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Really, I'd first do some online free stuff and see what grabs you. Python, Javascript, maybe some build-my-first-dynamic-webpage type stuff. Maybe some data and data mining type stuff. See what interests you. Then you can do something like that MS course (which honestly looks fine, its just they really should have a set of classes that are "Everyone should take these"), bootcamps (I have several people working for me that make 6 figures that made mid-career changes with a bootcamp), or maybe even a more traditional path (which is probably not the most efficient for tech, but some people need it). There's so much free that you can spend some time exploring for no cost but a little free time. That should cut down the risk tremendously that you'd start a program that would be a complete fail.
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Feb 11, 2023 00:02
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Thank you, that's also really helpful. I'd honestly rather do a boot camp than a whole other masters so it's good to know that can be a viable option.
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Feb 11, 2023 00:35
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hallo spacedog posted:Thank you, that's also really helpful. I'd honestly rather do a boot camp than a whole other masters so it's good to know that can be a viable option. A lot of community colleges also offer certificates in GIS. Way cheaper and if you are a motivated adult learner it should be enough to gain a foothold so you can further self-educate and/or pursue the Python or IT side of GIS. I worked at an urban planning firm for a year, and none of the GIS folks there had a masters in GIS. They either came from stats, econ or urban planning, and all were able to do scripting in python. A decent chunk of the planners also did occasional/basic GIS work. What I've heard about government GIS work through the grapevine is that's it fairly boring data entry and digitization, but I can't personally vouch for that. pizzapocketparty fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Feb 12, 2023 |
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Feb 12, 2023 05:04
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<removed, sorry>
Bronze fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Feb 26, 2023 |
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Feb 23, 2023 22:34
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I'm mid-30s and looking for a career change. Until the beginning of last year, I was a brewer running a small brewery solo with one assistant under me. I started studying a Bachelor's in Environmental Science last year, but the field doesn't grab me like I thought it would, so I've just accepted an offer to study Computer Science instead, since I've coded some projects while procrastinating doing other uni work and really enjoyed it. My goal is basically to be a wfh computer toucher earning 6 figs, my question is basically whether I should invest 3 years into a Computer Science degree with all the costs involved (loans in Australia are only paid back once you're earning over a certain amount) but the time is obviously very valuable, or should I do a bootcamp and start applying for jobs right away. Would a CS degree open doors for me that experience wouldn't at say, 5 years into the bootcamp pathway vs the 3+2 of the CS path? I don't have a degree already. Is there a cap on income without a CS degree?
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Feb 27, 2023 03:30
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I don't know Australia that much, but probably boot camp in your situation. For an 18 year old I'd steer differently, but with your life and business experience a bootcamp will get you to a much faster path. Not having a CS degree doesn't really create a ceiling for you outside of academia or maybe government work.
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Feb 27, 2023 04:03
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I'm an accountant. I worked for KPMG for 1 year and got let go. I then worked for a small tax firm for 6 months and got let go. I got a job at finance company and worked there 4 years as their main accountant. I got tired of the hours of public accountant and quit in August to start a job as a private accountant. At first, the new job actually was great. Reasonable hours, decent boss, and a huge pay raise. I went from 60k in NY to 90k But holes have come up. Most of it, I let go. The bosses micromanage. My direct supervisor is an rear end in a top hat. And the other coworkers are kind of incompetent. All stuff that Incould chalk up to a normal job. But today my supervisor did something bad. He called one of the other employees the n word behind his back. It's a small office and my supervisor is 70 years old and pretty much unfirable. I don't think the people above him will do anything and I feel any attempt to do so will come back to me. This is a small company of about 50 people that was willing to pay a premium to have me so there is no HR. For reference, I am a person of color. No, I'm not wiling to make a lawsuit over it for reasons that other people of color probably understand. I can't exactly just leave for a variety of economic reasons. But I do want to know how long you have to stay at a company to avoid it being a problem for future employment. Edit: I know how much losing a job without a fallback can hurt you. When I was fired from KPMG, I went from making 69k a year to 35k. I was out of work for 6 months (offically 3 because I was not going to the office but they kept paying me for 3 months) and I fell into a dark place. Thankfully, it just made me a radicalized socialist but I became insufferable to all around me. I'd endless rant about how the system is broken, how captialism is broken, and how we need a revolution. I still think that but I can control it. Also, I fear I could have turned out far worse in that vulernable state if others had reached out to me. I don't want to go through that again. Covok fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Mar 11, 2023 |
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Mar 11, 2023 02:06
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Jeez man that really sucks. That 4 year stint is going to pull some weight for you. You can try to jump and just claim new place was a bad fit, or your concerned they are over leveraged or something. Never bad mouth but if you're still employed you can spin a good story.
