IT Job Without a Degree?

adh0c writes "I have been lurking Slashdot for some time now without registering and I don't think this question has been answered yet. Is it possible to get a good IT job (assuming that there is such a thing), preferably a sysadmin position, without having a BS or other degree? From browsing the job postings on Monster and such, it would seem that everyone wants university papers. Is there hope for computer enthusiasts who didn't go to college?"

Not in this economy.

Since, there are lots of people who have the degree, I think that you will be in bad shape to compete against them.

Re:Not in this economy.

Since, there are lots of people who have the degree, I think that you will be in bad shape to compete against them.

My problem is the inverse one. I have a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science from a respectable scientific institute (app. 10% of our MSc graduates are recruited by Google each year), but I can't find a Software Developer position. Alas, nobody wants to take in someone without experience in this economy - nobody wants to invest in the shaky future. I've seen many job listings with "Bachelor's degree a plus", but the experience dominates.

Re:Not in this economy.

Where I come from (Holland), experience is valued much higher than education. I started out as a junior webdesigner about 10 years ago. Then I landed a job as a sysop for a large scale J2EE platform. Now I design and implement service oriented integration solutions.

You might think that all sounds a bit "enterprisy", and you'd be right. If I could have it my way I would be writing Haskell or Python for a living. But never the less, I get to work on big, complicated, mostly interesting engineering projects without any kind of degree, and I don't think the job well is going to dry up any time soon, despite economic unrest.

The bad economy might even give you a competitive edge since you don't have large student loans to pay back, and can afford to work for a slightly lower wage.

Experiance

Without a degree, the only way to really get a sysadmin job would be a few years of experience, certifications, and some good recommendations/connections.

Re:Experiance

I actually prefer non-university grads when I am hiring. I Got burned too many times with grads that tooks computers because of there is money in IT but they are not actually interested in computers (and therefore not interested in learning more )

Re:Experiance

In fact, the "meeting cool people" is the most important part in pretty much any business-oriented degree.

You can teach yourself the stuff from a business or CIS degree in way less than 4 years, if you are actually interested in it. It's the contacts you make that matter. It's pretty much the entire purpose of Ivy League business programs, but even at lesser universities it's the biggest benefit of getting that paper.

If you've got family or friends or contacts from some other setting who can get you in to a corporation, though, you can probably skip the full-time-student thing and just let the corp pay for you to do night classes or something.

start small

There's no way you can start as a sysadmin without having the degree, but there are other ways. I'd suggest starting at a lower level with a company that will pay for your certs, get your MSCE, CCNE, etc and work your way up.

Re:start small

why should a system administrator need a degree? does a plumber or an electrician need a degree? an apprenticeship should be enough for this kind of work.

Re:start small

Personally, I think that 90+% of "IT" jobs (not even counting help desk) are more of a trade than a science.

I'm never, ever going to be writing deep, math-theory-heavy code. I just won't. I don't want to, and there are other people who would be better at it, even if I studied it pretty damn hard. "Computer Science" is a wasted concept on me and on the vast majority of coders.

What I do have is a feel for problems. I know what's broken before other people, and I know what do to (or, more often, where to find what to do) to fix it. I write clean code. I learn new systems quickly. These are the skills that are truly useful to most people in IT. I'll probably never have to do a do a Fourier transform, or implement my own sort algorithm. I do need to be able to grok new libraries, languages, and technologies quickly.

I'm not saying that there's not any overlap between what's taught in a CS program and these skills--I am saying that it's inefficient to put as many people as we do through that program, when we could do much more useful things with those 4 years.

That said, I take an interest in math and computer science. I read on those topics, and seek to make myself better at mathematical thinking. I do so, however, knowing that only a tiny fraction of what I read will ever be useful to me in a money-making sense, and none of it will ever go on a resumé. I treat it the same way as I do reading classical literature: valuable to me in a personal sense, but of little worth otherwise.

Re:start small

Not necessarily. When something is wrong in an IT system, the cause for the problem very seldom is something that has to do with math or CS.

The main thing you need, in my opinion, (after the ability to read and understand plain-language error messages, which a lot of people seem to be lacking ), is the ability to "see" in your mind how different system interact and depend on each other.

Then you need to be able to figure out how to break a problem down and tackle one part after the other. Once you have located that $SYSTEM has $PROBLEM, then you can always Google if you don't know much about $SYSTEM or $PROBLEM.

