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| Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity  |
Huh? | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
I have nothing useful to say about the actual topic, but I have to say this thread is a great example of why I love WTF! If you have a question about something, anything....someone here will have an answer!
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| Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity |
I know. This site is the best. I have emailed friends and relatives in tech about this, and only one person even responded. Thank you all so much!!! | |||
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| Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana  |
The tough thing, imo, about these is that there are a bunch of competing platforms all going after web design. Ruby on Rails is a big one, but there are others such as Grails, Django, ASP.NET, etc. I'm not at all sure what the most popular one is right now, and certainly not sure which one will become dominant in the future. I agree with Ax's advice: if MS decides to go this route, she should be thinking of developing a online portfolio that will showcase her skills. She might also want to at least be conversant with some other platforms, but many employers will be looking more at general coding skills (as evidenced by her portfolio), figuring that she can always learn a new platform. What they're looking for is someone who clearly can code (and design a web application, not a page), and those skills will transfer. This, of course, is assuming she wanted web application design, and not web page design. Fun fact for MS: PeopleAdmin, one of the bigger online applicant/recruting/onboarding programs, uses Ruby on Rails. | |||
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Minor Deity |
They don't offer only a development course, they also offer a design course. And for those taking the development course, they offer a choice of framework to learn.
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Foregoing Vacation to Post |
I work in IT for a government agency that requires for most IT jobs a BS/MS college degree in computer science and a few years of working experience. Sometimes they’ll hire a person who doesn’t have the degree but has strong working experience. Does anyone remember Novell? Does anyone still use it? It was a popular network operating system that many companies used in the 1990s. It’s common knowledge that Microsoft won the networking operating systems war. Novell offered certificates in CNE (Certified Network Engineer) and CNA (Certified Network Administrator). Courses to take and become a CNE/CNA costed thousands. Now look at their certificates. They’re basically worthless for the people who got one. A certificate is only good for a certain operating system or computer language. When the computer language/operating system becomes obsolete and is super ceded by something newer, the certificate will become obsolete also. This is advice she probably DOESN’T want to hear: It’s better to get a college computer science degree than a certificate from an on-line correspondence course. A college degree will never become obsolete. Tell her to make sure the college where she gets the degree offers web based courses so she’ll get some experience with it. Or what Lisa said. Take IT courses in a community college. | |||
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
Does anyone have experience with courses offered at Lynda.com? If she decides not to do the certificate course, but wants to have a structured way to learn some of those programs, would that be something that would be helpful? I only bring it up because I did a course (or two?) through Lynda.com when I was a grad student and I did think program about developing online courses. That program used Lynda.com for a lot of its training and as I recall, Lynda.com was really well-regarded. If MS tends to work better with a pre-set curriculum, she might check it out. Also, on the topic of a degree, does she already have a BA (or maybe BS)? Is it possible she could get admitted to a BS and have all of her gen ed coursework waived/treated as completed? Either that or look at the different programs offered at community colleges and consider doing an in-person program for 1-2 years... Or! Are there any reputable online programs she could consider? Like Arizona State IIRC? Or ... what's the other one, Western Governor's Union? (Is that even the right name....) Are those well-regarded?
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| Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity |
Good questions, SK. I have no idea about those other programs. She graduated 2 years ago from Colgate with a BA degree in psychology. She has worked in sales since and wants to make this change. I don't see her going back to college for many reasons, including my bank account. My rule is one college degree per child. | |||
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| Member SIPC Minor Deity  |
Or will make one up. | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
I have the same rule, but I’ve allowed them to dedicate the money saved through merit scholarships to grad school. | |||
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
That makes sense Cindy. Re Lynda.com, hopefully someone will have some comments about it, its usefulness etc., but in the meantime, suggest MS take a look: https://www.lynda.com/ It's not free, but I would guess it'll be cheaper than the certificate course.
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Gadfly |
Hey - I was a Certified Novell Administrator. Hadn't thought about that for years. Anyhoo, I agree with QL to an extent -- but I would say that if she gets a certificate in something current, she can get a job and then as technology changes, she'll learn on the job....as in her boss will come in one day and say "ok, we're rewriting everything in platform X" and everyone will learn platform X on the fly. So sure my Novell certification is obsolete now, but if I had used it to get a job in networking, my skills would have evolved over the years right along with the technology. The point of the certificate (and really, not so much the certificate as the skills and training) is to get your foot in the door. Nothing in technology stays current forever including a college degree....just ask my friends whose college computer science degrees basically consisted of fortran programming. | |||
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| Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity |
Bump! An update: MS quit her job in May 2018 and started the Bloc web design course full-time. She lived off of her savings and drove for Lyft to make ends meet. She hoped to finish the program by October or November, but it took longer than that. She finished in February. She then began looking for jobs. She got three interviews, and she just learned that she got the third job! She starts next week with a well-known company ($18 billion revenue) in the city where she lives. She has a six-month "contract to hire," which is where you have a six month contract and they hire you after that if you are not terrible. The job pays well, double what she was making in sales, and has benefits. Regarding this web design program, it cost $6,000 and she had to work on it night and day. The result was that she has some basic coding skills, and her portfolio has two big projects that apparently are impressive enough to, you know, get a job. I am super proud -- she decided she wanted a career change, took a leap of faith, worked hard, and landed on her feet. And I am thrilled that I will have one less child suckling on my credit card. Thanks to you all for your helpful advice! | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
That's fantastic! 
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| Minor Deity |
Hurray! Great news!
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