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Education Programming IT

Computer Job w/ No Computer Degree? 160

Posted by Cliff from the you-gotta-start-somewhere dept.
Peterus7 asks: "I posted here a few years back, complaining that I couldn't code worth beans, but I wanted to get into computer science. Well, I'm back- with a psychology degree. However, I hear there's still hope since a lot of system admins and the like have liberal arts degrees. In the mean time, I've been working as a Macintosh digital media tutor, freelance tech support, and an assistant system admin at the campus library. Now that I've graduated, I want to find a job that will accept someone who knows a fair amount about computers, but is pretty much self-taught. Where should I start? Are there any classes I should take?"
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Computer Job w/ No Computer Degree? More

Computer Job w/ No Computer Degree?

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  • I started as a computer science major and ended up with a degree in Human Communication though with my background of computer knowledge I was able to get a job doing tech support for a small dot com. Fast forward 2 years and I was able to move up in the company, currently working as a technical project manager and part-time DBA.

    All it really takes is a foot in the door...once you have that it's a matter of working inside the company where you have something to offer. If it's a good company then your skill
  • I once worked in the IT department of a major multinational. Major. One of the managers in charge of software development was, as far as I could gather, quite proud of the fact that they could not program anything, not even a SQL statement, to save their life.

    The manager was regarded as one of the best in the department. Major.

    There's hope for you yet.

    • Re:Sure There Is! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:06PM (#15808027) Journal
      much better to have a GOOD manager who knows management than a mediocre manager who knows both management and computers

      then again when you get a mediocre manager who just knows management you end up with a perfect storm of suck.
      • Not nessesarily. Say you have two people in your
        group who differ on the technological solutions to
        your problems. If you dont know enough to apply a laugh
        test, how will you decide between these?

        I've seen it. I've been there, I wanted to solve problems,
        the other guy wanted to work with cool technologies.
        Managers sided with the other guy. They
        had no way to know who was correct, because they
        didnt have any appreciation for the issues. They
        thought the other guy and I were just having a pissing
        contest.
    • The manager was regarded as one of the best in the department. Major.
      So, does that prove that big multinationals suck balls majorly, or that anyone may become part of a software development team, or good managers are in and far between?
    • I have been a "software engineer" at that company that makes those expensive teal green routers that you see everywhere and the software architect at a couple start-ups. I have a master of fine arts degree and a liberal arts BA. The closest thing to a computer science course I ever took was a philosophy department symbolic logic course in collage and some assembly programming on a PDP8 in high school.

      BTW I hate the term "software engineer", but that's another rant.

    • Actually, 3 managers that I have known who I (and many others) considered excellent, had zero tech knowledge. But they were good at picking up lies and BS. They surrounded themselves with nothing but good ppl. I will say that in each case, they had one very good person who KNEW tech. 2 had CS degrees, the other had CE. They were actually serving as a co-manager of the group, but nearly all outside interface (politiicing) was through the managers.

      In contrast, many of the average to below average ppl were

    • Re:Sure There Is! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by really? ( 199452 ) on Sunday July 30, 2006 @03:49PM (#15812755)
      I am not sure why you got modded funny. But, then again, this _is_ slashdot.

      The best IT project manager, bare none, I had the pleasure of working with was indeed unable to program anything, save, perhaps, his VCR. That didn't stop him from having an amazing grasp on the projects; his projects always were, on time and on budget. Yes, I do mean always, and, yes, it could well be it's also because he knew how to select his projects.

      Also, although being the sole non-programmer - except for the accounting and HR people - in the last company I worked for - largish outfit, most of you have heard of - I was sought after to help debug Java and SQL programming issues. Being a "programming moron" helped ... by the time the programmers were half way through getting me to understand what they were trying to achieve they would go "I got it, I got it. Thanks, you saved us untold hours ..." (Truth being told, I can actually do both Java and SQL, but, they didn't need to know that; besides, my skills in both were, and are, significantly lower than the rest of the crew.)

