IT Job Without a Degree? 1123
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Experiance (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the things that has always appealed to me about computers is that people who deal with them are as often hired on ability as credentials. I don't know any IT guys who are respected for anything other than ability and how easy they are to work with. I hope that this isn't going to change. But I don't think it will, because some of us find these devices inherently fascinating, and spend endless amounts of time learning about them just because we enjoy it. It is very hard for someone just wanting to complete a degree and get a job to compete with that. I would say, based on my experience, that if you are good you will rise to your level regardless of credentials.
Augustus
start small (Score:5, Insightful)
Merit can meen as much as a degree (Score:4, Insightful)
but it's certainly going to be harder getting a foot in the door.
I've seen autodidact sysadmins do quite a lot better than ones with degrees, however the reverse is also true.
In general my experience is companies will prefer one with a degree over autodidact people, reason being someone with a degree has shown ability to sit down and learn - this is very important since pretty much no matter what job you end up getting there is going to be some learning to get familiar with the running systems.
Yes, but (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible... (Score:2, Insightful)
... but I would advise against it.
I am living proof that it is possible, but that was right in the internet bubble, when I got media attention for designing a website and was hired as a web designer. I learned programming Perl and PHP on the job, together with basic sysadmin and this experience let me apply for a job as servicedesk employee, get more experience doing sysadmin stuff, getting my MCSE and ending up being a consultant, coÃrdinating 5 people in releasing software packages over 4000 machines working in a bank and insurance environment. And this within 10 years.
I suspect however that if you don't have any experience, you'll have a tough time getting a sysadmin position. Try to find a position as service desk calltaker, study hard on various certification exams and then go for junior sysadmin positions.
But remember employers will favour degree+experience over just experience... And in a tough economy with an overflow of available IT people with degrees, you score low.
My degreeless friend... (Score:2, Insightful)
Compensation directly tied to degree (Score:2, Insightful)
You may find a job without a degree, but expect to be offered half or less of what a person with a degree would get. My son-in-law "to be" worked as IT mgr for non-profit for several years while going to college and getting degree, and was almost instantly able to land a job making three times as much with full benefits as soon as he graduated and started applying w/degree in hand, (got job in Solar panel manufacturing/installation industry, an industry that seems to be holding it's own in the recession).
Short answer is "yes, you need a degree"
You won't get a job in the fortune 500, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fortune 500 typically have HR departments that roboticly follow a check-list and a college degree is almost always on that checklist. You won't even get to the point where an actual technical manager will see your resume without one.
But, smaller shops without an HR department to institutionalize stupidity may let you in to interview and if you are a hot-shot than no one gives a damn about a degree.
If you are a hot-shot, you can also work contract. Contractors often bypass the HR department completely, even at fortune500 companies. No one hires a contractor for their college degree. They do hire contractors for their experience and knowledge.
So, if don't have experience your only hope is a college degree. But if you do have experience and are good at it, then the world is your oyster.
Everything is a lot easier with the degree (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:start small (Score:5, Insightful)
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%.
I wouldn't hire you (Score:3, Insightful)
I manage an area that fortunately has lots of people interested in working for us, doing sys admin work amongst other things. I wouldn't hire you. The problem is, all things being equal, the guy with a college education is going to win. Unfortunately, all things generally are equal. There's no shortage of people with good attitudes, good experience, and are bright. So, often the education becomes a focus. It proves you know how to learn, can follow directions, and have some discipline to pursue a long-term goal.
Now, having said that, if one of my friends told me I had to hire you, I'd generally trust them and do it. So, it's possible to work your way up, but it's hard.
I recommend working for the phone company. It's more interesting than computers anyway.
What else is on your CV (Score:5, Insightful)
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. :(
Re:You won't get a job in the fortune 500, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
More or less how I see it too. When I'm interviewing, the last thing I care about is if they have a degree or what it's in/where it's from. It rarely comes up when I'm interviewed as well (though it seems to be a major focal point for recruiters -- I'd say 90% of them ask about it vs. maybe 25% of prospective employers).
But, like you said, if you have no experience, a degree is about all they can gauge you by on paper.
Re:start small (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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. To design something new. A certification is a mere bare second-hand substitute for a degree. Someone with an actual degree will presumable have the capacity to learn new systems, instead of just memorizing the syntax and specifics of a particular language or system, learning to know the basic debugging or common routines.
Someone with a certification is merely learning to use an existing system or language. But someone with a university degree in computer science is in theory, capable of designing a new language or system. Linus Torvald didn't learn about designing an operating system by taking certification courses, after all. True that most of the brilliant folks often drop out of college, but that is because they feel that they have already learned what they can from the university system and are confident enough that they don't really need just the paper proof of the degree. But that just proves that the way you are taught in a university is actually important.
