Career in IT Training

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

Anyone here work/worked as an IT trainer?

Been considering a move away from development work for a while as the Agile obsession with its attendant micromanagement and bullsh!t is really getting me down.

(recently had my first experience of Pair Programming - I hate Monday mornings at the best of times but getting up at 5am, driving down to Porstmouth in the peeing rain & leaving my wife behind for a week to share my personal space with some IT geek with poor personal hygiene ain't my idea of fun. If this is the future, I'm out).

But I digress. I get the impression that the money can be quite good and I think I'd enjoy the interaction. Beats having your face in a pc screen all day long. Not got many pointers to how about going about making the change as Googling IT trainer just gets me loads of stuff about IT courses I can go on. Maybe someone could help me with my googling skills?

[SueEllen]

Agile works differently in different companies - so the next client you have will do it different. Just stick with it.

[TheFaQQer]

Unless you have a name to trade on, or it's niche stuff, then you'll struggle.

Alternatively, you need to be in something which people want / need training in constantly - otherwise you find that you can only run one or two courses a year, which isn't going to pay the bills much.

Then you need to consider your pricing and delivery method - on-site with the client may be easier (but you run the risk that they haven't booked a suitable room etc.) but they will expect it to be cheaper. Hotel conference room would be pricey and you'd need to sort out hardware etc. for the delegates to use (if they need it) and have it all ready to go when they arrive - plus there is the associated cost of having to procure the hardware first for something that may fail dismally.

I've run training courses before, and at a higher rate than I would normally earn. But there weren't enough of them to be able to move away from the normal role to do it.

[norrahe]

Also with training you need to factor in the time spent preparing for upcoming training courses for clients which isn't paid time.

As FaQQer says, it may be well paid it's not paid well enough when you take that time into consideration.

[Project Monkey]

For a few years I've fancied doing some PM training or coaching, just a few weeks a year would suffice, but no idea how to break into it.

[Batcher]

Old proverb:

Those who can't do, teach.

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

Agile works differently in different companies - so the next client you have will do it different. Just stick with it.

One thing I've noticed at all clients that have done Agile is that what you actually deliver in a sprint is really quite lightweight compared to a waterfall methodology / just being left to your own devices. For example, in my last role, at the end of the first sprint they wanted WCF service contracts, validation & some stubs written so that the UI guy could hook up. All well and good but I could do this with my eyes shut & each sprint was enveloped in its own layer of documentation, unit testing, code reviews, presentations etc. So you have to go through all that stuff for every sprint - and there are usually a lot of them.

I can see the point of it. I just don't like doing it, that's all.

[SueEllen]

One thing I've noticed at all clients that have done Agile is that what you actually deliver in a sprint is really quite lightweight compared to a waterfall methodology / just being left to your own devices. For example, in my last role, at the end of the first sprint they wanted WCF service contracts, validation & some stubs written so that the UI guy could hook up. All well and good but I could do this with my eyes shut & each sprint was enveloped in its own layer of documentation, unit testing, code reviews, presentations etc. So you have to go through all that stuff for every sprint - and there are usually a lot of them.

I can see the point of it. I just don't like doing it, that's all.

The reason all companies are jumping on Agile is with Waterfall they found a lot of their projects failed. They are hoping that seeing things at stages will prevent this failure. They ignore the main reason projects failed is the company didn't know what they f*$£ing wanted in the first place. Also lots of people have to see something in other words the UI to be happy with it.

In another few years it will be out of fashion again....

[Tasslehoff]

Old proverb:

Those who can't do, teach.

I intend to get into Teaching / Management when there are 18 year old kids coding rings round me asking for half of my rate. Till then I think I still have something to give at the coal face.

[minestrone]

Ironically the entire purpose of agile is a way for training companies to sell stuff to companies.

It is all meaningless tulipe.