There’s never been a better range of options to get into tech and there’s never been a greater time for companies to support people wanting to upskill into Tech.
Who does tech?
We know that historically the tech sector has suffered from many issues …
- Name shaming: Geek, Nerd, computer whiz, hacker – there’s loads, but where they were previously a putdown, now they’re kind of cool
- Its for the boys – Initially it was a women’s ‘admin’ role – there’s been plenty of reasons why and how the women were pushed out. Thankfully the trend is in reverse now and its positively frowned upon to have non diverse teams creating products.
- It’s incomprehensible – It’s not!
- Its all about coding – There’s plenty of roles with #nocoding – and lots of tech ‘adjacent’ options
- If you haven’t done a degree in it then you can’t move into it – most definitely not true anymore – its long been recognised that the low numbers of people that do specific degrees in the industry will not fill the skills gap and people can retrain
- Its for middle class white people – definitely not true .. its a global market and companies are trying their hardest to be inclusive now.
Why Diversify?
We understand that many people – namely women, people from working backgrounds in fact any minorities, feel that the tech world is beyond them. However its not only beyond the realm of most people but its a massively wide field and there’s also a worldwide shortage in the industry. Digital skills cut across all domains nowadays – there’s fields such as HealthTech, Deeptech, Meditech, FinTech, Edtech, Createch and plenty of others. These are all crossover domains and appreciate skills from the Education, Finance, Medical domains to help them succeed.
Barriers to moving into Tech
We can’t solve all of the issues obviously, but we can give you a place to come along to and find out if its a world you would like to be in. In many cases, once you’ve started on your career then its pretty daunting stepping across into another, similarly if you drop out of your career due to family or other responsibilities or issues then its also pretty nerve wracking to come back into it.
Opportunities to get into tech
The thing is that there’s plenty of opportunities out there and the government are massively pushing training into the whole tech skills area. As its a minefield finding out about the opportunities on offer and where to start we’re running a conference for everyone to come along and find out the opportunities on offer.
And to the following questions:
- Yes – you can learn remotely and fit it in around childcare/other work
- Yes there is mentoring on offer
- Yes you can get paid to learn by working in a company that runs apprenticeship schemes
- Yes it can go up as far as a degree or masters (and it covers all other levels .. its confusing so you really should pop along)
- Yes it can be a shorter bootcamp
- Yes the training is free
- Yes – its any age!
So if you want to find out what/how/where you really should pop along to our Tech UpSkill event on the 8th of November @ the watershed. Its Free and if you want to get into the industry then we don’t think you’ll get a better opportunity to speak directly to the groups doing the training.
There’s nothing to lose, you don’t have to know a single thing about tech – but having an interest does obviously help.
Pop along and have a chat and find out what the opportunities are, we’d love to see you there (and we are a pretty welcoming group!), we don’t care about your gender, if you’re neuro-diverse, working class, what colour you are or how you identify – you’re all welcome.