Can Anyone Really Retrain for IT? Or: From Marketer to Tester

I'd like to dedicate this article to all those who are considering a career change but lack IT education or experience. I found myself in the same situation 3 years ago. My profile then looked something like this: 30 years old, married with one child and another on the way, graduated with a (for IT) irrelevant degree from an economics university, and work experience as an electronics salesperson and marketer.

Since 2021, I've been independently studying programming, specifically in Python. I spent several months self-studying using YouTube videos, and in 2022, I completed a 285-hour online Python programming course, supplemented by evenings and weekends of further self-study. Since March 2023, I've started my first IT position as a tester at Edhouse, where I currently continue and further develop my skills.

I'd like to warn you in advance that the aim of this article is not to discourage you or talk you out of your decision to get into IT, but to add a real, marketing-free perspective on what to prepare for and what such a change entails.

As a marketer, your job is to create an illusion of an ideal world, preferably in connection with your service or product. Google phrases like "IT retraining" or "How to become a programmer" - you'll be inundated with ads for paid courses. Ads written by marketers with the goal of selling you their service - a course. The arguments are constantly repeated: IT salaries are among the highest in the Czech Republic, anyone can get into IT, there's a long-term shortage of IT workers in the Czech Republic, start your IT career with us, etc.

But nowhere will you read that the course itself won't give you sufficient technical knowledge to actually go and work in IT. It's true that there's a shortage of workers in IT, but it's predominantly a shortage of and interest in experienced workers (seniors). For junior positions, the situation is reversed - there are many candidates, and your competitors will be university graduates who spent 5 years studying and hundreds of other graduates from various IT courses or enthusiastic self-learners.

Describing the shortcomings and specific problems I encountered during my studies would be enough for a separate article. But I'd like to highlight here 2 general factors that will influence whether you can overcome all the pitfalls and succeed in IT. These are time and motivation.

Time

I hate the excuse "I don't have time". Each of us has 24 hours in a day. "I don't have time" means - I'm not giving the proposed activity higher priority than other activities. Do you have a family? A job? Friends? Hobbies? Sports? Are you willing and can you afford to put these activities aside for a while and instead devote yourself to intensive learning?

My favorite quote from the film "A New Shift" (a film about the story of a miner from Ostrava who became a programmer - if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it) is "No one was born a programmer".

Everything can be learned, it just takes time. A huge amount of time. To educate yourself to the necessary level, you'll have to lower the priority of many of your activities. In addition to writing code itself, you also need to have a general overview of the IT world to get a job. You're also expected to have above-standard computer skills and advanced knowledge of how computers work. English is a must, at least at the level of reading documentation. Depending on your current knowledge, it may take months or even years where you'll need to educate yourself in your free time.

For me, in the most intensive period which lasted 6 months, it meant spending 4 days a week in the regime of 07:00-16:00 work, 18:00-22:00 programming course + 1 full weekend day creating assignments and looking up additional information on the topics covered.

Motivation

What's your answer to the question "Why do you want to work in IT?" I consider it a cliché that your work must be enjoyable, but in the case of deciding to completely change careers, I have to agree with it.

Working on an IT project is a constant roller coaster of emotions. The joyful feeling that you understand something will be changed to hopelessness in a second when you look at a new problem and realize you have no idea what's going on. This situation repeats itself constantly, sometimes with a frequency of hours, sometimes days or weeks. I experienced feelings of euphoria alternating with utter frustration from the first days of learning, I experience it in everyday work, and I'm convinced it will never disappear. Personally, I enjoy these surges of emotions. I played competitive chess for over 15 years, and solving tasks in IT reminds me of moments from a chess game where you're also very often in a situation where you don't know what to do, but you have to solve it and figure out how to continue. You don't always succeed as you imagined, and then you need to spend more time and energy on how to do it better next time.

If your primary motivation is the prospect of an above-average salary, your mind will constantly be confronted with the question "is it worth it for the money?" The more often you ask yourself this question, the more you'll be inclined to answer "NO" and simply throw away all the energy invested so far.

Can anyone really retrain for IT? Theoretically YES, but...

Everyone has the potential to reach the required level. But everyone has their starting line for their retraining race in a different place. Some have had it moved by fate, some by their life decisions so far. But it depends only on how strong your motivation is and whether you're willing to invest the necessary amount of time in your goal. Probably your whole journey will be much more challenging than you expected. The feeling at its end will be all the more joyful when you start your first IT position, perhaps with us at Edhouse.