  • Not sysadmin but lots of other stuff... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by telbij ( 465356 ) * on Saturday July 29, 2006 @07:51PM (#15807948)
    I reviewed your original submission, and I gotta say that being a sysadmin is not for you. Well, maybe Windows, but in general a sysadmin has to be extremely good at problem solving. If you couldn't get into Java then you're gonna be banging your head against the wall on a daily basis with the kind of problems sysadmins face. No, they don't necessarily write any code, but the analytical skills required to learn to program are the same as debugging complex interactions between software.

    Being self-taught really has nothing to do with it. There are people that never took a single class but were able to pick up programming form a few simple tutorials and a language reference. Likewise, some people take the Intro to Programming class several times and simply fail to ever grasp the abstract nature of code. A computer science degree is valuable because of the ideas it exposes you to, and because employers may value it, but it doesn't really say much about your ability as a computer professional.

    My advice would be to look for a job centered around specific applications. Something concrete with good documentation that you learn to perfection. Another possibility is building or repairing computers. It sounds like you've already been doing quite a bit, so you probably have an idea of what you enjoyed and what you didn't. The next step is to simply apply for some jobs and see what pans out.
    • "If you couldn't get into Java then you're gonna be banging your head against the wall on a daily basis with the kind of problems sysadmins face. No, they don't necessarily write any code, but the analytical skills required to learn to program are the same as debugging complex interactions between software."

      One of my friends loves using computers and wants to get a "computer job", but the Comp Sci classes he's tried to sign up for have Math pre-reqs and he's lousy at that. "Do you really have to do a lo

      • One of my friends loves using computers and wants to get a "computer job", but the Comp Sci classes he's tried to sign up for have Math pre-reqs and he's lousy at that.

        In general, that's why Computer Science [algonquincollege.com] was seperated from Computer Programming [algonquincollege.com]. While math is a prerequisite for both courses, the latter puts much less focus on math by only teaching the 'basics'.

        You will need to know math at the most basic level, even if you don't use it in day-to-day programs. While advanced math won't be necessary f

        • It is a great idea to seperate computer science from software engineering, computer programming, systems design, etc. Too bad almost all companies hiring computer professionals do not know the difference themselves and will continue posting ads for a "computer scientist" when they really just want someone to fix their website.
    • To some degree, I see your point, but I am evidence to the contrary. I got two degrees in College, Bachelor's in Music Education, and Bachelor's in Orchestral Performance. (I am a pretty decent Trombone player, and I love to teach.) That being said, I worked at a compter store through college fixing PC's and working in Customer Service. When I graduated, I decided that teaching in a school setting wasn't for me, and orchestral performance is way too cutthroat for my tastes. So I stuck with the computer stor
      • Eight years ago, you could do that, you could grow with a growing field. The field has matured considerably now, and I really doubt there's anything like the computer store - to - network engineer path still viable.
      • It's been almost 9 years since I dropped out of an engineering school. I have no degree, but I am a systems admin/programmer making decent money. While I'm not the head of my department, I have been at the company longer than anyone else in IT.

        My first foot in the door was working for the school district in my hometown (I was well-known among the teachers for my computer skills)
        The position I'm in now was recommended by a then employee of the company who also happens to be my wife's cousin.

        Neither of thes
    • Sysadmins write glue. They just deal with larger application libraries than programmers do (particularly if you consider apps and operating systems as libs).
  • You can start whatever you feel you like. Don't ask me what you need to do. :) You need to know that on your own.

    But I think that with a psychology background you can go into stuff like:

    - user/computer interaction - UI design, translations, documentation, implementation, quality control etc.
    - new media (i.e. Internet) marketing

    I think these are quite interesting areas. But of course you can do anything you wish and feel like doing.

  • There's Hope! (Score:3, Informative)

    by graznar ( 537071 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @07:56PM (#15807974) Homepage

    I started a CS degree and quit about 9 credit hours into it. I suck at math, but I've been programming since I was 12. I've had about 4 jobs doing computer/sysadmin work (two of them at large colleges), have programmed freelance for some time, and I'm now writing a book for Manning Publications on programming (along with a self-published book also).



    All while getting a degree in Theology. :)



    Don't fret about the degree; you just need the skills and mindset to do it.

    • I never completed *any* post-secondary education, and to be honest, never actually completed highschool.

