Tim Burton

I got into the industry because I have wanted to be a programmer since I took up computing at GCSE level. I carried that through into A-Levels as well as programming in my spare time, and now I am in my current apprenticeship after turning down university offers for computer science courses.

I am doing an IT apprenticeship because I want to get into the IT industry preferably as a programmer. The courses I have taken as a part of my apprenticeship are PHP, Drupal, Java 7, Microsoft database fundamentals, agile/scrum development theory, software development fundamentals, and I will be taking a Microsoft C# course at the start of July.

With the skills I have learned, I have improved my productivity at work and can create more complex and well-written programs that are deployed into a working environment. Also, the nature of the courses with firebrand have taught me effective ways of learning a lot of material in a short period of time, which is very useful at work. I chose apprenticeships as IT jobs are starting to favour experience over degrees, also you do not get the substantial debt of a degree which is ever increasing through the years.

I plan to be a software developer throughout my career, and the courses taken with Firebrand open up all kinds of areas within software development to choose from. The knowledge gained through these courses assists in widening my career options, and the learning skills will help me throughout my entire life.