Question: You say you took IT as an A Level - how much do you use it in your work?

Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 20 Mar 2012:

The IT. A lot. The A-level, not much. When I was at school I was a bit of an IT geek. I learned to programme in a few languages, I was creating websites (not very pretty through) I was helping my IT teacher set up a local network and linux on pc’s. Back then the software was easier to understand and it kept crashing all the time. To use the computer you had to fix it.
As much as I enjoyed learning about IT I didn’t want to be in IT for work. I wanted to work in something more tangible (more physical, more real).

The stuff that I learned in IT a level was all a bit academic and not below my level at the time, however it was quite a fun a level to do and didn’t require essays. I am sure the content of the course has changed since then. But the problem with IT is that it moves so quick that the course always falls behind. However in professional life being good with IT is very useful. I don’t get to fix my machine at work anymore, I call IT for that. But I do write code in MathLab, mathcad, Excel and Access macros and other things. I think knowing how software is written also helps me use it more efficiently and understand what can be done with it.

When I worked on a project for improving control over the material that is transported from stores to the ships we have ordered scanners that would be used (like in a supermarket) to scan the items into different locations, so that we know where they are. And we had an IT contractor making it happen, but my good knowledge of IT made me key in this project as representative from our company because I could understand what the IT contractors were saying and could ask them to do things that are possible.

My advice would be, definetly learn more about IT if you can. But I don’t know if the A-level is the best way.