I've received really excellent feedback from prior posts regarding questions about tech careers and how to get started from scratch. One poster talked about a problem that I'm experiencing, namely, which field to commit to. They all sound attractive in their own right. So I thought I'd ask some questions about each.

My background: Been an online grinder (NL HU to 6max) for 10+ years. It's been my sole source of income. I'm ready to move on, however. Tech is my area of interest and hence my focus. I very briefly held a programming job before I got into poker (C/C++). It was years ago and very brief. I do have an M.S. in Statistics from an acclaimed university. However, for all intents and purposes my skill level is big fat 0 in the IT world. I am essentially starting from scratch. So with that in mind ...

Here are the five areas I'm most interested in, in no particular order:

- Web Development

- Cyber Security

- Data Science

- Network or Systems Admin

- QA Testing


1) What is the approximate length of time it would take until I could become employable in each of these 5 fields, if I can commit 4-5 hours each day to self-studying? (I'd like to be able to utilize the MOOC and study from home, and for free, if possible...w3schools, codeacademy, odinproject, etc. I don't know if this is possible for Network or Systems Admin, however, but I am perfectly ok with attending a physical school if necessary). I also doubt Data Science is something I can pick up on my own quickly. I gather it requires years and years of experience as it demands multiple levels of expertise across differencing disciplines. But I really don't know ...


2) Which of the 5 has the best job outlook currently/most job openings?

3) Best method of going about gaining the knowledge to become employable in each of the 5 fields (preference being towards the freebie, self-study MOOC method if at all possible)

4) If possible, which is the "coolest"/most fun to work on, for anyone that's dabbled a little in each.


Many thanks

#1 shouldn't hold too much weight in your decision. If you're really into this stuff and plan to go at it for at least 5 years does it matter if one of them can get you employed a few weeks sooner?

Depending on how deep you go with "web development" you'll likely touch on all 4 bases areas.

You'll want to make sure whatever web app you develop is secure right, or at least know what to look for in terms of security when making a decision on what framework to use and to also be aware of vulnerabilities of your code and how to fix/research them.

You could also be expected to create complex data models and figure out how to get information out in a reasonable way.

Lastly you may want to deploy your web app which will require at least a little bit of sys admin skills and knowing about things like DNS and other networking related skills. App deployment and CI/CD (google) alone is a career of its own.

Not all of that is mandatory up front or will be required on day 1.

Definitely wouldn't matter if just a few weeks. Matters somewhat, however, if the difference is many months or even a couple years.

The problem with going the self-study route is that, unless you have a knowledgeable friend/acquaintance to guide you, you're going to end up spending a lot of time wondering down bad paths. That's why these programming bootcamps that are springing up look like a good option. The good ones at least know exactly what you need to know to be employable and how to get you there in the shortest amount of time.

I can see that. Tyvm mate.

If you have social skills i.e. you can make eye contact and smile during interviews, you can become employable as a web developer in about 3 months of full time self study.

What fields would one study for such a thing iyo?

Just do the Odin project? Or is there a list of stuff you would recommend, like html, css, jscript, Ruby/rails, php, asp, etc?

At OP, have you read this?

You are probably employable in some capacity in all of these fields right now at the low end. The bigger decision is whether you're going to be a programmer. The difference between these fields is negligible early in your career if you're also going to be a programmer. Regardless of your title, if you're writing software to solve the problems you face day to day, how well you can program dominates your employability, until you're a few years into your career and have sufficient domain expertise. And when you do, it won't necessarily be generic like "data science" or "system admin" but something much more concrete and industry and/or technology specific. And the skill set and how you market them will evolve over time but at the core of everything is the ability to write software.

If you're not going to go into programming-heavy part of these fields, at the entry-level, you'll be judged mainly on how proficient you are with the software other people wrote that you will be using to do your job. This is more of a limited career track with a greater risk of obsolescence, because when the popularity of the software you're proficient in declines, you don't have as much to fall back on. It's difficult to transition ouf of your sub-field, because your skills are narrowly tied to it. There's also more of a career ceiling because the hardest problems in the industry generally require writing your own software to solve them. The up-side is that programming takes a long time to master and this allows you side-step the whole thing.

This. Although if you have succeeded at poker for 10 years its prob worth it to drop 10k or whatever on a bootcamp to increase prospects (and learn quicker/avoid rabbit holes, etc).

And All 5 choices are good but 1 of the 5 has by far the most bootcamps. For whatever reason the market has spoken and web dev bootcamps are clearly the most +EV. I just did one and have great job prospects. You could say I'm biased...but really its just what the market is offering so it must be a good economic decision.

As usual great advice. You guys rock! Don't know what other tech forums are like but posters at 2p2 seems very knowledgeable and wise. Many thanks.

One of the (many) reasons I decided to leave poker professionally is due to the inherent lack of contact with people (I was an online grinder). I'm an extrovert by nature, however I have a serious geeky side too (love chess, puzzles, programming, and such. Not sure if that makes me part introvert, but I'm happiest in groups of people..people I like that is haha).

