come your way without the latter. It can take years of hard slog and/or training to just to get a foot on the ladder and lucrative it will not be for many more years after that. You need the interest and passion to keep on top of ever-changing technologies and to motivate you to study for your certifications and then keep them up to date. If you don't have an interest in IT you may as well look at becoming a car mechanic who has no interest in cars. If you decide to progress with this course of action anyway, I wish you best of luck, just don't expect to get rich overnight.

 

Excellent advice. If you don't love IT, you'll find it quite difficult to compete with those who do. We put in long hours, and we study new technologies once everyone else has gone to bed, all for the love of the craft. If you don't have that kind of dedication (and are merely doing it for the money), your career won't be able to take off and stay airborne.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck in your career.

 

Thank you for those snippets of tough love Baba and Brain Beacon - I shall be sure to remember this when I next encounter the rather less than highly motivated IT people that our offices are so full of! Is anyone else able to offer some words of advice to someone who enjoys working with computers but sees them as tools with which to achieve a goal rather than a joy in themselves?

 

Put the work in and you will achieve.

 

Never heard of them Wally, hence my advice is to be very wary.

There are a lot of so-called training companies which proclaim to have excellent results and site cases of high levels of exam passes by their students, all sounding great and an apparent bargain. However, a lot of these, and I am not saying freeskills are in this bracket, give their students *braindumps*. In this industry the term *braindump* means the actual questions and answers from the vendors exams. This is cheating and is frowned upon by legitimate cert holders and also it is illegal.

Microsoft and other vendors are trying to have these sites closed down but the legal wranglings can go on and on hence it's a battle which can never be won. By the time that one site has been closed down another one doing the same thing pops up hosted in another continent and with a different name. It's the scourge of our world.

 

Welcome to CF, Tony. Seems like the Guys have already set you straight. I hope we can help you on you way to IT - for the right reasons

 

Hello and welcome

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome Tony, I loved IT to begin with, but the more I learn, the more I want to learn and the more I enjoy it, so hopefully you can develop a taste for the field.

Good luck with your choices

 

I'd just like to reiterate what baba said. I'd also like to point out that you mentioned "tailored simplicity" in relation to computeach... don't believe the hype. There is no way in which a course by computeach is going to be any easier than any other course.

 

Wallybazoom?????
Wasnt that Mart's boss in Game on?
"Just waxing my board Mand"
"Mart, tea!!! in the hand!!" Lol..............
Kat