About IT courses, or how not to learn how to make money on the Internet

Typical example of online course advertising
Typical example of online course advertising

Over the past couple of years, more and more often I hear requests from a variety of people to advise courses for IT training, and the advertising of these courses, if not from every iron sounds, has definitely reached teapots and light bulbs. You are promised in just a few lessons to teach you how to make websites, mobile applications, or tell you about other ways to enter the world of high salaries, for which you only need a computer and the Internet.

True, the authors of the courses are silent about the fact that, although there are high salaries, but not in initial positions, the work itself is far from the romance of creativity, and most importantly, the IT world requires not only knowledge of the programming language, but also a certain mindset, good knowledge of mathematics and often a few more exact sciences. For example, such a popular development of mobile games requires deep knowledge of physics and mathematics, often going beyond the course of the school, but also those that are not even talked about at the institute. Is it possible to learn this in a course in a couple of months? Of course not.

The romance of mobile app development
The romance of mobile app development

Now it’s time to talk about what is usually talked about in a customary way – about money. With salaries in IT, there has always been a difficult situation, and this is due to the lack of the need to sit in the office (they are also a little cunning about remote work in advertising courses, but more on that later). And the recent world situation has very well emphasized this feature of work. The point of advertising law courses is that you really only need a computer and the Internet to work, which means that you can work from anywhere and for anyone. On the one hand, this allows residents of low-income regions to work for companies from wealthy regions. A typical example from advertising – the salary of a beginner developer in Silicon Valley often exceeds a hundred thousand dollars a year. But the coin has a downside – companies from these wealthy regions can just as easily hire developers from developing countries, paying them based on local salaries. In fact, in Moscow, a beginner IT specialist is rarely offered more than 70 thousand rubles, and more often it is an amount of 40-50 thousand rubles. per month (data based on the analysis of salaries in vacancies on the website hh.ru as of autumn 2021). Is this a lot? For comparison, the courier of the popular delivery service gets almost double that amount.

I also want to dispel another myth – about the ability to immediately work from home. To be able to program remotely, you need to be able to solve problems completely independently, and to learn this, you need at least a year to work in a strong team, where a mentor will be able to sort out mistakes, and just suggest the direction of thought for solving the problem.

Night, Music, Keyboard and Android Studio
Night, Music, Keyboard and Android Studio

It’s time to move from analyzing the market situation to the most important component of any training – the knowledge gained. And here there is another problem with the courses – in fact, all these materials are available completely free of charge on the websites of organizations in charge of the corresponding direction of development. All you need is basic knowledge of the English language and a lot of self-organization, and these skills will be extremely important in future work. The ability to work with documentation is probably one of the most important for any IT worker.

It turns out that all courses are useless? In fact, this is not the case. If you have an analytical mindset and basic training in mathematics, algorithms, perhaps school programming experience, courses can provide structured information about the current situation in the IT world, current methods of work. Especially courses at large companies or well-known universities, for example, Yandex, Mail.ru, 1C or specialist.ru at MSTU im. Bauman. Moreover, at the courses of companies, they often recruit specialists for starting positions, however, for this you will have to try and show yourself during training.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that you should not chase fashionable professions, armies of lawyers and economists working outside the specialty will confirm this. But don’t be intimidated by the high competition for courses if you really like programming. There is a demand for good programmers.

PS This is my first article on this resource, so please do not judge too harshly, but I will be glad to criticize if it is objective. At the same time, I will briefly introduce myself – now I am the head of IT projects, I have been fond of programming since about six years, and the official experience has already exceeded 17 years. During this time, he worked in the web, and in 1C, and in mobile development.

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Come in, please.

Did you take courses to get into IT?

0%
Yes, I found a job thanks to courses

0

0%
Yes, but after the courses I still didn’t get into IT

0

ten%
I started but couldn’t finish

1

0%
No, just going

0

70%
No, I got into IT in other ways

7

twenty%
No, courses are useless

2

0%
I’m not from IT, just want to vote

0

10 users have voted. 2 users abstained.

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