I think much of *my* problem solving skills I acquired during my time as electrician, fixing industrial machines. Fixing them wasn't so different from fixing an IT system. See what works, see what doesn't work, isolate part with the problem, then dig into the documentation of that part if you don't know what's wrong.

Re:start small

And the other 99% in charge of hiring who don't go to slashdot would disagree but they're not geeks so this site will never hear from them. Heck even those who do post of slashdot probably had the resumes they see first go through HR which falls into that other 99%.

Re:start small

Potentially... but there are also those of us who TELL the HR department to hand over all CVs (resumes) that come in instead of pre-filtering them. The first time I asked them to do this, they were a bit unhappy, but then I simply explained that they don't have the technical knowledge of software development to make an informed decision (keywords don't cut it!), just as it would be a very bad idea for me to try and vet CVs for a new position in finance for example. While I was expecting that conversation to turn in to a rather nasty fight, they pretty much said, "Okay, that sounds fair enough", and handed over all CVs from that time on.

Re:start small

University degrees generally go far beyond mere syntactical and grammatical knowledge of a computer language or system. They generally try to instill in you, the capacity to learn.... [etc]

I've heard it all before. Those ideas are themselves ideals that have little to do with reality (for most people who end up going to university. That has been my experience at least).

Linus Torvald didn't learn about designing an operating system by taking certification courses, after all.

He learned (and did) much of this in his free time. Torvald's never needed to go to University. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs never wanted to or needed to (they were autodidacts, and compulsive about it). Many a famous (and rich) geek are; Brahm Cohen, Kevin Mitnick, etc. These people would find school highly wasteful. Bram Cohen himself couldn't keep a job during the dot.com boom. I doubt if most of these people could have gotten decent jobs if they hadn't have started their own businesses. HR (the front line of the job market) seeks out the status quo which often doesn't accomplish much but mediocrity.

But that just proves that the way you are taught in a university is actually important.

I've argued this point in other discussions. I don't believe that "the way you are taught" in (most/all?) universities is good. I'm certainly not hyping certifications either (I've met many cert-qualified people who are also incompetent, or at least barely competent).

Knowledge and education (for me) are important, they are however not often directly related to either ability or aptitude.

Best regards,

UTW

Yes, but

I'm the senior network administrator for an S&P 500 company and I have some college but no degree. I do have a ton of industry certifications, but I only got those for employers who asked for AND payed for them. Of course before I got my first "real" IT job I had already owned my own PC company for 5 years and volunteered for a number of different schools and charitable organizations so it wasn't like I went in with zero experience to show on the resume. I also started near the bottom as a deskside support guy. I think the only way to get in today without any formal education would definitely be to work a helpdesk position. Personally I would look for a midsized company because if you show good initiative, hard work, and some smarts it's a lot more likely you will move up from within. That's what happened to my junior admin, he had been stuck at the helpdesk level at a number of very large companies but within 2 years of starting with my company he was advanced because he showed all the traits needed to be a good sysadmin.

Yes, very much so.

I never finished my degree, yet I have been able to pursue a computing career without it being a roadblock.

My present role is as an engineer at Google.

My company explicitly does not care about degrees.

We've had good results with simply giving out actual trial programming tasks and comparing the results of several programmers.

Degrees don't seem to be a strong predictor of usefulness.

Incidentally, we're hiring right now.

https://spideroak.com/blog/200810280100 [spideroak.com]

Everything is a lot easier with the degree

I've known many people who were great sys admins or developers who did not have degrees so it is possible. However, it is much easier to get a job if you have the degree. Every time you do a job interview you will spend 5-10 minutes explaining why you don't have a degree - that is, if they even bother to call you in. That's 5-10 minutes that you're spending getting yourself up to the level of the other applicants that you could have spent putting yourself above the level of the other applicants.

Your pay level may suffer throughout your career as well. When I was in college, I had a job as a developer at a computer company. I switched from a full-time student, part-time developer to being a part-time student, full-time developer. They even asked me once to drop out to devote more time to the job. One day they hired a new developer, fresh out of college. She was quite sharp but had 0 experience. One day it came out over lunch how much she was making and it was more than me. I asked my boss why and he replied "She has her degree". Needless to say, I didn't entertain any more requests to drop out and work more.

It's a little harder but you can find a job.

There are typically two reasons someone will employ you without a degree.

