Quarantine is great for learning, and jobs disappearing from the labor market - so that, if you are going to study, then get a profession that is reliable and promising, which will not allow you to sink to the bottom in difficult times. If there are professions in the world that can guarantee employment in a crisis, then the "programmer" is one of them. Anyway, this is the stereotype.And here's another argument why working in IT is so attractive. According to the results of our survey ( interviewed employers), 85% of companies are ready to leave up to a quarter of their employees remotely. And who works remotely for us? According to the CNews website, every second vacancy for remote workers on Russian employment sites is in one way or another related to programming. Here's the puzzle: programming means stable employment, competitive salaries, and the ability to work remotely. And people go to study. According to Gazeta.ru, the number of students in Skillbox increased 4.5 times from March to August, and the professions that users strive for the most are software development and game design.
Another stereotype that easily becomes a guiding star for people who are either too dreamy or a little lazy is that the profession of "programmer" can be obtained easily and quickly. The average duration of short-term courses is up to 4 months. (Of course, the educational services market offers not only short-term courses, but including them.) The Trud.com job search team collected expert opinions on the topic "Is it possible to become a programmer in 3 months", and we turned to the representatives and commercial training companies, and the university environment, and to employers, and to the programmers themselves, in order to get the full picture. Our findings are unlikely to be news for established professionals or for those who are in the middle of the path to a career top,but for beginners or looking towards courses - they can be useful (hopefully).
Why does university start with Pascal
The opinion of university professors is interesting insofar as in most vacancies today they write: “having a diploma is a plus”. It is good to be an active and purposeful self-taught person, but nevertheless, in the alma mater, apparently, it is not seeds that peel in the classroom.
To answer the question about the timing of teaching programming, Vovk Elena Timofeevna , deputy. Director of the Training Center of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov, and Aleksey Valerievich Yakushin , who is responsible for additional education at the same faculty, offer to figure out who, in fact, is going to become a programmer.
There may be options: student or adult; a person with a humanitarian or technical background; the goal is to acquire a new profession or deepen knowledge. In these dichotomous situations, the learning technology and timing will be different.
“Programming is based on mathematics,” says Elena Timofeevna. "The basis of programming is algorithms, and it is easiest to learn it on mathematical problems." Therefore, knowledge of mathematics for a student is a big plus. And, on the contrary, if a nurse came to study as a programmer, you cannot count on a quick and easy result ”.
Why Pascal? “There are languages that are used and are most convenient for the initial teaching of programming,” explains Aleksey Valerievich. - Pascal speaks to them. It is on this language that the logic of the algorithm ideally fits with the transparent syntax of the language. "
When studying at the university, a multi-stage approach is used: different languages are studied, according to the principle "from simple to complex." The more languages a specialist knows, the easier it is to learn a new one.
But what use the courses serve is for learning new languages by people who already have basic knowledge and experience in programming.
In three months, you can. Just be careful
Thinking about the topic set in the title should take into account the starting point: who do we call a programmer?
“In the block of professions that are called“ programmer ”at the everyday level, there are quite a few that can be mastered enough to work in their specialty. Building sites on modern engines, layout, creating Landing pages - all these are skills that are quite mastered in three months, with which you can go on to work / intern. Yes, you will not be a pro, but you will slip in and start, ”says Luther Yezhov , developer at RentATeam.
Well, we are not so naive that the skill of creating a landing page on a ready-made engine is considered full-fledged programming. But in programming itself - let's call it conditionally "full-fledged" - there are professions that can be mastered quickly.
An example is the profession "tester". Anton Nemkin , Chairman of the Board of the Digital Valley Sochi Foundation, believes that in three months you can take a basic course on functional testing and become a Junior tester. “However, keep in mind that now the requirements for QA specialists are much higher, because several dozen people can apply for one job, so whether you get a job is a big question,” adds Anton.
Courses as a means of continuing education
Mikhail Kraev , Project Manager at GorodRabot.ru, believes that courses are ideal for those who are already writing code. “Courses are the best opportunity to learn something new and understand what a new language is capable of, to get acquainted with its specifics and syntax. I would also advise not to rush to paid courses right away, but first try the free training options so that an understanding is formed where this or that programming language is used, and whether you will need it. "
Julia Kiseleva, Head of Human Resources at Galileosky, emphasizes that courses are a useful tool for those wishing to retrain. "If you, for example, retrain (from a tester or from another language), knowing the basics, then the courses will give an excellent chance to get into initial positions and further develop in a particular company."