Degrees are important and are worth much more than mere certifications, when accompanied by practical experience. Certifications on the other hand, are acceptable substitutes if you need just a monkey coder or junior sysadmin who is familiar with at least the basics and is required to just maintain an existing system instead of designing a new one.
Without education, you'll be a poor computer tech (Score:4, Insightful)
Qualifications aren't just for show, they mean that you've extended your knowledge in the area and that someone has verified it.
There's a lot more to computing than writing a few programs that do something useful without crashing. That's important too, but it barely figures on the wider scale of merit of a computing professional.
What a CompSci education gives you is tons and tons of theory and context: theory so that you have a large portfolio of logically sound techniques upon which to draw instead of reinventing them and doing so badly, and context so that you understand why you're doing something, why you should not do something else, and how your solutions fit in with all the other methods and systems in the subject area.
Without an education in this field, you won't even know when you're making a mistake, owing to lack of theory and context. Your boss may like you because you'll always be saying "Yes" (until everything falls apart), but nobody else will appreciate it, not even you yourself in time. And you'll feel dumb every time that you come into contact with other computer people, as well as getting a bad rep because you can't hide ignorance in tech.
Just don't.
Take the time and make the effort to get yourself a proper CompSci education. You won't regret it.
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, certifications *with* experience *prove* that you have a certain level of mastery with the specific programming language, while also having the on-the-job experience.
Having certifications only proves that you qualified for a certification. Having on-the-job experience only proves that you have had a job.
I've had a DBA professor who had a Masters degree and on-the-job experience working for a bank. He couldn't answer simple questions regarding SQL without referencing a manual. In the end our class signed a petition to have him fired. After the dean sat in on a few classes he agreed with our class's assessment. Resumes and pieces of paper and on-the-job-experience have little to do with experience. Ask any customer who buys buggy software or has to deal with an incompetent sysadmin.
There are more practical ways of proving ability (like by demonstrating ability). Asking a comprehensive list of good quality questions will certainly do more IMHO than References, etc in deciding a good job candidate.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you don't have the paper DUE to a lack of effort! Not that I would know...
Re:Experiance (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly,
im still fairly young (mid 20's) and I'm a sysadmin. My tips for getting in to my situation are :-
-Apply for jobs in smaller companies
-Do the support roles in your early years
-Learn anout your job in your spare time
-Never stop learning.
In time you'll have the know how to go and command any job you want.
Its also controversial weather you actually need a degree or not. I worked with a degree student in my last job and all he knew was theory. WHen he started he knew what a partition was but didnt have a clue how to partition a hard disk or why you'd even do it in the first place.
Then again i am one of those "taught himeself how to program aged 6" people.
Yes, but not from Monster, jobbank, et al. (Score:3, Insightful)
As with most places it is who you know, not what you know. Applying for a job online you need to compete with MANY x10 applicants who do have letters after their names.
If you are applying for a local job where you know people or cn network with people who do know, then you have a chance.
Became a CIO without a degree (Score:2, Insightful)
I was making 6 figures and then left to start my own company, and I still make 6 figures.
Someone once told me this, and it is true. It takes 2 things to be a success. One is intelligence, and the other is drive. Someone with a lot of intelligence and no drive will find it very hard to succeed. Someone with a lot of intelligence and a lot of drive will find it fairly easy to succeed. Someone with a lot of drive and little intelligence WILL SUCCEED.
All things being equal, execution is what it takes to win.
Re:Experiance (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's fairly easy to get out of, if you get out quickly. Both places I've been, you're pretty much either out of the front line phones within a year, or you're stuck there practically forever.
Re:No degree needed, but Projects and Certs a must (Score:3, Insightful)
A college degree is supposed to show that you can learn and that you have a depth of knowledge in the subject. A number of my classes expected us to pick up a new language in a couple weeks on our own and be able to use it by the first assignment. Another class went over four or so new languages that students were expected to pick up and use in a couple weeks mostly on their own (class time was too valuable to waste on such trivialities as programing language descriptions). Granted the two most important things about a degree are probably the paper and the connections.
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
IT is a nice industry because experience and knowledge still counts. I don't care where you went to school if you don't have the aptitude and the interest you're just another student applying for a job.
Re:start small (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Don't think so! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:start small (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Another great trait is to be Lazy. This does not man to be slack, but to not want to have to do a job twice.
Anything that can be done the same way twice can be done by a computer. Scripting is your friend, and invest the extra 10% effort required to make sure that when you are attending some disaster at 2:00am that you have everything you need done ahead of time.
Also study and use more than one OS. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and any system can be set up poorly if you don't under stand why you are doing what you are doing.
