IT/coding/software/data jobs work from anywhere

tiger135

a question for IT people.
If I studied furiously for say 6 months initially with programming languages such as c, python, php etc if i really commited and understood it all, could i potentially use these skills to make an income  and be able to work from anywhere with internet?

tacpot12

Yes, anything is possible. Your problem will be to get anyone to take a risk on using you. You might get lucky and be able to pick up work on sites like Fiver and PeoplePerHour but you will always be being undercut by someone with more experience and more of a portfolio of work than you have. Realistically I don't think it is likely to be possible to generate a living wage for a good while. 

My son has just got a job as a junior software developer with no degree and just experience coding scripts to automate jobs in his admin role, but this is working at the company's office where he has a manager and access to other developers who can mentor him. This shows that the skils shortage is making it possible to get into careers with less formal qualifications, if you show the right attitude and apptitude.

goater78

I would say you will struggle. It’s hard to get a remote programming job with no programming experience or qualifications. 

Best bet would be to get a job in a company that has an in-house IT department who do their own development. Once you are in the door you can try and get a junior role in that department. Think it is unlikely though. 

Grumpy_chap

tiger135 said:

a question for IT people.
If I studied furiously for say 6 months initially with programming languages such as c, python, php etc if i really commited and understood it all, could i potentially use these skills to make an income  and be able to work from anywhere with internet?

Anything is possible but, as with any other sector, premium rates can only be earned when the individual is SQEP (Suitably Qualified and Experienced Person).  The six months of training will, at best, achieve "Suitably Qualified" (though six months is quite a small amount of training and will, presumably, only lead to a lower level qualification unless the individual truly has the gift of genius in the subject matter.

Why the desire to "work from anywhere" and where do you think "anywhere" could be?
If the desire is to be based on a year-round sun-drenched beach while earning premium European / American rates of reward, you need to consider the potential reluctance of employers to consider that type of arrangement. 
Particularly with IT roles, where there can be restrictions on the geographical regions that data is permitted to be processed. 
Even for more general roles, I know several companies where they permit staff to be located "anywhere within the UK" but not overseas.  The reasons are because the employers want to know that the staff are under UK rules for taxation purposes and for employment rights / obligations, plus a practical need to have access to employees during regular UK working hours.

gm0

The following comments are based on the idea that what you actually want is a WFH programming job (or contract) with an employer not point task fulfillment on the AmazonTurk model. 

You can learn a couple of languages and basic cloud tools and some other development skills in that way
Finding the first entry point to a job may be quite hard.  If you are a school leaver or recent graduate considering a switch to IT then perhaps easier than a late career switch due to rampant ageism in technology sector. 

It may be difficult to achieve your remote working dream at the first attempt.  You may need to be flexible for a bit to get in at all and to get some experience on your cv.  Via taking what you can get on your chosen tech skills (picking carefully) - whatever that is and getting creative about finding an in - charitable sector if you find your skills are bouncing off business employers.  
If it's onshore (to where you are, commutable - then some turning up may be the price of entry - working towards a better or even full WFH balance later.

Alternatively if you aren't a recent school leaver or graduate starting out then you will have some knowledge and experience of some other industry activity to work in somehow into your overall offer.

Fair warning. I wouldn't hire a fully remote novice programmer with zero experience anyway.  I would want them part WFH only to develop them in a team setting with more experienced developers in my organisation.  And they would need to have somehow looked an attractive candidate via other life history and experience or rare technical niche entry level skills etc.) .  And then aced the basic aptitude and capability test on the skills they had declared with a more experienced dev on the team (which is also an implicit work culture fit test by the way).  So it would be a red flag to me to perceive that it was a hard requirement from the candidate to work from anywhere (unspecified) all the time. I'd be curious about the somewhere. Because Time Zone. And because practicality of visiting a customer or our site etc. Which I may need to ask you to do.  In fact I'd be quite grateful if you announced that constraint upfront - as it would let me sceen you out of the hiring process early.

Once you earn greater flexibility via demonstrated quality of delivery, attitude and effective collaboration with group goals - successful projects on cv. - trained in the way we do it here. Then it matters less to that employer and maybe others - where you are day to day and week to week provided the time zone is appropriate (to task and other team members).  Not everything is asynchronous messaging in the real world. So someone a bit more convenient/flexible would get the job. 

The global price of a basic maintenance developer day is set by the lower tier indian firms in secondary IT centres. The global price of some tasks is via the likes of AmazonTurk and similar things upthread.

Alongside software syntax skills, frameworks and software patterns - you will need to get some awareness about some managing the work tools and skills - Jira as an example. The basic cloud and SDK tools will go with the self study but the team stuff will be needed at work.

Recruiting IT roles on the hiring manager end is largely crowd control.  Digital filters (skill keyword matching), Experience filters to get thousands of digital applications down to a few to look at cvs properly.  And then tests and interviews for the few that make it through the filter.  Corporates will have outsourced the filtering to agency in many cases. So they will never see you if you don't fit the brief and pass the sift.  Smaller outfits may be easier to grapple with in the first instance.

DullGreyGuy

tiger135 said:

could i potentially use these skills to make an income  and be able to work from anywhere with internet?

I note that you explicitly asked about "work anywhere" whereas people are responding talking about WFH. 

Certainly in my industry these things are not interchangeable terms and whilst some are happy with some people WFH most the time very few are happy with people working outside the UK and even more so if its also outside the EU. There are a host of potential tax, employment law, data protection and licensing issues if they suddenly find one of their UK employees is now long term living in USA or China etc.

Compared to other countries the UK focuses more on experience than qualifications. So if you are hoping to spend less than two months per language (given you listed 3 and added an etc) and will come with no experience you will find it very hard to secure a role, even more so if you are limiting yourself to those that dont care where in the world you are based.