"Being in IT" is not equal to "being a programmer"
Many applicants for a place in IT are attracted not so much by the nature of the activity and the essence of the tasks as ... let's call it the desire to be involved in an industry full of innovations, smart people and opportunities.
Dmitry Skripkin , HR Director of Reksoft, in a friendly way extends his hand to representatives of non-technical professions and reminds that the lack of technical education is not a reason to abandon the idea forever, as they say, to “enter IT”.
Dmitry reminds that today some specialties are in demand that you have never heard of before or, at least, their representatives were not needed as badly as they are now, for example, a UX designer or a business analyst. “It is unlikely that it would be reasonable to strive specifically for development, without having a technical education or an accompanying base,” says Dmitry. - Rather, it makes sense to find a direction close to you and retrain. For example, an economist can quite simply become a business analyst, a statistician - a Data Science specialist, a manager of any direction - a tester, a graphic designer - a UX / UI designer, a specialist from any field who is well versed in his industry and business processes of his company , can potentially become a project manager, and so on. " For this purpose, short-term courses are just suitable.At the same time, it is worth approaching their choice as pragmatically as possible. “Ask for advice from friends working in this field. Ask a question about the courses for HR specialists of IT companies, ask if there is an opportunity for further training, ”HRD recommends.
Case from life
Says Olga Kuteynikova , Product Director of Digital Contact:
“The story with COVID has thrown a huge number of new programmers onto the market. Just the other day, a JS developer was required for the project. As usual, we published a vacancy with a requirement of 3 years of experience, and it started ... In a couple of days we received more than 500 responses, of which only four candidates were relevant. The rest are students who have completed programmer courses from GeekBrains, Skillfactory, Yandex.Practicum. And most of them are those who yesterday were plumbers, crane operators, sellers. There are many job seekers over 35 years old, with impressive experience behind them, but completely unrelated to IT. Of course, as a professional participant in the IT market, it is sad for me to see how the illusion of the possibility of becoming a programmer is sold like this, in three months. Companies buy not knowledge of a programming language, but experience, thinking,which have been acquired over the years. The average programming experience in our company is 5-6 years. The minimum relevant experience of the candidate, whom we are ready to consider, is 3 years, while the preference will always not be in favor of freelancers. If a candidate has been freelancing all this time, creating sites on Wordpress or setting up CRM, then we cannot invite such a candidate to implement the tasks set for the company. It's just financially ineffective. The only place where such a candidate can find a job as an intern is large IT companies that are ready to train, but you need to understand that the money that such companies are willing to pay will be lower than what a person with experience could get by staying in their industry. "which we are ready to consider - 3 years, while the preference will always not be in favor of freelancers. If a candidate has been freelancing all this time, creating websites on Wordpress or setting up CRM, then we cannot invite such a candidate to implement the tasks set for the company. It's just financially ineffective. The only place where such a candidate can find a job as an intern is large IT companies that are ready to train, but you need to understand that the money that such companies are willing to pay will be lower than what a person with experience could get by staying in their industry. "which we are ready to consider - 3 years, while the preference will always not be in favor of freelancers. If a candidate has been freelancing all this time, creating websites on Wordpress or setting up CRM, then we cannot invite such a candidate to implement the tasks set for the company. It's just financially ineffective. The only place where such a candidate can find a job as an intern is large IT companies that are ready to train, but you need to understand that the money that such companies are willing to pay will be lower than what a person with experience could get by staying in their industry. "delivered to the company. It's just financially ineffective. The only place where such a candidate can find a job as an intern is large IT companies that are ready to train, but you need to understand that the money that such companies are willing to pay will be lower than what a person with experience could get by staying in their industry. "delivered to the company. It's just financially ineffective. The only place where such a candidate can find a job as an intern is large IT companies that are ready to train, but you need to understand that the money that such companies are willing to pay will be lower than what a person with experience could get by staying in their industry. "
By the way, about freelancing. It is believed that working in the status of a free artist is not evil at all, if you direct your efforts in the right direction. How and where to send, suggests Anton Nemkin: “You can take on simple freelance projects from the first months of training. It will not bring you money, but it will give you experience, which you can then convert into a good salary. "
I would like to end with a quote from Luther Yezhov about the moment when you can safely say that you managed to "enter IT". “What is considered the entry point to the profession? For me it looks like this: I started making money with a code or your code is accepted by large open source players - that means I entered. A question of mindset, character. "