And learn from your mistakes, you WILL make them.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Yes, very much so. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's almost exactly how. Started at a small but growing local ISP, and worked my way up.
Also, trade conferences (geeky ones, not suity ones) are vital for getting contacts and job leads. Don't forget to attend the dinners.
A degree says you might be able to do a particular job. Experience _proves_ that you can do the job.
Re:Of Course.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:start small (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not in this economy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's gonna hire you if you're the kind of person who did phone support?
Re:start small (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you,
You are a rare breed sir/ma'am. I can't tell you how many times I was disqualified by HR, I'm sure because of keywords/HR attitude similar to "no one knows that much".
Here's a perfect example. After about a year of applying for jobs with a few interviews I took a new job in another industry. It turns out to be better anyway, I get guaranteed pay raises every 6 months, about $2.00/hr which adds up. I'm currently at ~$35/hr Anyway, one day I get a call out of the blue with a firm that wants to hire me. He's extremely excited on the phone after reviewing my experience listed on my resume. I smiled, thought to myself "you've got to be kidding", and informed them HR sent me a letter 3 months earlier stating I was no longer being considered for the job. The IT manager on the phone was pretty pissed off. I hope he went and chewed some HR ass.
Maybe my resume wasn't perfect, God knows I'm not, whatever the reason, all is good now. The funny thing is, if you would have told me I would be doing this job while I was in school I would have been shocked. It turns out my job is in an industry of which I took 1 elective class in college as freshman.
To get my current job I was cold calling firms with ads in the paper. I talked to a man on the phone who ended up being the owner, of which I didn't know at the time. Within 10 minutes I was hired. 2 days later I was signing the employment paperwork. Easiest interview ever. The cool thing is I use my IT and programming skills in my new career.
It really is about being in the right place at the right time in the new HR(Waffen-SS) world we live in. "Where are your papers? Your papers are not in order!" bzzrrrzzzrrr......sound of resume being fed through paper shredder.
-ex-IT guy who kept getting shafted by HR who later switched careers.
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes you can! Absolutely! (Score:2, Insightful)
Like many other people, I view IT as more of a trade. I would much rather hire the person who started working right out of high school with 4 years of experience under his belt than the newly minted BSc with none. Of course, it would all come down to the technical interview, but the trend that I have noticed is that those without the degrees tend to be more "self starters" and capable of learning and researching on their own.
Now don't get me wrong, a degree doesn't hurt. It will definitely open up many doors for you, but if you are seriously looking to get into IT, experience trumps all. Hard work, determination, initiative... these are all the keys to a successful career in IT, imo.
As for myself, I've never had any formal CS or IT training, nor do I have a college degree. Everything I knew, I learned from a book that I bought so I could build a computer to play Doom with on a LAN. After getting out of the Marines in 2001, I took my meager Doom knowledge and landed myself an entry level help desk position making $12/hour. Now, I'm a Network Architect making over 6 figures a year and I work from home 95% of the time. I still don't have a degree, but now I'm back in school, and I have the time and money to get a degree in a subject that I'm actually interested in and not having to worry about making money with it to put food on the table.
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
One might think that but you'd be wrong.
But I'm not wrong -:)
You are of course correct.
There is a myth that formal education (certs or degrees) somehow makes people smarter or more knowledgeable than people without them. At the most there may be a correlation (people with a formal education certainly know more than people with no education). As for smarts, it's difficult if not impossible to learn. I do have a strong deductive feeling that people who have university degrees have been moderating this thread.
Best regards,
UTW
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's required, but not necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I'm still working in IT 5+ years after that, and have been working in a variety of fields (with specific expertise that well exceeds any that can be gained in college). I went back and got an MBA as well, so whenever I get tired of working for a living, I can move into management (I've had management-level positions and supervised people, but have avoided taking the actual management positions because that's not my personal preference now). If that ever occurs, I will have worked my way up from the begining ($20k per year crap support job) through varying technical positions into management wihout ever having a degree in anything technical. So it isn't necessary to succeed. However, it is quite hard to take that path, because even now when I look at positions, people seem to expect a technical degree.
Re:Experiance (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely correct. Also, a degree in Computer Science isn't MEANT to prepare for a career in IT, it's meant to teach you the Bachelor-level material about COMPUTER SCIENCE. That knowledge (i.e. the "theoretical stuff") is far from useless.
If you want to be the one designing the next generation of programming languages, you would need it. You need it to write non-trivial compilers. The list goes on. There's plenty available in the job market for a CS major and actually wants to do CS. If you plan to do IT, though, much of what you learn will not directly apply to directly to a job you are interesting in.