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Mar 11, 2023 06:55
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I don't think it's "a problem" to be interviewing after 7 months if the job is not a good fit. A year will look better if you can stand it.
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Mar 11, 2023 09:07
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Fuuck that’s awful. I don’t think there is a standard for how long you need to stay in a job. Closed-minded employers who want to see you having stayed doing the same thing forever aren’t going to care that it’s 3 months not 2 years, and open-minded hirers who are willing to look at your resumé thoughtfully will take the time to know what makes your job moves unique. That said, being unemployed for more than a month is both scary and necessary to explain during interviews. The best way to handle IMO is to do some consulting while you’re looking for work, even at a very cheap rate. If you do find yourself in that situation I recommend setting up a company to issue the invoices and paying a small amount to a local accountant to prepare and sign off on your accounts: modern job verification / background check companies will contact them as your reference and it just makes everything a lot easier. I found this to be the case when I quit my last employer (just ahead of them getting wrecked by the Chinese government but whatever). Last round of background checks when I got my current role came out fine, and that was through an impersonal verification company that was looking into everything.
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Mar 11, 2023 10:28
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Beefeater1980 posted:That said, being unemployed for more than a month is both scary and necessary to explain during interviews. The best way to handle IMO is to do some consulting while you’re looking for work, even at a very cheap rate. If you do find yourself in that situation I recommend setting up a company to issue the invoices and paying a small amount to a local accountant to prepare and sign off on your accounts: modern job verification / background check companies will contact them as your reference and it just makes everything a lot easier. I found this to be the case when I quit my last employer (just ahead of them getting wrecked by the Chinese government but whatever). Last round of background checks when I got my current role came out fine, and that was through an impersonal verification company that was looking into everything. That's a neat idea. For people without a legitimate consulting angle in their industry, would it be okay for the unemployed person to set this up and then have a friend or loved pay in as a "client" who they then pay back on the side, or does that stray out of unethical and into actual fraud? I truly don't know where that line is for things like this. Seems harmless, but everything gets more serious when you've involved accountants and the tax man.
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Mar 11, 2023 20:58
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Would love some ideas from you guys about potential ways to branch out and grow from what I'm currently doing. I've had a remote job for the last like five years at the same company, I've slowly risen through the ranks to an extent but because I'm fully remote there's a ceiling to this and I'm okay with that, at the moment I'm managing four other people that are all remote Upwork contractors. They (and I) mainly do lead generation for a timeshare company, so it's a lot of web scraping and then we just compile it in Excel and pass it along to people that do the actual hard work of calling. I have completely streamlined my process and automated nearly all of it, it takes me about 40 minutes to get eight hours of work done. The pay is nothing special but considering how quickly I work, it's actually a very good $/hr. Because the job is located in California and I moved to Oregon a few years ago, I couldn't get insurance through my job so I wanted to find something that would get me insurance and get me out of the house and still ahve enough downtime that I could do my remote job. So for the last eight months I've been working at a self storage facility as the property manager. Pretty chill, I get all my work done early and then dick around on my laptop unless someone comes in or makes a call. I'm enjoying it, all things considered, and it gives me insurance which is the main thing about it that I like. That being said, at some point I'll probably want to try and branch out into something that actually has mobility options. I'm hesitant to quit the remote job because it's so loving easy but I'm not opposed to quitting the storage one. I know that I've grown to like managing this facility, I think it's nice to do customer service when it's in a more casual setting and I don't talk to as many people (as opposed to, say, a cashier) and I know people by name. I also have a fair bit of experience managing employees and balancing a workload and making sure we can actually deliver what we've promised. I don't know if I should go more in the direction of looking for a managerial position, or if I should lean more into the automation and learn either some more scripting and computer stuff or try and teach myself and get certified as a data analyst or something since I work a lot with Excel and have gotten fairly proficient at it, although obviously there's more to it than that. My in laws keep telling me that I should just start my own storage place because it basically prints money (which is true, from what I've seen) but I don't particularly want to dip my toes into starting my own business, that sounds like a terrible idea for where I'm at right now.
