I enter IT or IT enters me



It was an ordinary gray St. Petersburg (rainy Moscow) evening, the n- th day of self-isolation was on - the day on which I decided to change my profession, and therefore my life. But let's rewind a little ...



Background - a little about high school



... Well, how little, almost six years exactly - at the time when I was an almost second-year student of the radio engineering specialty (and even with a military bias) at one regional university. And by the word almost here we mean passing a coursework in computer science - the last spurt that separated me from the successful passing of the session and the perfectly boring vacation of a nonresident student.



Behind two semesters of university informatics, at the lectures on which nothing really was given, except for empty motivational speeches of the teacher: β€œ radio technicians need to be able to code, then employers will tear you off with their hands !! 1!". But how to "comprehend Zen" C ++, where it is useful in practice and what we are doing here, no one has explained. So it is quite possible to consider the lecturer's uncle an info-gypsy even before it became mainstream (after all, 2014 is in the yard). Yes, undoubtedly, there were laboratory works, who carried them out quite smart, though not very interested himself (and, as a result, did not interest us) graduate student, but only a few of the group of ~ 30 people understood something. It would be worth, of course, to mention here the quality of higher education in the regions, but it hurts, so we will not.



The coursework was eventually bought (written by her office in Delphi), the teacher, of course, was not accepted, and I had to spend the night writing something similar, but already on the pros. The topic was pretty basic - a desktop application that looked like a "travel agency database". What task ( none ) is the solution. An eerie-looking exe shnik was presented - "you can see what he did himself, let's take a student's book ." And this is all my programming experience is over ( there should be a famous meme with a policeman ).



But by the fifth year I had to return to it indirectly. The teachers again started the hurdy-gurdy about the need to code and even give extra points for laboratory work using programming skills. Still not having much interest in coding, I forgot about this business andper aspera ad astra (through thorns to the stars ( lat .)) defended everything without additional buns.



Here is a diploma. The group is quite large, we were united by three students with one topic, and by some coincidence, I ended up in the top three with a teacher who loved students with knowledge (albeit basic) of any programming language. My friend, who shared the writing of a diploma with me in the top three, nevertheless decided to leave his specialty and already had a part-time internship in one of the IT companies that develop software for medical institutions ( you can read his path here ). Not really understanding the pluses, I came to the court in my specialty, that is, to be responsible for the radio technical side of the issue.



On the question of young professionals



Diploma for 5, suitcase, railway station, Moscow, and here I am in the army. Three years of obligation (my debt to the state for training), and then - whoever wants where and no one keeps anyone. Having decided not to connect my life completely with the sky in boots, I began to look for ways of escape.



So we come to the present time.

Where to go for a radio engineer (or what the search for " radio engineer " on the website hh.ru gives us ):



  • government organizations - that's what I'm running from;
  • - – , , , , , , – , ;
  • – , , , , , – , ;
  • ( ) /// – , , .


Well, again, in all these areas we run into the notorious EXPERIENCE, which yesterday's graduate, and even from a regional university, has nowhere to take. There are also specific requirements and factors: "preferably the education of MIPT / MSTU", the past in law enforcement agencies, thorough knowledge of some GOSTs, strange special software, knowledge of FPGAs - the level of God, salaries low enough for Moscow, somewhere on a rotational (!) Method of work and the list can be multiplied further.



              A leading (!) Engineer with such a salary in Moscow will have to

                  earn extra money leading weddings and corporate




events I in no way pretend to be the ultimate truth, I am not capricious about insufficient salaries in these vacancies - so young, but give 100k a month, no ... It is a shame for the state that radio engineers who are graduated from universities in batches and are not needed anywhere except the army, that there are no internship programs, just as there are no large concerns willing to hire young specialists .



Most of the graduates of regional polytechnics go absolutely not in their specialty: radio engineers, electronic equipment designers, power engineers, information security specialists, safety engineers - who are in business, who are in the army, who are a pizza delivery man, who is a seller, who is a taxi driver, who is for a penny (and experience) to small firms (while parents help financially), because there is no demand for young people. Thus, the diplomas of these areas are depreciated, and we get the same endless lawyers / managers / economists.