People well-educated to join the IT market know more about network topologies, queuing theory, some degree of business planning, higher level (as in "bigger picture") notions of security (as opposed to OS and lower levels). Oftentimes universities do not have education in this field, and the default is to get a CS degree instead, which is certainly fine in the sense that you are getting a degree in a closely related field that is also challenging and forcing you to learn how to learn (one of the SKILLS that university actually teaches you).
If you want to rise high in IT, expect on-the-job training or perhaps postbaccalaureate certifications. Computer Science is often a more academic pursuit (this is certainly true of many subfields) and suits itself more to being taught as a university degree, whereas IT has several "trade skills" that are better taught in the field.
As for the original poster, a trade school is not a bad place to start to get something that distinguishes you from other candidates. It may also teach you some things you didn't know, and give you some skills that will make you more competitive in the job market.
However, to you and those that refer to higher education as "a piece of paper", I would not carry around that attitude for too long. You are not morally superior for rejecting university any more than they are for embracing it, and believe it or not the in the 3+ years people spend in university to get their degree(s), they do learn a thing or two, and you will have to gain that knowledge (and the associated experiences) in other ways. To work alongside/eventually above people that do have said education, you will have to accept that they bring something valuable to the table from that education, just as your education and experience are valuable.
If the response from anyone here is "I went to university and it was useless, I didn't learn anything", then it wasn't the university's fault, it was yours. You did it wrong and wasted your and every faculty member's time. And perhaps a fair amount of money.
Re:start small (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Then you've never coded anything meaningful.
I thought so about most of the theoretical and math stuff during my university time. Now, about 10 years later, I've time and time again been happy that I had to learn the stuff, because it came in handy. And quite a few times, I could probably have done without it, but the alternate solution would have been complicated, wasteful on resources and not as easily adapted to other problems.
Mathematics is the language of computers. If you "don't do math-heavy-stuff" then you're not doing anything meaningful. Period.
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
Torvalds, Gates, Cohen, Mitnick... they're one in a million examples. I wouldn't try to go that road.
That's a bit like saying "I don't need to go to school, look at Einstein, he failed math and he was one of the brightest people and got rich and famous and even got a Nobel Prize." Yes. And a million like him failed miserably. You never get to hear about them, though. One of the few counterexamples that actually got known may be Tesla. He was brilliant. He had ideas way ahead of his time. Yet... rich and famous? Maybe the latter, but somehow I don't care if they name an SI-Unit after me when after I died poor.
Sorry to tell you (not in you, as the parent poster, but the general 'you') that, but you're most likely not that one in a million guy. Statistically, not even one of us here is.
Re:dead. end. job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you would make more if you were in the workforce longer. If your only goal by getting a university degree is "to get a job" and "make money", it's quite obvious you can do it without that. Personally, I don't care how much I would make, I find network admin extremely unsatisfying and would dread waking up each morning to do that.
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I don't have a single piece of paper since I left high school. I do have 12 years work experience though. What you are saying is complete and utter crap. I work in Europe now, having started in Australia. I know people from the US that would hire me in a heartbeat if I ever even suggested that I would be interested in coming over there. Degree or not, they don't care.
So, quite simply, yes, it's possible to get a great job in this industry without one, you just have to have the work experience behind you. If you don't have the work experience, you just have to work hard. Do that and you will get pushed up the ladder faster than anyone with a degree, or alternatively, if you want to change jobs (Sysadmin to networking or to security) it's easy.
The only benefit I have seen to having a degree is actually to pass immigration in different countries.
No Worries (Score:3, Insightful)
Smaller companies have, in the past, emulated this behavior. However, as time has passed, as a way to gain a competitive edge, more and more have begun to take long, hard looks at un-degreed candidates for a couple of reasons:
The lower pay level is temporary, so don't go thinking that just because you don't have a degree, you're gonna get jizzed for the rest of your life. Non-degreed employees experience an initial loss of income, but over time, likely within 5 or 10 years, the value of experience plus your own ability to negotiate your employment contracts will normalize your income.
Myself, I don't have a degree, and I've held lead developer and system administrator jobs that have paid me competitive rates. I'm now the owner of a small development shop, and the lack of college degree doesn't matter one bit. My advice, if you're going to roll without a degree, is to not stop looking for that first, entry-level job, and to work your ass off at it. Put in extra hours, be a fucking superstar, and put on as many hats as you can. If you're a developer, learn systems stuff. If you're a systems guy, learn to do development, or design, or SOMETHING. Without a degree, you are your major selling point, and the more you know how to do, the more attractive you are to employers.
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I know. Neither are quite a lot of coders. There are tons of jobs coding things that aren't meaningful, by your definition. Are such jobs advancing the state of computing? No. Are they likely to yield any cool breakthroughs in theory? Of course not. But companies seem to be willing to pay for it.