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Mar 11, 2023 21:16
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What do you enjoy doing? You have a wide swath of stuff and I could tell you what I would do (People management + computer stuff is cool for me), but you gotta kinda have an idea on what gets you going in the morning.
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Mar 11, 2023 22:20
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Unsinkabear posted:That's a neat idea. For people without a legitimate consulting angle in their industry, would it be okay for the unemployed person to set this up and then have a friend or loved pay in as a "client" who they then pay back on the side, or does that stray out of unethical and into actual fraud? Its fraud but if you pay your taxes on it literally nobody will care, you're essentially defrauding yourself there.
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Mar 11, 2023 22:34
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Lockback posted:What do you enjoy doing? You have a wide swath of stuff and I could tell you what I would do (People management + computer stuff is cool for me), but you gotta kinda have an idea on what gets you going in the morning. Honestly it's hard to say. I do really like just having my own property, I can take pride in it and when something goes well I know it's because of me, and recognition is always nice. I like that I can build a relationship with clients and customers, and I'm not trying to be a salesman because they know what they're here for. I just have to guide them and help them find what they need. That's also what I like about the remote managing, I can guide people and help them do their jobs well. I wanted to be a teacher for a long time and minored in Education, but over quarantine I got my substitute license and it turns out I absolutely hated it, although that was more because it was middle schoolers than the teaching itself. I think if I was in an environment where people were actually going to LISTEN to me, I'd enjoy it a lot more. At the same time I really like solving problems, one of my favorite parts of my remote job was just actually getting the automation working. I could do that all day, but unfortunately I've chosen a script language that no one uses professionally so that won't help me much unless I go learn Python at the very least. If I could find a job where I just go around educating people on how to do their jobs better or something that would be a dream but I have no idea where I'd even start with something like that. I guess that's just like a training coordinator or something.
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Mar 11, 2023 23:11
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Maybe start and take online python tutorials and see what you think. If you struggle or hate it, that kinda knocks out that path.
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Mar 12, 2023 03:10
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pseudanonymous posted:Its fraud but if you pay your taxes on it literally nobody will care, you're essentially defrauding yourself there. Heh, fair point. I assume you could set the pay rate low enough that the taxes are a non-issue? Nothing ridiculous, but some monthly amount that the taxes are small enough that you consider them worth it for plugging the resume hole.
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Mar 12, 2023 20:09
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I'll have been at my current job for four years this November and I'd like to move on. $52K a year just isn't enough to go on with the rental market being so hosed right now. So I'm working on polishing up my resume and I'm looking to start applying to places. Trouble is I have no clue what sort of jobs I should be applying for. I've got an undergrad in English with a creative writing concentration. My current job is titled as an "Office Coordinator" and my main responsibilities are to proofread transcripts, assign work to our contracted transcribers and secure audio coverage from reporters or audio techs, email clients and occasionally record audio from livestreams. I haven't got a clue what sort of keywords I should be punching into indeed and general stuff like administrative assistant or technical writer either come with caveats for skills I don't have or they pay less than what I'm currently making.