To those in the tech field, how much human interaction is there, with a typical wed dev job, for example? Is this a poor career choice for extroverts? I LOVE the brainy aspects of sw development, but I worry somewhat about the lack of human interaction. Perhaps there's more than I'm giving it credit for??

I wouldn't worry about it.

I've been a programmer for a while and in all my workplaces I've worked in groups of 4-7 people. There's plenty of group interaction, especially with how popular agile and scrum are with meetings (standup, retros, grooming, planning etc) plus just general off topic conversation.

But when I code I usually throw my closed headphones on and fly solo for a while, although occasionally I'll pair-program.

If you're a social animal then you will probably have an easy time getting promoted to some sort of middle-management position.

I don't think this is entirely true. To use a tired poker analogy, if you start your learning with Play Poker Like the Pros, you are beginning down a terrible path. If you start with Theory of Poker, you build a solid intuition of what is valuable and what is not when you find new resources.

Codecademy, odin project, learn x the hard way are all resources that start you down a rabbit hole by tossing you face-first into introducing bad study habits and it is well-known that Codecademy in particular teaches you things that are outright wrong.

Go find damn good books and work from there. Go to the top university websites and find what their classes are and see if they have any intro courses available, etc.

So your argument against structured, guided learning is to find other structured, guided learning?

There are all kinds of bad resources out there and trusting a novice to figure out the "damn good books" from the rest is silly. That was Craggoo's point. You need someone wise that you trust to guide you. And if you don't have that, it might be a good idea to go with a more structured approach.

What bad habits would you say they're teaching?

Learn x the hard way has a really asinine teaching style. For example most of the first handful of chapters for the python version are about string formatting. Then before you've even learned an if statement or for loop your assignment is to find and read code on github.

Odin, OTOH, gets good reviews, though I haven't used it. I've tried Codecademy and wouldn't recommend it.

some guy here posted some html he was working on and having problems with for odin. It was a trainwreck. Like, outdated, terrible stuff. That's made me a little apprehensive about using it for learning web dev.

otoh, taking a course (or hell, getting a course number and then going to the uni book store to see what book they use) might be the better option.

Do you have a link to the html?

Was it that thread about some links on a food site? Something about not being able to position elements where he wanted them with css.

I don't think it was. I remember who you're talking about. He made a couple threads all about his website that his friend was helping him with.

It may have been him. I could be wrong.

Whoever it was was using div tags like they were going out of style. Like div id=nav type stuff instead of just using nav

Edit

Found it. Starts around here I think:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=321

That doesn't qualify as a "trainwreck" or "outdated, terrible stuff" - it's not even wrong, nor does it have particularly adverse consequences at the moment. Until very recently, using html5 semantic tags gratuitously was probably more wrong than the other way around as it wouldn't work correctly in some older browsers without polyfills.

Knowing the degree of wrongness is a lot more important than knowing whether something is wrong. This is what separates engineering from rhetoric, where a tiny little bit of wrongness can be blown up to be the equivalent of genocide.

I've had a lot more success with the codeschool.com and lynda.coms of the world (those have been my 2 favorites) now that I've learned more of the lower level concepts. Most of those sites teach you to become a coder without really understanding anything beyond what your code does.

as an example, it took me a very long time to (1) use the terminal, or even know what it is, (2) understand the difference between 2 entirely different languages like java and python and the relative advantages of each other, just as 2 examples of things that I really should have learned at the beginning.

learning to code without knowing what's going on underneath not only limits your upside but it makes it a lot harder to learn. I still have a lot of bad habits I've picked up from not doing things the right way. unlearning bad habits is far from trivial.

I think it was already mentioned, but go with the MIT OCW stuff imo. they put their entire undergrad CS curriculum on there. it's going to take a lot longer and you'll make some goofy toy programs like a hangman game, but your upside is a lot higher if you build from the ground up, rather than trying to run before you can walk.

and also, use the terminal for virtually everything. if you have a mac, you have no excuse. if you have a PC and some spare time, look up how to dual boot windows and linux. I have some links if anyone wants. if you don't have spare time, just get a linux mint or ubuntu VM. you can just learn by doing. it is a tremendously valuable skill to have, especially now with the rise of cloud computing (typically when you log on to a remote server, you don't get a gui desktop. you get a black screen and blinking cursor). I set up my computer to dual boot windows/linux and within 3 months I was very competent at the command line. it was probably the single best decision I made since starting on this path.

How would you recommend getting the proper education (and/or certs) for Network/Sys Admin? How long would it take to go from no knowledge to employable? I assume this route means going to a physical school. I'm hoping there are better options than Devry or Phoenix. Those are so costly.

Viking School is 2k up front, 9k over a year after you find a job. (14 week online-only bootcamp) so you could be doing web dev stuff in as little as 14 weeks! (After the start date of June 29)