1). They want to get the best skills without paying for them.

2). You have sufficient experience that no-one reads your resume far enough to notice you've never been to college and wouldn't care either way, or you present extremely well at interviews.

I'd say work on (2) because companies that focus on (1) tend to be bad employers, although not always. Sometimes it's just employers who realise the value of the skills you have, not the paper you paid for that claims it.

GrpA

What else is on your CV

A degree is one way of getting your first job. A basic BSc. won't really mean anything after the first 2 years in the industry, although some employers will pay more attention to a Masters, or a Doctorate especially.

If you can't show previous jobs, write your own software and publish it somewhere. Or contribute to open source projects. There are some people who can read code who also have the power to hire.

Get some industry certifications. Microsoft certification, (*ducks*) Java certification etc. are all worth something to some people. That's something you can get yourself for a lot less time and money than a degree although they're generally not worth as much.

All that aside, the current job market is not your friend right now - or anyone elses for that matter. :(

Yes... maybe.

It all depends on a lot of things, of course! Do you have any experience? What is your work background? If all of your experience is customer service at Best Buy, then you're probably not going to have much luck, going in cold.

You've got several options, none of which are easy.

• Do you know someone in the field who would take you on at their company? A friend? A parent of a friend? Knowing someone is always the best way to find a job.
• Are you willing to relocate to a better job market? You'll have to pay for it yourself though, if you don't have any experience.
• Would you consider an unpaid internship? Non-profits are frequently in desperate need of IT professionals who work for beans.
• Have you considered going to school? Either to a real college, or even to a community college, where you can get an AS in IT in two years without much effort or expense (and the economy might be better in two years anyway). There are also plenty of professional schools, and certifications you can get, though I think those are not as desirable/credible -- it depends on the sort of positions you're looking at.
• There are definitely jobs as a technician that do not require a degree, but will give you experience that could lead to a systems administration job. Particularly if you're willing to do shift work.
• Consider a job in software quality assurance. There's a desperate need for people in that area, and a lot of times, you end up pulling systems administration duty as part of that job. I got my first job, without a degree, doing QA for a small start up, and ended up as lab administrator. But I did finish my degree, and then some, and life is much better now.

You've got plenty of options... good luck!

--brian

Temp Jobs?

Get temp jobs doing computer type jobs for small companies. Show that you shine and youll be the "Whizz Kid". Even if its data entry or something. Your first few jobs might be a bit boring but the cunning plan is how you write your CV/Resume. That data entry job suddenly becomes

"Worked in the IT Department assisting with data collection systems and acted as first point of call for members of staff requiring support".

That'll act as a stepping stone for your next career move and before you know it you will be away!

N.

Re:Do you live in a van down by the river?

Of course you can. I left High school 2 years early, got a diploma (dunno what that equates to in the US?) and now Im contracting in an unrelated discipline (Diploma in Network Engineering, working Web Design/Development). And before someone mentions $$ - both by previous and current contracts are six figures. I was somewhat lucky, but I am also living proof you don't always need a piece of paper.

Re:Do you live in a van down by the river?

Seconded. I dropped out of high school my junior year, got my GED, immediately started working for a web dev firm doing sysadmin work. 10 years later (Just turned 26) I own my own professional services/hosting firm. Don't let anyone lie to you and say you need a degree, for what you lack with paper you'll just need to make up for with effort.

Re:Do you live in a van down by the river?

Seconded. I dropped out of high school my junior year, got my GED, immediately started working for a web dev firm doing sysadmin work. 10 years later (Just turned 26) I own my own professional services/hosting firm.

Unless my math is off, you started during the dotcom years when they were looking for talent under every rock they could find, and it was generally accepted that web developers could be very young as the web wasn't many years old. There's always ways for the entrepreneuring individual, but I think you'll agree the market looks very different today.

Re:Of Course....

Depends on the country and how snobby the company is. There are plenty of smart companies hiring autodidact people, but they just have to prove their credentials through other means, and will be tested harder at interviews.

Personally I work as CDO without any degree, but that is because I've studied at the highest IT education in Denmark where it is common for students to quit before finishing the degree because they are offered 6 figured salaries (in dollars).

On the other hand, I turned down a job offer from Google, because their mentality there is such that you can't have a career there without a Ph.D.

So if you want to get hired as an autodidact, either work you way from the bottom, or get involved in open source and write some really awesome code that proves your proficiency.