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Mar 13, 2023 20:17
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Content marketing might be a good fit - you could spin your creative writing experience, project coordination and audio work into a good story.
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Mar 14, 2023 02:06
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this poster is asking for career help in BFC: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4027100 someone have a look? I don't have relevant advice
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Mar 17, 2023 14:35
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I'm hoping someone can give me career advice: I'm moving from the UK to the USA (hopefully) in a year-ish (hopefully) to be with my fiance. She's studying in Urbana, Illinois, and I need to upgrade myself. Background: graduated with bachelor's in media and journalism, worked in the media for a bit (but never climbed up the ladder), went travelling and taught English in Asia. Now, I work remotely, writing social media posts and blogs for a company's clients (and arguing about wrestling on these here forums). My goal is to be a movie director and for the last year put everything I had into making a movie. Got close, but it didn't work out. I'm not giving up, but I have to be realistic and need to do something when I can legally work over there. Most of my skills and work are creative, but I don't really have a portfolio (look at these tweets I wrote for someone! Read this blog about MSPs!). I'm a decent screenwriter but good luck paying the bills that way. I can also edit video (and recently had a few paying gigs online), but my portfolio is small and I don't think it compares to anyone who has been doing this seriously for a while. So, I basically have a lot of varied experience/skills but it's all shallow. So, I need to re-train over the next year. I'd love to be outdoors (park ranger haha) but I don't think they have any of those in Urbana (or Chicago, where we'll be moving to when she graduates). I'm great at PCs, always enjoyed fixing things in Windows but have no qualifications. I can't do code or write software, so I'm thinking, outside of landing a brilliant creative job, I should get some IT qualifications, but don't know which ones to get. Thanks for reading this mess! I will take anything you say seriously!
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Mar 20, 2023 22:52
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Alan_Shore posted:I'm hoping someone can give me career advice: See if volition has openings for community management?
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Mar 20, 2023 23:23
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leper khan posted:See if volition has openings for community management? What is Volition? Would me *ahem* experience help me out?
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Mar 23, 2023 03:55
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Alan_Shore posted:What is Volition? Would me *ahem* experience help me out? They're a game developer now owned by the embracer group, and one of the notable employers in Champaign (others being Wolfram, and whatever is in the research park out of the university)
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Mar 23, 2023 05:03
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I'm seeking some guidance and a sanity check for what I'm looking for. I currently manage operations on the East Coast (95% NYC) for a small covid testing org that primarily handles film releases and publicity, but the demand is definitely slowing. Previously, I had six years of working on film sets coordinating actors and their departments. My resume is thus weird and lacking in hard skills. I'm exceptionally adept at herding cats, just not in a traditional corporate setting. It was recommended to me that I look to jump into project management and that I should look in healthcare or healthcare-adjacent tech. It has been very tricky to actually find jobs on sites that aren't construction, publicity, sales, donor recruitment, or just plain executive assistantship. I'm about 40 applications in with not as much as a nibble and I'm wondering if I should be recalibrating my expectations or attempting to beef up some recognizable credentials. I have a BS in microbiology but haven't been in a lab in almost a decade. NY also requires a lot of expensive training and credentialing for lab work, which is more time (read: twoish year programs) and money than I can invest right now. Am I hosed because I don't have a hospital admin background nor experience with tech PM tools or is this just an unlucky time to need employment? (I definitely know that's true for tech) I also asked a few questions in the PM thread and the idea I get from having read it is that many PMs come from their area of expertise and develop PMing skills along the way, rather than vice versa.
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Apr 3, 2023 20:57
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theflyingexecutive posted:I'm seeking some guidance and a sanity check for what I'm looking for. What about the trade show / convention space? I imagine you have some experience with large group registrations, trade unions and heard cats?
