the spirit is weak. woe be the spirit. the body is weaker still. Siërra R
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ask me about horses
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somewhere on website league
username will be botflymother
really if you wanna find me just look for botfly mother
gonna keep that name around for a good while

doctorwyrm
@doctorwyrm

I’m 31 and I have been working the same shitty fast food job for the last 13 years. All of my music opportunities pretty much dried up and I’m staring at the capitalist hellscape wondering what the fuck do I do now? Should I go back to school? Can I teach myself? Are online courses even worth it? Are there even actual career opportunities out there? Sorry to beg advice to the void but the existential crisis has been dragging me down for so long



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in reply to @doctorwyrm's post:

My friend did a boot camp in 2021; it was really demanding (like sleep, eat, code) and the whole process (learning enough to get in to the program, doing the program, and then applying for work) took around a year, and a bunch of folks who started at the boot camp the same time that my friend either didn’t finish or have had trouble finding work after they graduated. That said, my friend did get work, on a career engineering track at a tech start-up, and at this point is a full time software engineer doing complex product work after a year on the job.

The punchline is that “learning to code” is pretty hard to do quickly but it can be done, and does seem to be worth it if it goes well.

You can learn to code and apply it to a lot of office jobs to automate junk, but honestly, you're probably better off just learning excel (via google sheets since there's a lot of overlap in functionality). Most shitty office jobs are impressed if you can do really basic excel work like pivot tables and vlookups and it's more widely in demand than coding.

That said, it doesn't hurt to learn a language like C++, Python, SQL, or Javascript depending on what you're interests are. You can use free courses online like Code Academy and other places. For example, I was looking at Construct 3 for game dev stuff a few weeks ago and they have a pretty indepth Javascript course for free. I would also advise avoid paying for courses because all this stuff is out there for free. Even spaces to just mess around. Especially for stuff like SQL and Python or really any of the major languages.

I would recommend you look for the types of jobs you're interested in and then learn the stuff the list as requirements.

Lastly, if you do decide to learn to code you should have some personal project that uses the language to better motivate you. This can be anything! Even something that just takes data from a .cvs to make a little guy run around the screen.

I have... 23 years in the industry, most of that as a computer programmer and what Viz says is mostly accurate. The truth is, even the high era of bootcamps in the 2010s... the shit was oversold. The last time you could walk in off the street with no degree and just A Particular Set Of Skills was 1999 or so. College is your best bet. If you're looking for a full-meal-deal degree online, Purdue is what I would recommend.

If you're interested in tech, and computer programming specifically is less important, though, have you considered seeing if your IATSE local has a hiring hall? If you've got a music background... Depending on where you are there's a lot of work in audio engineering and it'll pay better than most entry level programming jobs, too.

You can learn to code self taught. Codecademy isnt bad, and it will give you fundamentals - I learned java and JavaScript that way. If you try it, take REALLY THOROUGH NOTES, because they will mention critical shit in passing and not stress how important it was until many chapters later after you've nearly forgotten it. Basics will take you anywhere from 3 weeks to a few months depending on how much energy you have to pour into it.

I then turned around and got a job... Building furniture, basically. Oops. Shit.

As far as things you can pick up fast and possibly increase your wages, I had a lot more luck learning trades tbh. Even if they don't reach the high wages tech brings, a lot of them have pretty regular pay increases, and people always need walls painted/plumbing fixed etc. It doesn't have to be a forever job, but it might be a better fit for you than what you're doing now at least.

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