Hi, I wonder if you can give some advice. I am considering training from home as a Computer programmner. I would then like to work from home. Would I be able to start applying for jobs working at home without gaining prior experience? Is it possible to apply for a work from home Computer Programmer job from anywhere in the country, regardless of where you live? Regards
I have been a computer programmer for 10 years, and have done mostly Fortune 500 stuff (Microsoft, Boeing, etc). My experience has been that work from home is an extremely tough thing to get UNLESS you are a consultant. But consultants get new clients based on having a good (or better) reputation with past clients (of which you probably have none, right?). The field self destructed in 2001, and is trying to pull itself together, but there are simply more unemployed programmers than jobs. Here in Washington, a lot of the community colleges are closing or greatly consolidating the I.T offerings, since there are so few jobs for new programmers. The bulk of programming is done in an enterprise environment, complete with networks, database servers, web servers, middleware, clients and managers. What a person can learn about the I.T field working alone at home is extermely limited, especially if they are only learning from a book. Others may disagree with me, and that's ok, but as a programmer, programmer supervisor, hiring manager, project manager, database programmer and web developer over the years, I've seen very little of what you are talking about (although during the big boom years, I did work at home for Microsoft for 1.5 years, but I was not a new programmer, and Microsoft ain't what it used to be). One exception is writing vertical applications for niche markets. I know a guy who does nothing but websites for rock bands. He develops the sites and databases, and offers a set of tools the musicians can use to modify the sites themselves. He does ok for himself. I wish you luck. Sean
