It may be useful if i gave you an understanding my background with the company and how ive got to where i am today and what i have achieved if that time frame.
I will have been working for this company 6 years in jan 2024 its the longest time ive worked for any company as i have a tendancy to move on about every 2/3 years, this was the pattern for me ever since i started working.
For this company i started out as Break Fix engineer mechanically fixing the physical hardware in the field, I was promoted to supervisor in less than 2 years and ran a team of 12 engineers. Natural progression from this point would have been to step into a regional manager role. However due to covid the company was forced to restructure and make alot of redundancies. This left me at a dead end as the only way to progress from then on would of been for one of the long term managers to leave (these guys have been here in some cases an excess of 15 years) this was a unlikely option.
Because of the above i started looking else where, this was until my regional manager at the time called me and mentioned about a more technical role in another department, this role i was seriously under qualified for tbh, but i took my shot and went for it. There were a few rounds of interviews. and i was evenually offerd the position on a probationary 6 month period (likely due to lack of experience).
After some thought and chatting with the wife i took the offer but this was with its own risks, as i wouldnt be able to return to my old position if as it would need to filled asap. I offically started in my new role sept 2022.
The company i currently work is in the finance sector, I am now working as part of a 2 man team (my self and my boss) we are responsible for tackling any support/issues/bugs that arise on our 3rd party software platform.
If an issue arises we take the information provided and attempt to replicate/understand the issue. Once we have an understanding we liase directly with the current 3rd party that provides our software to get a fix/patch, we then have to write a package (usually with some form of Batch/VBS scripting) that we can remotley deploy the affected hardware.
Some side Projects ive been involved with since i started in this new position:
I've been involved with creating a streamlined software install package, that has seen me write a utility program thats takes all the required input parameters that are required during the install (these are normally entered manually by the engineer), and auto populating them as and when required. this has saved approximatley 1-2 hours of the total install time. (Engineers and the regional managers loved this)
I was also tasked with creating a self recovering install package, basically windows that can re install its self and install the software with no interaction, i was told this had to be standalone with no 3rd party software/no wan (devices are run on private networks with no DC that communicate back to a remote host) the only exception is the 3rd party software thats required to run our devices. No WDS/pxe boot or anything.
I achieved this by creating 3 partitions on the Hard Drive, i deployed windows PE with a modified startnet.cmd to partition one and set a boot record, the 2nd partiton contained all he recopvery files required and we can update this remotely, the 3rd partition contained the windows install and our 3rd party software, this isnt a conventionaly dual boot system as we set the active partiton to change the boot preference thsi si done simply by sending it a command via our 3rd party software. this whole recovery system was done as a proof of concept just to proove we could do it, and this was built on the back of me streamlining the software install with my utility program
I've since been informed the company are happy with this and we will be including this as part of our upgraded software drop we are due to recieve in the coming weeks.
Im now currently writing a USB management utility to handle out encrypted USB sticks that will contain this software package. this use's the usb event handler to detect when when a USB is inserted it checks if its specific brand of usb, and if it is it takes the physical hardware serial number and compares it against a database. if that database contains the hardware serial, it will decrypt and apply any updates to the usb stick automatically. theres also been further scope on this in that they want me write a service that we can incorerate into our hardware so that this can be done in the field so the engineers will always have an uptodate USB
This recent project has been very complex for me but what i found is i have enjoyed doing it. i imagine writing software for a living will have its own pitfalls but i think this is where my end goal maybe. Along side the fact im already working in the financial sector and a majority of financial products are primarily written in Java, the open Uni course seems to be a logical route for me to take.
as you may be able to tell i seemed to have hit the ground running in this new role, despite my lack of experience, i have achieved alot on top of my BAU work. i think this is possibly the reason the company have even considered me to do this.
What is it your looking to get into? (in the end)
afaik these all start with the same course that you can change the subjects you study
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For the Maths, do the MU123, (meant to be a little easier) I'd recommend not going too hard if your not used to it, it can sometimes become a struggle to "get into learning mode" and a lot of it is stuff you may already know. it's not untill Stage 2 you really learn stuff, as for is it worth it? do it! highly recommend getting a laptop (don't cheap out too much, as if its slow, it'll discorage you) if you don't just so you load it up do some reading at any point.
im not to concernd by maths but i wouldnt want to make it harder unless i actually needed to.
Depends what path you want to get into...
Web Dev, Data Science, Software Dev, etc..
Can always buy courses on udemy which are cheaper than going to a university. Also cheaper when they are on discounts.
They also give you a certification of completion when you finish a course. And some courses are so lengthy up to 120 hours or so.
i think the logical route would be JAVA software devlopment
I’ve used
Centre of Excellence before which I highly recommend, they have some free courses on there too.
not heard of these il look into them
ive not heard of ITIL compTIA yes
I do actually have COMPTIA Server + from a previous employer, and a lapsed CompTIA Network + (i got them while working for a company called SCC based in Tysley Birmingham) i found the CompTIA course more focused on answering test questions than anything. and ive never used them :/
www.open.ac.uk
www.open.ac.uk
