Early 20s: secretary + general qualification for university entrance
After my apprenticeship was over I stayed at the company and continued to work as a secretary. I automated everything within my MS Excel spreadsheets. I was fascinated by the work a colleague did with all those networking stuff in our company. I got to know some cool people who did a lot of computer stuff at home and one off them working in IT. If only I got a formal education to work in such a job…
With my best friend I had a deal: whenever one of us wants to do the “general qualification for university entrance” evening course — we will do it together! So we both started with this course in the same year we finished our apprenticeship. I was able to skip one year because of my advanced English skills and I did not need to attend the IT course. For my IT project I chose a MS Access database — and as you might have guessed — yes I automated it with MS VBA for MS Access ;-)
All the other people built a website with frames — boring, I’ve done that several times. At the end of this course it came to my mind: hm with this qualification I would be able to study Computer Science — so that I could finally get my formal education and get a new job! Brilliant idea! I attended some events which were exclusively for girls and tech. At those events you visited universities, had some guest lectures and you were able to talk to girls who are studying Computer Science. Wow, awesome stuff — exactly what I want!
Mid 20s: part time study, getting an IT job: turning into a developer
Finally I was able to study and I found a University of Applied Sciences which offered part time study. It was not 100% Computer Sciences, it also included network and automation engineering, lots of signal transmission, mobile phones… — but it included the essential parts like programming, OOP, algorithms and data structures, databases, software engineering, patterns,… And it was part time! So I worked the whole week and attended the lectures on Tuesday and Friday evenings and on the whole Saturday.
With that knowledge in mind I was able to get a job as a project assistance for SAP ERP and CRM rollouts. I was still more or less a secretary, but SAP sounded promising! It was a great experience, I learned how the whole ERP & CRM processes work together, gave trainings, created training material, tested our E2E process, did a lot of travel, maintained translations and helped wherever I could during the rollout phase.
“Fast track” vs. “the hard way”
The whole journey from “Secretary to Software Developer” took me several years. Because I was “just” a secretary I was not allowed to study, I had to take the “general qualification for university entrance” course, which took over three years. I did all my education part time, which is very time consuming and you have to put a lot of effort in. Most of my holidays were used for project work, my bachelor/master thesis and exam preparation. Not having a technical background made my studies extremely hard in the beginning. So my journey was really “the hard way”.
Today you can take a lot of programming and Computer Sciences courses online. Everyone can be a developer! There are also a lot of developer bootcamps: within 8–12 weeks you can become a developer. I think this is great if you want to become a developer within a small agency or working in-house. Those “fast tracks” mainly teach you how to code, but not other important stuff like software engineering, algorithms and data structures, patterns, databases, theoretical stuff about computers and so on which you would need in bigger projects. Bigger companies mostly want you to have a formal education. The same is true when you want to climb the corporate ladder. Universities don’t really teach you how to code, but they teach you timeless things! I never regretted my hard way, because I learned so many different things.
Summary
As you can see from my story: it is possible to switch careers if you are willing to put time and effort into it! With today’s possibilities I would recommend the “fast track” first to see if you really like it. Codecademy is a great free option, for paid ones I can recommend Codeschool and Treehouse (they have a bunch of inspiring stories). Build a portfolio, put your stuff on Github, learn as much as possible and get yourself a new job! After that you can still decide if you need the formal University education and doing so part time is a great option.
All the best for your upcoming journey! I’d like to close this article with this quote:
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them”, Walt Disney
Answers & Comments
Early 20s: secretary + general qualification for university entrance
After my apprenticeship was over I stayed at the company and continued to work as a secretary. I automated everything within my MS Excel spreadsheets. I was fascinated by the work a colleague did with all those networking stuff in our company. I got to know some cool people who did a lot of computer stuff at home and one off them working in IT. If only I got a formal education to work in such a job…
With my best friend I had a deal: whenever one of us wants to do the “general qualification for university entrance” evening course — we will do it together! So we both started with this course in the same year we finished our apprenticeship. I was able to skip one year because of my advanced English skills and I did not need to attend the IT course. For my IT project I chose a MS Access database — and as you might have guessed — yes I automated it with MS VBA for MS Access ;-)
All the other people built a website with frames — boring, I’ve done that several times. At the end of this course it came to my mind: hm with this qualification I would be able to study Computer Science — so that I could finally get my formal education and get a new job! Brilliant idea! I attended some events which were exclusively for girls and tech. At those events you visited universities, had some guest lectures and you were able to talk to girls who are studying Computer Science. Wow, awesome stuff — exactly what I want!
Mid 20s: part time study, getting an IT job: turning into a developer
Finally I was able to study and I found a University of Applied Sciences which offered part time study. It was not 100% Computer Sciences, it also included network and automation engineering, lots of signal transmission, mobile phones… — but it included the essential parts like programming, OOP, algorithms and data structures, databases, software engineering, patterns,… And it was part time! So I worked the whole week and attended the lectures on Tuesday and Friday evenings and on the whole Saturday.
With that knowledge in mind I was able to get a job as a project assistance for SAP ERP and CRM rollouts. I was still more or less a secretary, but SAP sounded promising! It was a great experience, I learned how the whole ERP & CRM processes work together, gave trainings, created training material, tested our E2E process, did a lot of travel, maintained translations and helped wherever I could during the rollout phase.
“Fast track” vs. “the hard way”
The whole journey from “Secretary to Software Developer” took me several years. Because I was “just” a secretary I was not allowed to study, I had to take the “general qualification for university entrance” course, which took over three years. I did all my education part time, which is very time consuming and you have to put a lot of effort in. Most of my holidays were used for project work, my bachelor/master thesis and exam preparation. Not having a technical background made my studies extremely hard in the beginning. So my journey was really “the hard way”.
Today you can take a lot of programming and Computer Sciences courses online. Everyone can be a developer! There are also a lot of developer bootcamps: within 8–12 weeks you can become a developer. I think this is great if you want to become a developer within a small agency or working in-house. Those “fast tracks” mainly teach you how to code, but not other important stuff like software engineering, algorithms and data structures, patterns, databases, theoretical stuff about computers and so on which you would need in bigger projects. Bigger companies mostly want you to have a formal education. The same is true when you want to climb the corporate ladder. Universities don’t really teach you how to code, but they teach you timeless things! I never regretted my hard way, because I learned so many different things.
Summary
As you can see from my story: it is possible to switch careers if you are willing to put time and effort into it! With today’s possibilities I would recommend the “fast track” first to see if you really like it. Codecademy is a great free option, for paid ones I can recommend Codeschool and Treehouse (they have a bunch of inspiring stories). Build a portfolio, put your stuff on Github, learn as much as possible and get yourself a new job! After that you can still decide if you need the formal University education and doing so part time is a great option.
All the best for your upcoming journey! I’d like to close this article with this quote:
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them”, Walt Disney