How to retrain from an enikey worker to a programmer?

Question

IT education

Great summary of the question from @23cm:

I'm 23. I dabbled in one thing after another: Python, Java, Android, JavaScript... and a bunch of other words that I have a vague idea about. As a result, I can't do anything, but I'm sure I want to be a programmer. How to be?

It so happened that while still a dashing college student, I went astray and went downhill, embarking on the unsteady path of Enikeyism. Easy money, vicious knowledge, tyranny corrupted my temper, leaving the true purpose of my stay in this mortal world - programming - somewhere in the depths of my disordered subconscious. But sooner or later, everything comes to an end, drag dealers tighten the noose, and your patrons are curtailed, complaining about the crisis - and you, like a drowning frog, are only floundering with your paws, trying to stay afloat financially.
And in the end it turns out that you are without a normal education, adequate skills, not limited to “deploying AD in a shara of 20 computers” and “setting up MSSQL for 1C according to Gilev’s instructions”, and there’s nothing to say about skills in a high programming area, because all this time, the maximum on which you “programmed” is AutoIt, no one needs it. Especially employers.
Of course not. All this time I was trying to learn something. A couple of courses on Python (well, why the hell is Python if no one needs it in Krasnodar?! Oh, yes. PHP is not kosher. And no one thinks about being in demand), introductory Java (here is a whole cloud of introductory ones. And then what "Where are the courses explaining what to do with it next? Where about all these Swing, Hibernate and other obscure things?), the same introductory Android, JavaScript (more or less dense, but with a loop on it, and pure front-enders in that but Krasnodar doesn’t need it) - and all with a complete lack of practice due to the lack of ideas “what could be done”, and therefore - training > / dev / null. I even worked with 1C for a whole year, administering, making requests, delving into the configuration. But 1C is fi, it doesn’t matter that the middle peasant is paid one and a half to two times more money.
Take it, leave everything and go to interns, to a company that will “grow” a specialist out of me, probably will not work. There is a family, and therefore there is a need for adequate money. And among local firms, no one is eager to engage in such charity (probably?).
So, if someone mastered reading this whining, give some good advice:

• Stay enikey?
  
  • Grow up to a real “system administrator”, having settled for a penny in a big company?
    
  • Make yourself a mini-outsourcer, ripping off money from beggars and pensioners?
    
  
  
• Go to programmers?
  
  • Sit quietly on the priest and learn-read-knock on the buttons, bringing the level to at least junior? And if so, what to teach, what to learn, where to get ideas?
    
  • Go to one of the thousands of "web developers" firms to work for a penny as the same "webmaster"? (Which are both front- and back-, and layout designer, and designer, and content manager?)
    
  
  
• "Kill yourself against the wall, do not take bread from adequate professionals." How better:
  
  • Insure life and lie under a train?
    
  • Sell ​​a healthy self for organs so that the family lives comfortably?
    
  • Itty (I like this Tolstoy "itty") to work as a janitor?
    
  
  

In general, I am ready to do anything: at least the web, at least applied. If only not to install Windows. Though with the help of WDS. As usual, you need a low start, high salaries in the long term and training to adequate salaries for two months of hard work.
By the way, I have a fellow student with exactly the same problem - he is engaged in "administration" instead of programming. He is aware of the severity of the situation, but unlike me, resists treatment. I mean, I'm not the only drug addict. Whether it's sad or happy, I don't know.
Well, yes, if someone needs a hardworking slave who already more or less knows HTML, CSS, JS + knowledge that there are all sorts of Less, Gulp, jQuery, Underscore, but with practice that was a long time ago, which will need a lot and hurt kick, and later pay a little - I will be glad.
Upd#0:

The heavy burden of choice has come down to me. As recently as yesterday, the boss offered to relocate from the warmed Adyghe land to distant Ufa, promising full time plus an increase in salary.
Pros: 50 thousand rubles + apartment at the expense of the company.
Cons: get tired until the end of your days + unlimited processing + dragging a family + household expenses can offset increased income + neurotic phobia of changing habitat.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that my beloved stumbled upon this outpouring of the soul, and does not mind my change of activity (meaning the change of aggregate state from eneikey to bydlokoder), even if I receive a beggarly 20 thousand (and for a family with a child, albeit in provinces, this is, shall we say, modest). Naturally, if profit follows :-).

Answer 1

23 years old? And so much decay in words? Well, catch my culture story, I had much more decay at 23...
A little less than two years ago, in the summer of 2013, I was 23 and had ZERO work experience (except for 2 months of internship in a computer equipment store for practice from the university). Somehow I got a job as a seo-shnik in a local web studio, not even knowing what kind of work it was, while sending a resume (I googled it after). Of course, as soon as I started working, I immediately realized that seo was not mine, but it helped me to become a web junior in 3 months at the same place. And so I became a junior, having 4 courses at codecademy and one poorly read book. With a space salary of 12k rubles! After 5 months, I already started working remotely with other people, where they paid 30k, and at the same time it was possible to work 15-25 hours a week. This allowed me to read all the Internet on the topic of the frontend, and then, most importantly, saw demos on the code pen, sitting up until night. Resigned in March rested, and in April began to lazily fill out profiles on foreign freelance exchanges. And then a kind of sundress suddenly fell on me because of my demos, and people just began to write to me with an offer to drink something, although I never wrote down profiles on the exchanges. Now I’m working on 2 projects, with a rate of $30/h, for clients it’s a trifling figure, but for my Arkhangelsk, this is generally some kind of crime :)
Well, you, with your existing background, do not know what to be afraid of. There can be problems only if it turns out that programming is "not for you". If you love this business, then just sit down and start plowing. First of all, for your self-development, at first I would even advise you to look for something with a convenient schedule / place of work, because an "uncomfortable" office life usually kills all enthusiasm. And without enthusiasm at the start, you can’t go anywhere.

