I hate being in Australia for the most part - it’s a country of tall poppy syndrome that has squashed any opportunities to focus on innovation or interesting cultural development for the sake of rent seeking industries.
In any case, I really want to move to Europe long term, potentially migrating but in any case a remote working type of job would be perfect for my lifestyle.
I just finished my degree which was mostly social science and philosophy - good for policy work, but while government jobs are flexible, they are unfortunately not something that can support me moving overseas ;(.
In lieu of this, I’ve considered trying to learn IT related skills (I know it’s a meme but alas) - don’t really know where to start but programming sounds like it would suit me best. Got a friend who learned to code over lockdown and now has a front end Web dev job that’s completely wfh.
Learning something purely for future employment can be problematic - Ideally I’d like to learn IT skills that are somewhat transferable to my interests in music production and more generally philosophy.
Obviously though it would be a big investment of my time to learn these skills - did anyone do this for the same reasons I want to and have success or failure?
In any case, I really want to move to Europe long term, potentially migrating
If migration is on your mind rather than DNing take a look at skill shortage lists for different countries, i.e. the ones they are looking outside their own country for and giving preferential treatment to.
Depends on your salary expectations. You can find remote work opportunities in many fields. Customer support for example requires less time in training. Becoming a solid employable web developer takes more than a boot camp or short training so you might not have a lot of opportunities fresh out of the training. Do it only if you would enjoy the work, not for the remote perks
Your main concern should be how to get a visa. You can’t just arrive somewhere and decide to stay long term, you generally need a birthright or an in demand skill and sponsorship. Figure out where you want to go and look at their requirements. Do you have any parents or grandparents born overseas?
You absolutely can get positions abroad working for government, I have friends that have bounced around Asia for over a decade and are currently in China.
If your primary purpose is to travel and you don’t like “IT”, then it might be hard to follow through because to be proficient in tech takes commitment, blood, and tears.
In my travels, I’ve met many nomads and there are a lot of ways they’ve done so. Examples that are non-tech include
- Coaches
- Wellness leaders
- Creatives such as copywriters, illustrators
- Online teachers
- Entrepreneurs
Yes.
IT skills are a very generalist toolkit which can be applied nearly across the board in terms of industries, and also to enormously many jobs. Knowing some basic automation and programming, plus the mindsets involved, can get you significantly ahead of the general workforce in a lot of roles, purely because you’ll be able to free up more time that other people spend doing tasks manually.
This is hard to answer. If you’re a beginner you’re looking at a 2 year minimum time investment. In the last 18 months alone AI and other advancements have severely diminished the availability of well paid tech jobs. In 2 years, it is difficult to imagine the field being accessible at all.
I’ve recently shifted from dev and engineering to AI prompt engineering and AI training. I’d suggest running through the Wasp and MageAI quickstart guides to start learning the landscape. In 72 hours you’ll be competent enough to generate full stack web apps in REACT. That makes you immediately marketable
Yes it’s still worth it but the market is saturating very fast for junior positions. AI is replacing those jobs and unless you’re senior you’ll have a harder time to get hired compared to 5 years ago.
Anyway I suggest either software development, data engineering or machine learning/AI. Machine learning/AI/Deep Learning is probably the safest one because the demand in the future will be extremely high but it’s also the hardest one among the three.
Yes
Learning transferable IT skills opens doors to remote work and travel opportunities. Go for it!
People often overlook the massive opportunity to work remotely for tech companies in non-programming roles! Myself and my partner have both worked fully remotely while traveling the last 5 years for 2 different tech companies in tech sales roles. The work is really satisfying, I get to meet new people and companies every day and do a show and tell of our software for their needs. It pays super well also - if you’re a people person, you might love it too. I’ve also worked in operations and customer success roles and they are awesome too, so many options if you’re not sure being a developer is right for you (it certainly isn’t for me). About getting started, you would need some general sales experience first, or you can look at joining an internship program in an area you’d like to try out first