It was a big risk leaving my job to embark on a tech course
I was becoming a little bored by marketing and feeling like it wasn’t challenging me anymore and that’s when I saw an ad for _nology on indeed.com. I spoke to Pete (Anstey, Nology co-founder) at length about the course and whether it would be the right thing for me to do. It was a big risk to leave marketing behind and take up something new and I wanted to make sure I gave it a good amount of time to think it through. Pete and I had lots of conversations!
A career in web development
I’ve always been interested in tech. I’m that sad person who watches all the Apple and Samsung conferences on YouTube and I had studied computing and IT at GCSE and A Levels – although I gave my A Levels up eventually to take up a marketing apprenticeship. Having said that, I had done bits of coding and was very interested in the subject matter. Now, even though I’ve only been at _nology for four weeks I know I want to become a web developer when I finish. I’ll use my Marketing knowledge, however, to help my tech career because marketing is all about the user experience. Knowing what users want and how best to deliver it to them – and that’s something at the forefront of my mind as I study and in everything I’ve built so far. A good web developer has to be able to picture who you want to appeal to and how to make it as accessible as possible to those people.
I know firsthand that most marketers want more communication from their web developers. They want to be able to speak to them in a more open way but they don’t always have the language to do this. There’s a lot of technicality to things like SEO and lots of marketers know they need to complete this, but sometimes don’t know in what way to work with Devs. And likewise, most developers don’t understand why marketers are so concerned with things like the speed things are loading onto the page or the user focus. I know so many marketing managers who are sick of web developers churning out rubbish and with web developers who are like, ‘this is how it is and we’re going to build it’ because they can’t see what the each other can see. I think it works both ways. A lot of marketers don’t understand why certain things can’t be done technically either.
It’s all about teamwork
I think for the strongest products, the two departments need to come together far more and work together from the start of a project. That’s why after this course I hope I’ll be the one that can talk as a web developer to my marketing team and say ‘here’s why we can’t do X. I understand why you need to be able to do X though – and that’s why I’ve built Y’
The _nology course will give me a USP
Many marketers have a base knowledge of coding, HTML, and CSS. The issue is when you start to look at Javascript and frameworks like React, as we are this week and how that can be used, you start to learn about the principles of a website and not just the language of it. I haven’t seen many marketers with that ability and I think that’s what will make me stand out when I complete _nology. All good products have to do something different and have a USP and I want to apply that thinking to myself. After this course, I’ll have the technical skills and ideas as well as knowing exactly how to work with the user in mind and bring the two departments closer together.
It’s great to see how _nology is offering opportunities that are changing lives and preparing students for a thriving career in an industry that is constantly evolving. If you want to join our next course, click here to find out more about what you will be learning.