People doing these jobs are the carpenters of the tech world. To carry the metaphor a bit farther: yes, it's great that some people are paid to invent new planers and levels, and those guys deserve all the respect they get, but there are plenty of jobs to be had simply using those tools, especially if you can be a bit creative about it without being inefficient.
To clarify, because I think there might have been some misunderstanding: I meant not a lot stuff reliant on deeper computing theory or some of the "tougher" math. Algebra, geometry, trig, basic calculus, maybe some very specific PDEs that you can just look up and certainly don't need to have memorized, sure, that kind of thing crops up a lot. What percentage of coders are paid to design new encryption algorithms, though? Or create low-level parts of an operating sytem? Now, how many write or maintain relatively simple financial software or something like that? How many people with CS degrees end up as network admins or sysadmins, and, further, only wanted the degree because it helps to get them in to that sort of job? My opinion is that it's a waste of resources to encourage people wanting to do carpentry to get engineering degrees, even if they don't really like the engineering and just want to do the carpentry. That's all I'm saying.
Re:start small (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the main benefit of a BS in math or CS is learning to think and problem solve. Yes, learning about the theory is interesting and needed if you intend to continue your education, but the heavy math and logic needed to "successfully" complete a CS degree tends to lead to strong problem solving skills.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
my father always said the engineer didn't know everything, but he usually knew where to find everything.
I took a 2 year diploma that was basically the cisco academy plus 4-5 other classes per semester all centered around sysadmin, networks, and a little business communication.
6 months after I graduated I probably couldn't repeat half of it to you. Why? because most of the interesting things we looked in class never came up in the real world. Something you do only a couple times a year just doesn't stick. Now I'm across the world doing something unrelated and outside of bring up the ports and setting up basic routing I doubt I could do it without checking a book or the internet first to refresh myself.
There are better ways to demonstrate ability than simple memorization. In the real world if you have a problem is the internet suddenly unavailable? Are books suddenly unavailable? A lot of lab "tests" don't really show how someone would function in a real situation because they often deny outside assistance. employees don't work in a bubble (unless they actually do and that is kind of cool).
Sure but..... (Score:4, Insightful)
The first question would be what type of sysadmin do you want to be and do you have any good contacts? I did consulting for a number of years (small to mid size companies) and the lack of degree never hurt me.
But wait; now you are getting bored. You realize that you are lucky to roll out one server every two years and 80% of your time is patches/account maintenance/backups. The more you think about it, the more you realize that you could be replaced tomorrow because your boss/his boss thinks that all you do is push buttons. If you are wise you spent all that sysadmin free time (you have free time right? All good sysadmins should) learning about what interests you and getting certs as those are what it will take to "move up" if you don't have contacts and/or a degree.
Once you get to a higher level getting asked about what you need (ie: "The Budget") the ability to understand the relationship between IT and the business is critical to your continued growth within the organization. I had to do a business case/presentation for a data dedupe solution that I wanted and I can say without a doubt that the writing and research skills I gained during my bachelors (and now masters) courses helped me a more than just a bit when it came to getting the purchase approved.
At the bare minimum I would say that you need to start earning certs and building your business contacts. Join local user groups or even Infragard (if IT security interests you). Set up a Linked In profile and join a bunch of groups (on that site). A degree can always come later should you feel that it will help you further advance your career. I can tell you that when it comes to many larger companies a degree figures in what your pay will be. Fair or not it is just the way things are.
Re:Experience (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on you (Score:1, Insightful)
Degree without an IT job? (Score:3, Insightful)
I see absolutely no correlation between a university degree and the ability to support anything, whether it's some leftover turnkey application that runs on SCO or 1000+ servers.
I have a degree, but I became a sysadmin as an intern. I happened to enjoy the courses leading up to the degree, but the subject matter has very, very little to do with any of the work I've ever done as a sysadmin, or even as a systems architect. I got practical experience on the job, including how to drive an API, and a wealth of other experience that simply was not available in school.
Granted, there is a distinct advantage to understanding programming paradigms. I probably could have learnt the basics on my own, but it doesn't seem likely that I'd have entered the market with them. OTOH, I was hired out of school for systems support, then moved to software engineering when some idiot manager thought it would be a good idea to decimate the support staff. I found it to be utterly soul-crushing, but to be fair, it was a very customised system, e.g., they'd rolled their own network transport and DBMS.
That is, working alone or on a small development team is rewarding beyond description. Being a cog in a large software development corporation is a slow roast.
The enduring lessons I learned at university are critical reading and writing (handy with most manuals), the value of re-reading (manuals), and the value of project completion. The single most valuable lesson, which I use daily, is the confidence that I can tackle any subject matter, even when it seems impossible at first, with careful reading and asking questions. That alone is worth the time and money spent, because I know the difference between my own shortcomings and those of computing products.