Of course, life is a struggle, and he who seeks will always find, but at the pace of modern life in a big city to spend from six months only on interviews in dubious organizations for a guy or a girl who rely only on themselves, of course, there is no time. And then it is unlikely that it will be possible to achieve anything - the above directions almost do not imply career growth.



Not having the skill of a mother's businessman, not being an adherent of network marketing, and not ready to work in a taxi or delivery all my life, I decided to try my hand at IT .



                          When trying to enter IT



Beginning of the End



Having succumbed to the persuasion of my girlfriend working in IT, the hints of a programmer friend, as well as having a lot of free time for self-isolation, two months ago I decided to start approaching the issue in detail and attended the online intensive Netology with the promising title β€œ How to become a programmer ". I had three two-hour lectures in three nights. They explained in sufficient detail and with real-time feedback what IT is, what areas, YAP exist, how to figure it out, what to choose, where to start and what awaits in the end.



    At each of the classes, different speakers talked about their areas of work.It







seemed to me that Swift is a rather peculiar and not very common direction for a beginner, although there is an epla technique, and the salary in the market seems to be quite good, but chasing the crane ( money ) ahead of time, I think it's not worth it, as well as believing everything that is written about salaries - this does not lead to anything good (according to the experience of looking for a job while still a student). And also a small number of trainee vacancies on Swift during a superficial search sent this option to the minus, but it is not at all excluded that at a later stage of my journey I will begin to master this language.



Pros and Sharphated for me since university, testing is also not entirely mine. For data science , my knowledge of mathematics is far from perfect. Yes, five semesters of high school at the university were not in vain, but again I didn’t want to plunge into variance, RMS, take derivatives, and all the more did not want to associate my career with it. I decided to leave



JS for the second stage of my career in order to get closer to full stack. I am also not very enthusiastic about programming for Android , so I decided to stay with Python . The explanation of the choice may have turned out to be rather crumpled, but I watched this intensive with a priori confidence that after it I would go to comprehend the language of the great and mighty Guido Van Rossum.







A huge number of articles about the ideal choice of Python as the first language have already been written: about the fact that the immersion in programming must be started with it, about the clear and concise syntax, about Google, YouTube and Instagram, almost completely rewritten in it and in general about the fact that God created the Earth for seven days, and on the eighth wrote print ('Hello world!') in python. Therefore, I will not dwell on the pros and cons of this language.





And then what?



Being a lover of planning everything in advance, even at the stage of choosing a language, I began to think about who would need me like that. The answer is rather rash, but simple - IT internships . Yes, this is not a full-fledged job, but in addition to pumping your skills, you get the opportunity to work in a team with already established specialists, learn from experience and (by no means a ghostly) chance for an offer .



There is no point in talking a lot about internships either, there are enough articles about this, you can read in detail in the corresponding section on the websites of your preferred companies. And there is nothing to tell me about it myself. All that remains is to hope and believe ( cake )



A pretty good short article about how to start in IT- of course, not without advertising Yandex.Practicum , about the first impressions of which I will try to tell in the next article.



Well, in the meantime, there are two years left until the end of my current contract, and in addition to my main job, I have a little time (mostly in the evenings) to study, try and look, which I actually started almost two months ago.



On HabrΓ©, I want to write about all the stages of my path to June from scratch (not only about how smart I am, but also about failures, mistakes, reckless actions, laziness and somewhere lack of knowledge - most likely, this will be at first more) and receive feedback from the habro community, which I hope will be valuable.



PS



Perhaps this particular article will be useful to few people, and perhaps it will give an impetus to someone who is not very decisive. I do not pretend to be a motivator, but I decided to change my life for the better and I hope that I will succeed.



PPS



I would be glad to receive your comments and advice on how to start sailing around the IT world as a beginner. So far I can’t enter into polemics substantively and on an equal footing, but for this I am here too - to learn .



All Articles