If you’ve read any of my previous articles, it’s pretty evident that I’m what most people call a "tech guy".
In today's article, I will be writing about how you can actually get started in tech. This is something I have always wanted to write about. I am glad, I am writing this before the year runs out where I know a lot of people are actually thinking of how to start their own careers or looking for ways to stay consistent, switching their jobs and getting into tech. If you fall to the category of these people, this is the right article for you.
I remember when I started my journey to tech. I must say it's been a rosy journey, but it comes with ups and downs. It required me more patience and discipline to eventually break into the field. It cost me significant amount of time learning technologies and languages via tutorials courses on youtube videos. I have to connect with a lot of people on LinkedIn, Slack, Discord and especially TWITTER. Today, I can proudly say, the responses and supports I got from different people from different countries and continents on Twitter were overwhelming. Oh! my #100DaysOfCode! That's where the journey began.
Tech is for everyone, It's so interesting. The communities in tech are so welcoming and you'll find it so easy transitioning into tech. Many questions I have been asked by people I came across with - How do I get into tech with no experience and no computer science degree? Or simply how do I get into tech? Well, the truth is that, there is no straight forward answer to this questions been asked. The truth is you don't have to be a genius to work in technology. I'll explain how you can kickstart your own career in tech.
I'll share how you can make the switch or start a new career in tech and actionable tips you can leverage to help you stay consistent on your journey. There are a number of strategies and options that can help people transition into the tech industry but I will go over four:
So lets get started into it.
1. TECH MYTHS
To start off, I will like to start with the myths that prevails in the tech industry. There are couple of people who will tell you that for you to start a career in tech, you need to have a degree. That is not true. That is a big lie. You can be in tech, you can be successfull in tech, you can get a job in tech without having a background degree in tech. I know quite a number of people that are very successful in their career without a tech degree, so don't let anybody tell you otherwise. If you are planning to switch careers from whatever career to tech without having any background in tech, it is very possible for you to do that. All you need do is stay consistent on your journey. Anyone can have a tech job as long as they put in the work and they go for it.
2. DO YOUR RESEARCH
Technology is a very broad field. This means that there are different areas in tech that require certain skills. A career in tech is a career without boundaries. Tech is growing exponentially. The best time to get into tech is now. In order to discover the right role for yourself, you need to make some RESEARCH and pick a NICHE or find a specific area that you are interested in. There are so many fields in the tech industry, so many that do not require you to know how to write code or take on what we refer to as a technical role. Yeah! You can start by researching the major areas in tech below:
Take your time to read about the resources listed above, you will have a better idea of the major areas in tech. With this knowledge, you can go ahead and explore the area that you find most interesting.
A lot of people would do research and do research and soon find out there exists over 20 different career roles in tech. They become confuse on which one to start off with. For instance, you see people that start off learning Front-end and at the middle of their journey they switched back to Back-end and they just keep switching and on like that.I will say before you start off, the first thing you need to do is to pick a niche. Pick an area you want to focus on. So be sure to do your research if you are thinking of switching into any of this, also be sure that you are actively interested in what you are picking. People have different reasons for coming into tech, don't they? If your reason is not legit and you don't have interest in it or somebody is forcing you to do it, then you might not be able to keep up and that will eventually lead to you dropping out or you switching to something else. So you need to be sure that you are interested in what you're picking and that you are actually going to be commited to learning it.
3. CREATE AN ACTION PLAN
Another action tip I will be sharing is after picking a path and deciding on what you want to do in tech. You have to create an action plan. Perhaps, your friends in tech have told you about the benefits of being a web developer and you were impressed or you've heard about program management and it made you excited because you've always loved managing people or events. But you are not sure yet which tech role to pursue because they all sound good.
This is a very important step beacuse it can make up break down of your plans for the year. It could be "I want to learn web development in six months and at the end of six months I want to find myself an internship". This is an actionable plan because it has a time frame that you plan on achieving it, you also have a result at the end of it that you want to get an internship. Yours could be anything, this is just an example, so finding or creating an actionable plan is very very important and you should do this at the beginning of your journey.
Here are some tips for things to think about when trying to make this decision.
Go for passion, but be practical too.
It is important to know that choosing to pursue a certain tech role because you are passionate about it is great. But it's also ok to choose a role because you believe the opportunities are better, even if you are not very passionate about it.
So, I'd recommend that you do a mixture of both: choose something you will enjoy doing and become so good that you get tons of opportunities.
Build while learning.
Another good tip is build while learning. This sounds quite big 'Learning and Building'. Once you have a good foundation of knowledge, start building basic projects. Most people think they need to know everything about a particular programming language or tool before they start building a project. But most times, this only results in watching tutorials for months. The truth is that building projects lets you improve your coding skills in ways you can't imagine. It also gives you something to show off in interviews when you are telling your interviewers about your tech skills.
As a newbie in tech, there are a lot of resources out there for you. A lot of video courses, and youtube tutorials out there. But don't be stuck to this alone, reason being that, people tend to just watch, watch and watch when they are starting out into tech. They don't build! They watch these courses, they watch these tutorials, and also read articles. But end up dumping all the knowledge inside of them and not putting them into practices. So something that will really help you is to build while learning. The idea is, as you are growing and learning on your journey. Ensure to build up ideas and apply them to eventually building your own project.
Now this has two benefits - One - For you to have been able to reinforce the knowledge that you are gaining from reading or watching these tutorials, you are also applying it to your own personal project directly. Two - Let us say maybe six months of your learning journey, you already have a ton of projects to show for. Therefore, you have not just learnt from the tutorials you just watched from youtube alone but also built your own projects. Which you can add to your portfolio. So this is a very good way of learning. You have to start learning. Set up a schedule that works for you. For instance, learning for at least 30 minutes or 1 hour every day. If you have more time, then spend more time learning. Your growth will be tremendous.
4. JOIN A COMMUNITY
Fourthly, what I will like to share is that you should join a community. I can't over-emphasize the benefit of joining a community as a newbie in tech. You might feel lonely especially if you are learning on your own. No friends in that line to guide you through or you don't have people that you can talk to. Your best bet is to join an online community. It could be a physical community if you have that available for you. But there are a lot of communities out there that are helping beginners in tech to find their feets in their tech career. Below are some of these communities:
I remember when I started my journey, I joined a tech community online, this tech community was called #100DaysOfCode and it is actually a challenge and you can also give it a try if you are interested in doing it. #100DaysofCode means that you code for at least an hour everyday for 100 days, i.e you code for 3 months in total and you are not just coding, you are actually learning and you are part of the coomunity of people that are also doing almost the same things as that you are doing and you also have people that you can learn from, people that you can chat with, people that you can share your journey, your struggles with.
There is also the freeCodeCamp community this is one of the biggest and largest community out there for beginners. Lastly, I will like to share codeNewbies, as the name implies, it is for newbies that are new in tech. You can also check this community.
It is very very important to have a community because there are so many things you can gain from this communities. So much connections, you can learn, you can also share your work with this communities so it is very important.
SUMMARY
Finally, I would like to wrap up this article by saying as long as you have zeal and you are consistent in your journey, you can be sucessful in tech. Consistency forms habits that become almost second nature.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you find the couple of things that I shared helpful please share this article to people who are also looking forward to get into tech in this year.
I hope you learned a thing or two from this article. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a DM on Twitter and I'll be happy to answer every single one.
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