Answer 2

Hello everyone, it's me again.
Young man! You are 23! TOTAL! And you already, like me, in an old way, grumble. I see people like you every day. Now I will explain. In my city, it is tight with programmers, although the city is young, advanced (I live in Tomsk). We are constantly looking for people, now we are already looking towards remote developers, because people like you come to interviews. Not in terms of experience, but in terms of requests. 23 years old, no experience, but I need at least 40 sput. Native! For what? Understand, in order to understand what kind of developer you are, you need to work with you for a couple of months, and on average, the first "exhaust" from you will be only after six months. Therefore, this is my advice to you, if you want to develop as a developer, bite the bullet, explain everything to your wife, and go as a junior. Better in Java or C#. Gain experience. In our field, employers are mostly adequate and see when you already have a sense.
Good luck to you!

Answer 3

Judging by the way you described the question, your vocation is a WRITER!

Answer 4

Here, rather, the question is what do you like more - administration or programming (a good salary can be both there and there), and dig there.
You can, if you have basic knowledge in administration, get a job as a system administrator in a not too big office, set everything up and sit down to learn programming in your free time from the routine. Start sawing some bike in the language or technology stack of interest and try yourself in freelancing. In this case (if you have willpower), you can get to know administration better and start programming (the main thing is to first set up and automate everything within reasonable limits that your hands can reach). So you can get out of this theoretical situation in a vacuum both into more serious administration and into programming, if you wish.

Answer 5

Maybe in server administration? Unix? Database? Study the demand for such specialists in your country, in my city they are looking for them with fire during the day and are ready to pay quite decently. Or, if you have such a craving for universality, think about organizing your business, many interests can be blocked there.

Answer 6

As a result, I can't do anything, but I'm sure I want to be a programmer. How to be?

Like nothing? You already know these words and try to understand something, read, find out, ask questions, don’t throw what you want!
And working somewhere permanently as a programmer is an ass to do impossible work for a salary, for a month you get 50k rubles to your boss for one project $$k rubles not at all good for him (especially if projects are grabbing competitions from MUP and state), gather people around yourself the same as you, it will be more interesting to come up with the first project, make a competent T3 and make sure that your friends whom you find are hooked and you can get a good startup

Answer 7

Is it club 23? Great.
I'm also 23. I work as a corporate network system administrator for a local provider. I came with minimal knowledge, taking into account that I, so to speak, ended up at that time and in that place. Grid +200 computers + branches in several cities. For 8 months I understood the work of AD (replications and other nonsense), work with tape storage, work in PBX, Postgres administration and a long list. 30k salary for 60 hours a week, given that I'm doing my favorite thing, I think it's a fairy tale,. And although there is also a family.

Answer 8

Need a goal, and then choose the means to achieve it. And you are looking for funds, but it is not clear why. Money? Confession? What would you like?
What is better is as the soul desires. Someone wants to gnaw php to holes in order to know, and not what to do. Some people just want money. I personally want to dump from this "fucking" country to Canada and monitor what is needed there and I'm not afraid to retrain. And I'm 33. According to your logic, I need to open the window without finishing the post and bring my brain closer to the asphalt. But it is unlikely that my 3-year-old daughter will appreciate such a courageous act, to drop everything and kill herself.

Answer 9

And now there will be a long high-sounding passage.
Wrap yourself up in a warm checkered blanket, sit in front of the fireplace and think about this: “where do I want to go in development” (yes, you have already chosen what you will go into development, it’s written between the lines in the question). It's no secret that every person wants to be happy, but happiness is different for everyone: someone wants recognition in a large company, someone wants to brag about something to their friends to be proud of, someone wants freedom, someone wants to communicate with high-level professionals, someone solve complex problems, someone to experience the delight of working designed systems. The list is very, very long, but this is what will motivate you to go ahead and wake up in the morning.
Goals will change hundreds of times, but now you need to decide in order to take a step. Do not listen to anyone: the language is not important, the development layer (frontend-backend) too, think about the product as a whole, live by what you will create. Try whatever seems interesting to you and keep moving. At 23, you can find a job for 40 and 80 and 120 and over (well, you understand that the list goes on), but you must agree that money does not decide. Provide yourself with an income level for a comfortable life and start developing and getting real happiness as a professional.

Answer 10

Well, for me, you have a normal start. Knowing the admin craft for a developer is very important. Programs have to be deployed, and sometimes they work in different environments at once, when the program is multi-level, and sometimes even before development it is desirable to come up with an architecture where everything will work in order to simplify your life and tell admins how to deploy and support. And since the assemblers have already used it, then in general everything is OK - you are going in the right direction. Today it is almost impossible to do something from scratch and become noticeable. But to learn how to integrate opensource and make components work - there have always been and will be few professionals here.

Answer 11

almost a year has passed :) Dmitry Logvinenko did you manage to get a job according to the "take it somewhere, by someone" scheme?

Answer 12

A similar situation, unlearned, went to the army, this and that, and now for 30 years. I work in a budgetary organization in a town with a population of 30 thousand people as a system administrator. Gradually, information resources "go" to the higher department, so there is no need to talk about any new technologies. In order to develop at least somehow, I undertook to make a program for inventorying software and hardware from workstations over a network on VB Net, a simplified and free analogue of Aida. There will be at least something worthwhile in the resume ...

Answer 13

Regarding the move, this should also be discussed with the family. How will the move affect the child as a wife, will it lead to scandals? You are very lucky that your spouse understands the need for your professional growth. So, if there is no persistent desire to move and change the situation, then this is not necessary.
The way out is to try to get a job in the direction of interest, plus part-time jobs (or pull money from beggars and pensioners).