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Apr 4, 2023 01:50
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Alan_Shore posted:I'm hoping someone can give me career advice: Seems like a midlevel or upper-junior level digital communications job would work. Universities themselves have communications departments but very often the individual schools, research centers, and other organizations within the university will have their own comms departments. Social media, copy editing, video editing, stuff like that which you already do are things I can picture comms staff doing at a smaller department. Look into other jack of all trades roles like event coordinator too. You could get a chance to film colloquiums and stuff. If you're going to be living near a highly regarded university that would be a good place to start building your stateside resume. Plus there's not much else in Urbana! Ease yourself into an easy campus job while you adjust to the move, then once you get to Chicago you could expand your horizons and get back into more creative work and network to pursue opportunities that get you closer to being a director. If you are going to apply at U of I start early, it can take a while.
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Apr 4, 2023 16:07
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I lost my job to an unfair dismissal about six months ago. I was Lead Producer with an indy game developer, the execs wanted to replace me with a dipshit friend of theirs and told me to sign a contract on much worse terms. Previously I worked 3 years at PlayStation project managing a team on a non-game project, and some time in test automation with IBM. Before that I spent years in games first doing QA with some compliance specialization, until I went back to regular QA when they refused to bump me up to the pay I should get for it. I also did a bunch of build engineering work, a production-adjacent thing working with processes, automation, version control and stuff, quite specialized but also an apparent career dead end even when the management of the project don't poo poo the bed, which they did. I have an undergraduate degree in IT which included project management methodologies as the main thing I've used since then, and a much more recent masters degree in games that covered that again plus a bunch of stuff around game design and such. Since the games industry steadfastly refuses to appreciate me or recognize my experience I think I have to look elsewhere, but I really don't know where. I was never passionate about the test automation stuff I did for IBM and I've had no better luck with things like the VFX industry. So I feel stuck, I thought I could come out of that jop and straight into something better with all that experience but the goalposts just keep getting moved.
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Apr 6, 2023 02:46
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Dunno if you're still watching this thread, but what is your list of hard skills? Languages, frameworks, etc? You sound like potentially a great candidate for Scrum master/Delivery Manager/Release Manager type job. If you have some development skills, you could probably find a QA job with a short-track to leadership, as that seems like a very natural next step for you. Most of the time you need to get your first management job through promotion, though you sound like a good candidate for a team lead or something.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:36
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I'm in the middle of applying for jobs. When it comes to start ups, what are some red flags I should be aware of? The bump in pay is nice, but I don't know the first thing about start ups and I don't want to leave my job just to end up being unemployed because the funding didn't go through or something. Is there a book or a guide I can read that will give me more information about how stable the start up is going to be?
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Apr 11, 2023 18:25
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Bioshuffle posted:I'm in the middle of applying for jobs. When it comes to start ups, what are some red flags I should be aware of? The bump in pay is nice, but I don't know the first thing about start ups and I don't want to leave my job just to end up being unemployed because the funding didn't go through or something. Is there a book or a guide I can read that will give me more information about how stable the start up is going to be? If they're not public, their options are worth zero, or potentially a liability. Amount of money in the bank matters a lot, ask about runway (including projecting for growth). What kind of money have they raised? Bootstrapped isn't a growth company, early stage VC will implode. How many quarters have they hit their targets, who are their investors. Do they have a successful product or service? Is there an exit plan, how will they book profits (or are they just waiting to be bought)?
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Apr 11, 2023 19:02
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Also keep in mind Startups are probably going to be more work and definitely more risk, but there is more potential for reward without being a tip-top person. So you'll see some red flags, it's part of the equation. You kinda need to start with "Do I want to do this?" before you start figuring out "Where do I want to do this?".
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Apr 11, 2023 19:46
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The YOSPOS interviewing thread has a bunch of questions they recommend to ask if posters are thinking about joining a startup. Their list is developer-oriented but there's a lot there you can either use or adapt.
