For skills based, I mean jobs that you would start to work for a company with basic knowledge and as you work in the field you develop more and more skills under the guidance of more experienced people and professional development classes until at some point you reach the level of a “professional” whatever that means in that field. Fields like: plumbing, electrician, auto mechanic, computer technician, programmer, etc.
Today, are there any of those fields that you could start at a basic level and only through internet resources learn the field? Like I know how to do very basic work on a car. Could I through webpages and Youtube videos and working alone on my car get to the level of an ASE certified mechanic?
I’m not sure if this is still true, but I self-taught myself web software development, then moved into back-end software dev, also self taught.
In a fast moving field, those willing and able to learn get ahead. For me, that is clearly paying attention to AI, but plenty of people make a living installing Wordpress, tweaking the presets, and maybe even touching the PHP* code that underlies that ecosystem.
So your answer is “yes”, but like any job, it is also “it depends”.
* god, I hate PHP. But it is the de-facto entry point to web dev, and it is not hard to grasp.
In terms of certification, there are a lot that you can do online if you’re prepared to pay.
I’m a certified product owner and scrum master, which I got online, using my own money. And it helped me transition my job role.
Be careful though – there are numerous organisations that provide such certification, and most are worthless, so check first that it is one that is specifically mentioned in job listings.
But excluded from my scenario are online classes where someone is there to answer your questions directly like a class because that would be professional development.
Plenty of programmers who have gone on to contribute significant pieces of software learned their craft purely from the internet.
A lot of creative jobs have had an internet career path for ages and some are approaching exclusively using the internet as a talent development pipeline.
A big chunk of the political commentators these days came up through early blogging (Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan, Nate Silver etc.). Getting signed to a record label these days pretty much requires you to blow up on Tiktok. A lot of the early internet comedy people (Funny or Die, College Humor, Cracked) ended up at The Daily Show, SNL etc. And there have been several movie directors who never went to film school and got their start just making short films on Youtube (eg: David F Sandberg aka ponysmasher who directed Shazam).
A lots of arts and crafts people also are learning their craft exclusively from Youtube these days. Woodworkers, metalworkers, knitters, robotics engineers etc.
I’m not sure if there was such a person, so it seems an odd point of distinction to me.
The course I did was not taught; you went through the material at your own pace. (Importantly though it wasn’t just some kind of participation medal at the end; there was an exam, that the majority of people fail, and you only get one retake before you must do the course again).
Was there a person I could reach out to if I had a question? I don’t know…probably, but I didn’t.
I also don’t quite get the distinction with “professional development”.
You mentioned certification in the OP. So something where you are at the “level of” certification, and that could be used to get a job, but not professional development?
I think the distinction is between community resources provided by volunteers for free vs a commercial entity that has a specific business model selling training and it just incidentally happening over the internet.
Ok but that’s why I started my original post with “if you’re prepared to pay”. Then got the response that what mattered was whether someone would be available to answer any questions.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there. I think it was unclear but I don’t want to hijack anything.
The simple answer to the OP is that yes, there are skills like computer programming that you can learn well enough from free resources to get your foot in the door.
I think things like Skillshare classes where you pay $35 for some pre-prepared material done by someone who is a working professional who just does this as a side gig would be fine but not paying $3000 to a company that sells courses as their main business and their instructors are hired specifically to prepare courses.
No. The distinction is: is there someone I can get feedback from if I need help. For example, if I have a question about installing head bolts on my car then if I ask someone whether a teacher, a neighbor or someone online like in reddit, that is excluded from this scenario. All information is gleaned from information on the internet. Now if someone on reddit already asked my question and the answer is already there, then that counts for what I’m looking for.
In a Skillshare, can I ask questions and get personalized answers? If so, it cannot be used per my question. If not then it is ok.
Wasn’t my question. Can you reach professional level (not entry level) in the field via learning on the internet?
In that case, I’d exclude a lot of the examples I listed above. Almost all self taught programmers got that way from spending time on IRC, forums, Q&A sites and other places where they’re interacting with other people willing to help them out.
Yeah, my husband taught himself to be a Web developer primarily from online resources. But
he might have also bought a book or two
he might have asked questions of someone. Not someone paid to answer him, but still, someone.
He started by volunteering to be a webmaster for various organizations he participated in. The local scouting group, the people he went on bike rides with, etc. This gave him a portfolio of successful projects he used to apply for a job. His first couple of jobs were pretty shitty, due to his lack of experience, but he built up to be a leader in the local Drupal scene. (Drupal is a web development platform, like WordPress.)
Most YouTubers learned “online”, i believe.
There are lots of certificates you can get online. I got a “safe serve” food handling certificate online. I paid for it, but there was no individual help. Just online videos and online tests. Does that count?
This was over a decade ago but my little brother (brilliant but the one out of the sibling group who was not traditionally academicallly inclinded) taught himself to design video games using online resources, worked freelance for a while, then switched to CGI animation and was hired by Disney, worked on the Avengers movies, and now had a nice career. Now in a supervisory role instead of a computer jocky. So it can be done. It helps to be smart.