I get asked this question a lot. And the simple answer is – I’m probably not best placed to tell you.
See the thing is, when I started old greybeard that I am it was a gentler, easier world. The Pentium had just launched, the Pentium Pro was not even out, and computers, whilst not a curiosity were by no means essential to the workplace. As for the Internet – that was still something for academia, and Amazon was still a twinkle in Jeff B’s eyes..
In that sort of environment, anyone could hold enough knowledge of the entire IT landscape and business processes in their head to be able to walk in, and *be* the IT resource for an entire company. I know I did, and the thing was any well presented nerd could easily convince people that they did know everything, and get it all set up. The late 1990’s IT boom was really an explosion of the early 1980’s home computing phenomena, as those people who started with BBC micros and Spectrums etc, came of age and took off in the workplace…
So what do you need today?
There is a difference between what you need to do – and what you need to be. If you want to succeed in IT, then perhaps more than any other field of endeavour you need to always, always, always be learning. Continuous professional development is the norm, and you need to be doing it all the time. This takes passion and curiosity for the field for without that passion you are never going to be keeping ahead of new technology and identifying what you need to learn, and master next.
Gene Kranz was the Flight Director at NASA for the Apollo 11 landing, and the Apollo 13 accident, but it is the lesser know Apollo 1 disaster that gave rise to the Kranz dictum…
Be tough and competent
Kranz was referring to the Apollo 1 disaster where Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in a capsule fire, which was entirely due to people not being willing to stop things before they became catastrophically out of control.
Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.
While you might not be directing a lunar mission, working in IT means that you are likley to be in a position to have an immense impact on peoples lives. Working in banking? Be careful not to wipe out everyones access to their accounts for a month or more.. Doing a spot of healthcare related work? Just be careful not to leak a few million highly sensitive records out for people to be blackmailed with.
If you want to work in IT, expect that you need to be tough and accountable – for everything that you do. You will make mistakes – are you prepared to own and correct those mistakes?
Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills.
As for competence, you will find that everything moves all the time. That version of PHP you mastered? Yup version 8.0 just dropped. You think you can program in Python well? Just have a look at version 3 – oh and we changed the coding so please refactor all your print statements because they are now functions… Its continuous none stop learning, all the time, without end, and if you cannot – you will get dropped by the wayside.
So what do you need to do to get into the modern IT world then?
Get one of the free linux operating systems, and start using it.
If you are not already using and running and tweaking linux – then start. I personally use Debian, but you will probably be better off using a more commercial facing distributions like SuSE or RedHat. A lot of people will say to use Ubuntu, but I’m rapidly going off of the direction that Canonical is taking the distro and I’ve now reverted to a straight Debian install on my laptop.
Have a genuine interest in technology
If you are going to work in this field – you need to be interested in this field unless you are happy to sit in something like a helpdesk, or frontline support. You need to show this, or people will wonder just how well you will stay current. So read the relevant press. Read Wired to find out trends of the industry. If there are industry exhibitions nearby – go to them. Online magazines, make sure you take time to read them. A Flipboard account https://flipboard.com/ will make this a lot easier if you set one up.
Get certified.
Either industry certifications, or something like a Level 3 BTEC is a place to start. You can get them done inside of a few weeks to a few months, they are something concrete and they are fairly well recognised. You are almost certainly going to be coming in at the bottom, and at this level no one expects much experience, but a solid certification in something will help get the foot in the door.
Once in – I’ll let you into a secret. No one really cares that much – when you are in the door, it’s all about experience. Theres very little to be had in doing more general certifications but there is still a lot of value in doing specialist niche qualifications for specific software and hardware tooling.
Learn to code
This has to be the other essential skill. You need some ability to code, regardless of what you are planning to do. Even Windows is moving towards code being a required part and Powershell is quite a powerful and robust language these days. It doesnt really matter what you language you learn, as long as you do learn one because if you can code, then it’s easy to transfer to some other language.
Python is probably the easiest and best language to start on, it’s also quite popular at the moment, tying for top place with Java. I would NOT recommend starting with Java, it is a rather abstract place to start in and will lead to frustrations. It would also serve well if you learnt the basics of Bash scripting if you are planning on tinkering with any form of Linux, or Powershell if you are playing with Windows.
Udemy has plenty of courses and if you look for the regular sales you can get them at silly prices. Pick a presenter whose voice you can get on with, and start learning. I’d recommend Dr Angela Yu as a good one to try first..
Once you have done the above – and whilst you are doing it of course – you need to do the usual. Network, apply for jobs, talk to recruitment agents. If you don’t have a linkedin profile get one set up. Sign on to jobserve and the best of luck…
