Work from home is the new normal for many people. It promises flexibility, independence, and work-life balance. Better yet, you can start a business and become your own boss. One of the best ways is to break into the tech industry. While there are a lot of options available to a budding techie, it’s possible to leverage several educational and financial resources to help you start a tech job at home.
With a computer and a strong Wi-Fi connection, you can do a great deal. While you cannot build a house or go to Tuscany from your sofa, you can do a great deal. Remote work is growing increasingly prevalent, and technology is one of the most versatile career sectors in which competent workers may find excellent work-from-home options.
Top 5 – Steps to Start a Tech Career Working from Home
If you want to know how to start a career in tech making money working from home, check out these five simple steps to help get you started.
Choose Your Field
The tech field offers a wide variety of different career paths that include website design, database administrators, and network engineers. Programming isn’t for everyone. Software development jobs aren’t the only ones on the market. Discover if you love or hate to code before you sink thousands of dollars into coding boot camps or certification courses.
Identifying your interests upfront can help guide your choices and potentially save you a lot of time and money. It’s a good idea to test out several different fields to find the right fit. Here are some top tech areas to get you started:
- IT Development
- Network Administration
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Systems Administration
- Web Development (this includes Front-end dev that the user sees on a website, Backend dev, the website building or code behind the frontend application, and full-stack dev, which uses both frontend and backend development).
- Cybersecurity
- Software Development and Engineering
- Database Administration
- Cloud Administration
- Pre-Sales (involves Solutions and Sales Engineering)
- Mobile and App Development
Start Learning
The good news is that you don’t need a degree to start working in tech. The most successful people succeed by educating themselves and letting their work show off their skills. Devour everything about your chosen field. Read books about computers. Read books on coding, programming, or any IT aspect grabs your interest.
Even if you don’t end up writing code every day, coding is a good basic tech skill that you’ll want to learn. It’s a good idea to take a course or teach yourself web development principles. Programming also provides a strong foundation for most tech jobs on the market.
Instead of forking out tens of thousands of dollars for a fancy and time-consuming tech degree, enroll in a course or workshop that will give you the knowledge to ignite your career today.
Check out these top online classes to help you qualify for a job in the tech industry:
- Codeacademy
- Harvard Online Learning
- Khan Academy
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Microsoft Learn
While most universities, community colleges, and technology training centers give weekend or evening entry-level web development, networking, or programming workshops, an online class also offers more flexible and efficient options.
Free courses can help to keep your costs low. If you can shell out $10-20 for a class, try out Udemy courses. They offer more structured videos, assignments, practice projects, and IT assistance than free classes.
Taking a course or two lets you explore writing code, have some fun, and find out what you like to do.
Write a Program
Nowadays, knowing HTML, the programming language that displays web pages, is a basic skill. Most work from home tech jobs expect a programmer, technical writer, developer, information architect, or other types of techies to understand this important field.
Once you know HTML, you’re a step closer from end-user browsing to digging into how the internet really works.
Show Off Your Work
You may be thinking, how should I go about impressing potential employers in order to land the dream work from home tech job? Wow them with your work.
Maybe you already have a background in programming or JavaScript. If you don’t know already, programming is a key skill for techies to know. If you can work with JavaScript, this is another fast way to speed up your tech career. You just need a web browser, an online tutorial, and a text-editing program.
You can also build a website and use this as an online portfolio to showcase your tech work for future employers.
Take Out a Loan
While your goal is to start making money working from home as soon as possible, the cost of learning new skills is not free. You may have to apply for financial aid and/or personal loans to foot the cost of tuition. The good news is that there are tons of grants and loans available for students. Use this guide on personal loans to figure out which loan is best for you.
The Bottom Line
Starting a tech job working from home might seem overwhelming at first. There are a lot of options and ways to go.
Investing in yourself is the most important part. Take a class that helps you hone your skills. Figure out what type of tech job that interests you. Befriend mentors at workshops or conferences that can help guide you in the industry.
If you write code or HTML, build a website, or work with computer software, combining education with volunteering and mentor-ship can give you both the skills and connections to jump start your tech career and make money working from home.