Simply put, college provided enough trial and error for me to convince myself that I really grok computers. You may not need this for yourself, and it's too bad that most hiring managers don't have the same luxury of trial and error. They're probably going to be stuck with whomever they hire, so the degree is very attractive to them.
Re:Experiance (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows or Other? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a position for sysadmin in the Microsoft world, you're going to have to spend a few thousand getting certifications. You'll need those whether you have a degree or not.
If you're going for a position with Linux or Unix, check out a local LUG (Linux Users Group) for some great resources and job leads.
Don't stop there though. I got my last SysAdmin job from a guy I played Battlefield 1942 with who was a fellow Linux enthusiast. You never know when opportunities pop up and where, so keep your eyes open.
My Career so Far (Score:1, Insightful)
After graduating, I found that my degree wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I focussed on selling myself with a good CV and interview technique.
While I was at uni I worked in pubs and bars. From this I could boast enough about my customer service skills to get a 1st line suppoort position. It didn't pay great, but at least I was on the ladder. Since then I've moved jobs three times, each time moving up, learning new skills, gaining experience of new systems.
Getting that first job is very competitive (even more so now), you've gotta sell yourself as best you can.
I'd also try to move around alot early in your career, to get a varied experience. I don't think you should stay in the same job for more than a year or two, chances are you won't get much more out of it after then. If you're clever you can push your wage up pretty quickly like that too.
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
This needs to get modded up. If you don't have a degree, you can't get past the filter system that HR puts in front of managers at most corporations. HR doesn't care/know if you can do the job, they just have a list of checkboxes that need to be filled before they pass the resume to anyone hiring, and a degree is almost always on that list of checkboxes.
But if you KNOW the managers, or someone who works with them, you can get your resume past the HR filter. Also, if someone the manager trusts 'vouches' for you, it gives them some comfort that they don't get from someone coming in from outside. In this case, a degree isn't important if you can do the job.
A great way to get known is to work in phone support in smaller companies that do support in-house (a call center won't do), where you'll meet the ops/dev staff in the halls, and usually don't need a degree. If you work hard at improving the processes in place, and do it well, it will get noticed. The NOC is also a good place, since they're often desperate for staff that will work midnight on Saturday, and you'll have access to learn a lot about operations functions that outside hires with degrees can't match.
The bottom line is that a degree is a checkbox on a form to an HR manager, while an operations manager wants someone who can do the work. If you can get past the first, you can get a really well paying job with the second if they know you can do what they need.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but 10 years ago was right in the middle of the dot com boom, when if you could power on a computer, you could probably get an IT job.
Unfortunately, with the economy the way it is right now, nobody is hiring without a degree unless the person has significant "professional" experience. Lacking that experience, you're shit out of luck without a degree. Hell, even with a degree it's difficult to find a job without experience.
He could try going the startup route, but that's difficult without experience. "I don't have references, but I've networked my mom's basement" usually doesn't cut it.
I'm sure it's theoretically possible to start out without a degree right now, but he'd make his life 1000x easier by just getting the degree.
Re:Experiance (Score:3, Insightful)
It's much worse than that, they go from being completely worthless to being a serious impediment. I developed an ipsec solution for someone whose systems administrator wasn't smart enough to figure it out, and he got in my way because I had to interface with him in getting the job done. This is a case in which the hired, effectively tenured (fucking unions) employee actually made it harder to make the system (with personal data including SSNs for literally thousands of people) secure, thus presenting a serious liability.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:4, Insightful)
wow, that's the really crappiest reason to attend university I've heard in a long time and I'm very very glad you're not my employee.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a cynical way of saying that completing college shows you are capable of taking on something and seeing it through to completion.
And it's absolutely true. Absent seriously special circumstances, I would not consider hiring someone without a college degree.
Entrepreneurship (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to compensate (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're not going to go get the degree, you have to compensate for it by being more competent than you otherwise would have to be to get the same job. When I walk into a job interview people look at my resume, and bang, strike one. I have to make up for that by being better than their other candidates by enough to overcome the bias. You say you're an enthusiast, but almost everybody trying to get an entry level position at any decent company in this industry is to some extent. The question becomes, are you better than most enthusiasts with degrees?
If I had it to do over again, I'd just get a degree. With the economy in the crapper, now's the perfect time to do it. If I didn't love my job and have a mortgage to pay I'd probably do it myself.
By the way, there's always the tech support route. It's real easy to get a tech support job without a degree. Sure, the work sucks, but you get your foot in the door somewhere. If you're good, you can move out of there into a "real" job. The flip side to that is that a resume with nothing but tech support on it might actually be worse than no resume at all. There have been "Ask Slashdots" about that before.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends.
