Welcome to the Tech Career Launch Pad (TCLP). Glad you found us!
If you don't mind, please drop a ⭐ on this repo to help increase visibility. 🙏
Tired of your current job and looking for a new career? Looking to advance in your your tech career? Want to make more money, have a high potential for working remotely or hybrid work, and have more job satisfaction and a higher quality of life?
A career in technology might be for you and it is definitely within your reach.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.” ― Henry Ford 💭
TCLP Launch Video: https://youtu.be/T_ioyw2HZ6A
- Technology Career Launch Pad 🚀
- Watch The TCLP Intro Video
- Table Of Content
- Before you get started. 👈
- How Do I Get Started? ❓
- How Much Will It Cost? 🆓
- Beyond The Free Courses How Much Should You Spend? 💵
- About Your Time 🕥
- What Do You Need To Do To Make This A Reality? 👀
- Average Salary Info 💰
- Knowledge Overlap Per Topic ♻️
- Ready For Launch - What To Learn Next? 🚀
- Contributing 🤝
- Thank You's 🙏
- About Me ℹ️
This is not an exhaustive list of all career opportunities in tech. I have been in tech for over 20 years and I am still learning about new areas of technology that exist.
What this is intended to be is a gateway into the field of technology focusing on prominent technologies where I regularly see high demand (as of 2022).
Hopefully these courses lead you to tech areas that are interesting and exciting to you and then you can deep dive on those topics yourself and pursue it.
This is also not just for people looking to get into tech. This is also a great resource for people who are already in tech and want to level up their tech career. I hope this can be a resource for you to take your career to the next level.
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." – Pablo Picasso 💭
Follow the path laid out below. Information Technology is a huge field with many different areas of expertise and opportunities for you to find something that speaks to you, makes you excited to learn, and provides an exciting path forward in your career.
The path to getting a job can be, and there is no other way to say this....
FREE
That's right. If you have a reasonably good computer and an internet connection, the majority of resources listed here are free. Pick some topics that seem interesting, buckle down, and work through the courses.
Actually, that is not true. It isn't FREE. Your time has value, so this will cost you something. To really make this move, it is going to cost you your time.
If you commit about 10 hours a week for 1-2 years, I believe you can easily make over $100K/yr working remotely. Anywhere you have internet and your computer, you can do your job.
There are many paid resources that might be better organized, slightly higher quality, more in line with your learning style and maybe a more efficient use of your time, but these paid resources are optional. The web is filled with incredible, high quality, freely available educational resources that will provide you with all the knowledge you need to get a job in tech.
As mentioned before, if you are being extremely frugal or just don't have the funds right now, free course are going to get you a LONG way into a solid tech education. But if you are able to pay and want to leverage those additional resources, how much SHOULD it cost?
Let's assume this is a 2 year journey for you and we can do some napkin math with optimal pricing and a broad learning path:
- One Year Coursera Google IT Support Certificates (and much much more): $39/month or $468/yr
- One Year ACloudGuru.com (Black Friday Discount Pricing): ~$300/yr
- Udemy Courses (Linux, Database, Python, More): Approx $15/course (almost always on sale) x 10 course = $150
- One Year Code With Mosh (Black Friday Discount Pricing): $125/yr
The breadth of knowledge you will get from these resources across general IT support, programming, cloud, Linux, containers and Kubernetes and more will easily put you in a 6 figure role for:
$1024.
That's right. For less than one months average mortgage payment in the US, you can completely change your career path and potential lifetime earnings.
Time is precious. It is a non renewable resource. Your time is finite. Protect it and spend it on things that improve your life and the life of those your care about.
You will have to give up some things. You will not be caught up on the latest Netflix series. You will not make it out to the bar with your friends every weekend. You will miss the season finale of "The Masked Singer". Your PS5 will get a bit dusty. But your life will be much improved for it.
"I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'" - Muhammad Ali 💭
Commit. That's really it.
If you commit about 10 hours a week for 1-2 years, you can easily make over $100K/yr possibly working remotely. Imagine that life. Anywhere you have internet and your computer, you can do your job.
Remote work isn't just "Work From Home". It's work while visiting your brother in Ohio. It's work from the pool or beach. It's work from another country. It is dropping your kid off at school, picking them up early and going to get ice cream. It is spending more time with family and friends. The freedom tech work can provide is immense and well worth giving up little things now for big things later.
“The only person you can control is you. So focus on making yourself who you want to be: Faster. Stronger. Smarter. More humble. Less ego.” – Jocko Willink 💭
Click the $Salary to see the source. Industry recognized certifications in these areas will likely increase your salary potential.
- Average Entry Level IT salary (June 2022): $51,073
- Average Cloud Engineer salary (June 2022):
- Average Computer Programmer salary (June 2022): $64,493
- Average DevOps Engineer salary (June 2022):
- Average Database Administrator salary (June 2022):
You will notice throughout many of these topics that the skill sets often overlap. Some examples:
- Database administration will likely require some knowledge of System Administration and Cloud
- DevOps will require knowledge of System Administration, Cloud, Networking, and Containers
- Software Development will likely require knowledge of System Administration, Database Administration, and Cloud
- CyberSecurity will likely require knowledge of System Administration, Networking, and Coding
Do not let this scare you. Take it slowly and learn individual components as they become necessary on your learning path.
This has been broken out into different sections. Clicking the links below will take you to a page that lists resources related to each topic.
- Cloud
- DevOps
How can you contribute? For starters, share this repo out far and wide. Share with friends, family, co-workers, on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Anywhere where you think there are people who are unhappy with their current path and want to make a change. This is a resource that could help many people.
Also, please ⭐ this repo to help increase visibility.
Lastly, there is so much great information out there that this needs to be a community effort. Please feel free to submit a PR or open an issue if there is a topic you think we should add.
I would like to extend a MASSIVE thank you to all of the amazing creators who put in all the hard work to create these high quality, technical education resources for anyone to learn from. I appreciate every one of you and we as a community are all in your debt.
Please support these people. Like, Subscribe, Share, and support these folks if their content helps you.
My name is Mike Johnson. You can call me MJ. I have been working in technology for over 22 year and have a vast amount of experience in many areas of technology, mostly from the Infrastructure and Operations side.
I have some container certs, a few cloud certs, and spend most of my time these days building robust cloud, container and cybersecurity automation tooling.
Feel free to connect with me and I look forward to hearing from you.
- Github: https://github.com/mjtechguy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngu1SJ-pyiNEHMINKlW8Uw
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjtechguy/
- Website: https://mjtechguy.com
- Email: mj@tclp.club