this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Honestly, we are potentially on the cusp of the next great societal shift not only in how countries are ran, but probably also where the sphere of global influence resides. I don't know how it will all end it, whether it will end with China superseding the US as a global influencer and power, or if we will go the way the Nazis have been trying to direct us since the 30s and the entire world takes a dramatic shift to the far right.
Quite frankly, it's terrifying. Being in the United States and watching our political climate dissolve into a party who is afraid of embracing the young and go further left, and a party whose only interest is owning the libs and helping the 1% become even wealthier while the rest of us have to suffer through greedflation is really frustrating. My wife and I have talked about leaving, but we have JDs, and American JDs are basically useless outside of the U.S. unless you went to Harvard/Stanford/Yale and can land a job in Big Law, which we did not.
I've thought about going back to school and getting a degree in programming, or trying to find another way to learn and get the experience/certifications I would need, but I have absolutely no idea where to start with that or how to look for those kinds of jobs.
I do not advise going to college for programming degree, it could easily be the worst financial decision especially now that the jobs and pays are not guaranteed anymore, programming positions are getting flooded and wage are tanking. More often than not, college does not teach you standard practices in the industry, the tech stacks that we use, and so forth.
My advice instead is to get some certifications for programming or system administration and save up for like a $7000 classroom course for some of those certifications, it's expensive, but helluva a lot cheaper than college at least. Once you have the certification and some basic understanding, do some projects like:
If you're system admin, try and set up a whole new office network by configuring the routers, firewall, group policies, ADAP, RADIUS, and so go on and so forth. Get comfortable doing it in a virtual setup.
if you're programmer, try and develop some common web applications since that is easily 90% of the job in programming nowaday, it almost always going to be web application everywhere you go.
A WGU computer science degree costs about 3800 per six month period, btw, which is a decent option. I'm with you on avoiding a typical expensive college degree, though. I would personally recommend considering WGU after getting some experience so you can get through it faster (since it's self paced).
It's about $30,400 for 4 years study, so it's not as bad as other college courses could've been. That a good option, I might consider doing that then. Thank you :)