Schools these days target the lowest common denominator in order to keep their graduate and placement rates up. It's a fine balance between reputation and the bottom-line. Unfortunately modern institutions are increasingly concerned with profits and find it difficult to resist the temptation to give a few more grads a free ticket to impress their investors/beneficiaries.
It's also not really fair to exclude people of a certain economic fair who may not have been able to afford the luxury of a college or university education. Speaking from experience, I came from a poor family and couldn't afford four years at ever-increasing tuition rates on a part-time wage. That fact has no relation to my intelligence or capability -- I work on web, computer graphics, and computer vision technology and I never spent a day in university or college.
I might try joining an institution some day, but my hopes of finding a more rigorous and dialectic education remain dashed. Too many institutions are monastic and profit-driven factories. Boring.
I'm sure I've sat across the interview table with people who have the same opinions as you. I obviously didn't get hired by them. In hindsight, I'm rather glad. The people who do tend to hire me have a broader insight into reality.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway - I'm a well payed CTO (33 years old) got and conditional offer to work at Google this year (very interesting terms). I studied Physics with the Philosophy of Scince Msci, but dropped out.
If you're bright, you have ideas, and you can make them a reality, then you will will do well. a degree, is only good for proving you can get a degree.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)
seriously? for a technical role?
I could see for a professional engineering role, MechE, EE, ChemE, Biologist or something like that, you don't really want bridges or chemical weapons built by amateurs, but for a technical role?
Respectfully, that seems too limiting.
Re:I wouldn't hire you (Score:3, Insightful)
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that pisses me off to no end.
Companies/people who think that education and/or certification justifies someone being given a job.
I have known COUNTLESS people who have lots of education, lots of certifications, and are dumber than fish shit.
I once knew a guy who had his CS degree, and a CCNA for Cisco, but didn't know how to use the PING command.
Sounds like you would go ahead and hire this guy, give him buckets of cash, then wonder why nothing works.
Good luck buddy!
Re:Don't think so! (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're looking for help desk workers you may be right. For more intellectually demanding jobs, a PhD here or there might prove more beneficial.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)
Did it teach you what anecdotal evidence is?
Re:Certificate in the other kind of networking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Ecole Polytechnique ... or try your local Lodge [wink wink].
Re:Don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that not going to college shows how smart someone is by getting into the work force 4 years early and not spending big bucks. My salary has consistently been at or above the average for whatever part of IT I was working in. I took courses based on what my employer needed my skills to be, not on what some college thought I needed, and used tuition reimbursement to cover several of them. The studies that show 'college degrees mean X% more in pay' are bogus, they may show correlation, but they don't show cause. Since people who are smarter and more motivated tend to go to college, of course they make more money later in life. It doesn't mean college had anything to do with it.
Smart, motivated people don't need degrees. Average people need degrees to suggest they might be smarter than they really are.
HOWEVER
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Experience goes a LONG way....and of course, the oldest, but most important factor I know of...who you know!!
My degree is BS in Biochem...although I never really used it (just missed med school admission a couple times). I fell into CS doing databases while doing medical research, while trying to get in med school...and taking grad courses in comp. sci to try to raise my GPA (I had a LOT of fun at LSU).
Anyway....ended up doing this, and now pretty successful at contracting. I find that just having SOME degree helps, but, experience...and knowing the importance of making lots and lots and lots of quality contacts in the business is what gets you in the door.
Having a personality, and a little ability to BS works too. I've beaten out people for jobs that were MUCH more qualified than I...due in large part to being able to talk to people and present myself well as a normally socially interactive person.
Also....when interviewing, DO NOT be afraid of asking for too much money!! Many people are just geared to think that if it costs more, it is worth more and better quality. Employers are consumers of a type....and you can always negotiate down if you wish. Also..try to get THEM to state what they want to pay...you don't do it first!
Re:start small (Score:3, Insightful)
I respectfully disagree. First, I would never encourage anyone to drop out of college and go the route I did. But I did not get the capacity to learn from college.
All college did for me was lift several thousands of dollars from my wallet and show me how to get the right answer out of a text book, without applying conscious cognitive skills with the answer. Oh and it tried to "weed me out." (Large college.)
The most valuable skill I ever learned was at Dell, learning to become a PC technician. I'll never forget Joe Green taught me how to troubleshoot ANYTHING (thank you Joe!). That is a skill that most people do not have.
Because of that, I could even troubleshoot my car. I may not know what the thingy is called that does this other thingy! Or how to replace that thingy! But I know what system is affected and where it likely is in the automobile.