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Apr 11, 2023 20:40
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Got a pretty depressing dose of reality. I had a talk with a recruiter. Basically, they said my resume is too jumpy and that it's going to look that way even if I worked a year and a half at my current job. That I'm pretty unemployable with my employment history and that its probably not going to happen. She said the only job that I ever stayed at was only 4.5 years and that I had four jobs and that's really unacceptable in a six year career. And that she will do what she can but that I am very noncommittal.
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Apr 12, 2023 00:56
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Idk it kind of sounds like she’s trying to undermine your self-worth and lower your expectations so you’ll jump at a lowball offer. Four jobs in six years, with Covid in the middle, does not indicate a flight risk. People jump around a lot these days anyway. I would not talk to this person anymore if I were you. Even if everything she said was true (it’s not btw), a real recruiter who’s not trying to screw you would help you come up with ways to explain the jumps, rewrite your resume to make the longest-held one more prominent, and so on. They wouldn’t just tell you that you suck lol
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Apr 12, 2023 01:05
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gamer roomie is 41 posted:Idk it kind of sounds like she’s trying to undermine your self-worth and lower your expectations so you’ll jump at a lowball offer. Four jobs in six years, with Covid in the middle, does not indicate a flight risk. People jump around a lot these days anyway. I would not talk to this person anymore if I were you. She did say she liked my explanations and that she thinks they can justify what I did, but she said that, at a glance, it looks really, really bad. I asked if I stayed longer if it would help and she was like "even if you stayed a year and a half it would still look jumpy." It got brought up if I asked for a lateral move on my salary (90k on Long Island) would be possible and she said that the jumpiness was bad. She wasn't as down on me as I made it out to me, but it's how I felt afterwards. For the record, these are my employment dates: October 2016 to August 2017 November 2017 to May 2018 May 2018 to August 2022 August 2022 to Present The story is: First job was at a Big 4 firm. They overhired and let go myself and about twenty over people. The second one was technically another layoff, but I immediately got a new job so I told her I left for a better opportunity. It was one, by the way. I kind of took a very low paying job after I got laid off and was out of work and was pleasantly surprised to get back to my old salary after the second firing. The third time was burn out. Public accounting, working until 10pm-11pm six to seven days a week for three months out of the year with normal hours with frequent overtime the rest of the year, with no help and constant mismanagement and problems finally took me to my limit after four years. The last one is because my new boss is a racist who drops the n-word in the office and is a humongous dickwad, but I said it was due to uncertainty with the company sticking around in the next few years since it is also running into a lot of financial problems recently. Covok fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Apr 12, 2023 |
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Apr 12, 2023 01:11
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Here's another way to look at it: If she's wrong, then you're hireable and you should keep looking. If she's right, then your hireability isn't changing anytime soon. That means searching now is as good as searching later and you should keep looking. Besides, if some boomer is going to not hire you because you left one job five years ago after less than a year, you don't want to work there anyway. gently caress that dinosaur poo poo.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:34
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Magnetic North posted:Here's another way to look at it: I suppose. It would be my most recent job also being under a year, but I started now because I expect that, yeah, I am going to probably be at or about one year when I leave it. I'm at roughly 9 months now so I expect that I'll probably be at about a year by the end of the process since job hunts, for me, usually take months.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:39
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Do you need those first two jobs that lasted less than a year on your resume? Also, if your recruiter is worried about those first two jobs looking bad on your resume, I think she should have suggested removing them if you don't need them.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:52
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Coco13 posted:Do you need those first two jobs that lasted less than a year on your resume? Well, one is a big 4 job so it's a really big deal so they probably don't want me to not mention that. Edit: It is pretty ironic that I'm seen as a job hopper, btw, when I was forced out of my first two jobs by firings and my last job is the only job I've ever voluntarily left. Covok fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Apr 12, 2023 |
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Apr 12, 2023 01:54
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