The second most valuable skill I learned was how to read and use a manual (or documentation) effectively and find the answer quickly by skipping unnecessary sections and focusing on important parts.
And the third most valuable skill was programming, learned from a computer math class in high school. Yes, it was in BASIC. But it taught the concepts of logical thought processes.
I did not learn any of these things from college.
But what I *did* learn from college was how to open up, not be shy, and interact with people.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Insightful)
I donno about that. My father was a coal miner (and still is). My mother stayed at home.
Actually, turns out that I'm the first on either my mother or father's side of the family who completed college. Of the roughly 10 cousins older than I, 3 attended college at the same time or before I. One dropped out to work, another got hooked on smack, and the last just took a long-ass time to figure out what the hell she wanted to do.
Do I sound like your stereotypical child of an affluent white family? My father was making about 28k a year (which is why my FAFSA reaped such huge dividends for me), and at least 1/3 of my family is either addicted to heroin, crack, or cocaine, with one particularly colorful cousin the proud mother of 4 crackbabies.
Needless to say, I don't consort with most of my family any longer.
But, I guess that just because I'm white, it automatically means my family was mega rich and completely adjusted, eh?
Re:I wouldn't hire you (Score:3, Insightful)
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that pisses me off to no end.
Companies/people who think that education and/or certification justifies someone being given a job.
Go back and re-read what I said. The key is "all things being equal."
The last position I posted I got 300 resumes. That's after HR weeded out the junk. I did phone interviews with 20 of them and in-person interviews with another 15. No, they didn't all have college degrees - maybe only half did. Experience definitely counts more than education.
At the end of the day, I had 3 awesome candidates. All three could easily work with our users, understand our business processes, and was willing to support something from front-line to systems implementation. They were all excited, all motivated, and in general great people. Did it matter that the guy who got the job had a CS degree? Well, the other two guys were great systems guys (1 had a degree, 1 didn't), but the guy with a CS degree got it because he had a lot of experience while in college doing some DB integration work.
People who think they're a millions times more talented than the guy in line behind them are gravely mistaken. Anyone who thinks they have job security and are irreplacable are sadly out of touch with corporate America - there are few companies in the country that have loyalty to their employees. It's tough times for anyone looking for a job right now and there's plenty of qualified candidates available. So given the glut of potential candidates available do you think majority of the best candidates will have degrees or not? Phrased in another way, thinking of the best programmers and sys admins you know, do the majority have degrees or not?
Re:Don't think so! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Entrepreneurship (Score:3, Insightful)
something that takes a LOT of work
The key to entrepreneurship is efficient work, rather than hard work. Entrepreneurship does not need to take a lot of work. In fact too much work can kill entrepreneurship if it's dull and inefficient. What entrepreneurship does require, however, is lots of intelligence, lots of efficiency, and lots of enthusiasm. You must work smart, in an efficient way, and enthusiastically, but hard work is not a requirement for successful entrepreneurship, as long as we understand that no hard work does not equate with laziness. However, in practice, most people who work enthusiastically end up working hard, albeit they don't see this is as a bad thing, and they may even like it.
To be a successful entrepreneur a person must avoid dull work at all costs and focus on doing smart work (ie high-efficiency work, ie a little work for great return) while maintaining the drive of an enthusiast (ie do work that "speaks" to your DNA, something that you do naturally all the time, for example nerds/geeks enjoy programming software and customising their hardware so they can work on it with enthusiasm). Hard work may come as a by-product of enthusiasm, but if you make the mistake to only focus on working hard you may end up doing inefficient dull work for little return.
Of course there is a problem with entrepreneurship, the fact that it requires attributes that not every person has: lots of imagination, analytical skills, creativity, motivation, and above all intelligence. But the main reason many people lack these skills is not because they don't have them, they do, but the education/school/university system does not help students to discover and express these skills. In fact schools teach children how to become good employees, ie people dependent on other people for their survival (which is the definition of a slave, ie a non-sovereign individual). And no, technical and business lessons aren't going to help with that (in fact good entrepreneurs are more like philosophers and artists, and I think that an entrepreneurship education should focus more on classics, the enlightenment, painting, music, dancing, etc).
a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole.
Jobs also have a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole. Ever heard of redundancies? The idea that a job is more safe is an illusion, and having a job means that you are always dependent on someone else.
Furthermore, the chance of hitting gold while being an employee is very low, especially for entry-level personnel, but for new entrepreneurs who focus on innovation the probability of hitting gold is much higher. But even if you don't hit gold, maintaining a business means you can be independent, able to feed yourself, not having to expect someone else to feed you. It's a good thing to be able to live without waiting for others to feed you, ie to be a sovereign individual. Being independent also means that you are more capable of supporting and helping others who are in need, which is a good thing.