      I started my career in computing in the late 1970s, at the tender age of 16. My lack of any paper credentials didn't seem to slow me down any. I was a "senior member of scientifc staff" at a major high-tech R&D company by the time I was in my late 20s. But I had a strong aptitude for programming and systems design. Solving technical problems, root-cause analysis, leading technical projec

  • Websites (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Saturday July 29, 2006 @07:57PM (#15807975) Homepage

    Want to design web sites? You won't believe how many artists and companies want web sites. Make some. Do them for friends and relatives. Make them nice, make them do neat things. Now you've got a portfolio. Look for companies wanting web sites and sell yourself. Make a business out of it.

    If you work for yourself (web sites, tech support, whatever) then the hiring manager won't care you don't have a degree. Work your way up and prove you can do what you say and you can get jobs.

    • Re:Websites (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Doctor Memory ( 6336 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @11:09PM (#15808832)
      Web sites != programming. Any halfway-decent "visual" sort of person can dig up some scripts and templates and come up with a decent web site. People who are good at cranking out code tend to display mass suckage when designing web sites. Likewise, many web designers will sweat blood over a ten-line Javascript function. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but there isn't a lot of overlap between good web designers and good programmers.

      • I agree, but he asked for something he could do, and he didn't specify programming.

        Getting a programming job without the degree is going to be a TON harder.

      • Have to agree with you there. At this stage in my career I'm a bit of a jack of all trades (master of some!). I have a software engineering degree which was mostly java but in the real world I mainly found myself doing databases and web apps so I retrained to MCSD / MCDBA. I do back ends mostly, and I'll freely admit that the idea of doing the HTML / CSS brings me out in a bit of a cold sweat. Don't get me wrong, I can do it, the tech is fairly easy, but I'd be much happier handing it over to someone sp

    • Want to design web sites? You won't believe how many artists and companies want web sites.

      I've thought about this myself. I've taken classes in and was working on a degree in web programming, though I wanted to go into something more, perhaps CE or IT. However I'm also into photography and some of the photography students at the college I was going to were thinking about establishing an online presence or portfolio. So I was thinking maybe I could develop photography websites both for myself and for o

      • I've been looking for jobs for two to three months now, as I just got my CS degree last month. I knew lots of places wanted websites, but I was surprised at just how many. EVERYONE seems to need another (or a first) website guy. It's too bad I'm not more interested in that, I could get a job easy.
  • Being largely self taught isn't going to work in your favour. I can deploy Exchange 2003 to a corporate network, but not in the most efficient way. A decent deployment can be painfully complicated [microsoft.com].

    This goes for all software, knowing how to do it from picking around on tutorials on the internet is going to get the job done, but not in the same way as somebody who has got the Exchange certification. My advice to you is to go to your local Microsoft certifier and get some basic sysadmin certification at the v
    • The author was asking about Comp Sci degrees - I'd like to see the Comp Sci department at a major university that offers a course on installing Exchange 2003. Most Comp Sci grads I've met can barely install MS Office

      (of course, that's because they primarily use UNIX and Linux in academia...)

  • Networking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nosredna ( 672587 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @07:59PM (#15807988)
    Without the skills on paper (relevant coursework, certifications, similar work experience), you're at a severe disadvantage at the resume stage. People are going to spend their time with the people who say they can do it and have something to back it up before they spend their time looking at people who only say they can do something.

    You're going to have to meet people and get yourself promoted almost exclusively by word of mouth. Even then it's going to be an uphill battle, because there's always going to be somebody more qualified who's going to get one of the precious interview slots before you. Then you have to be absolutely sure you know what you're doing in the interview, because while somebody who has experience or other qualifications that they can point to may be granted a little bit of slack if they can't do something right off the top of their head (as long as they know, procedurally, what's going on), without anything like that, you have nothing to point to other than your word that you actually do have some kind of background in it.

    It's not impossible by any means, but you have it a lot harder than anybody else out there, and you're probably going to be looking for a long time before you find that job you want. And when you do, you're likely going to be hired on the recomendation of one of the people you know in one of your placeholder jobs.
  • Macintosh digital media tutor

    Not much hope here, I'm afraid. Why not try canine psychology [wikipedia.org], instead?

    Honestly though, I don't know. I'm actually in a similar position: I'm a year away from a non-CS degree, but I'd like my future work to be computer-related. I doubt tech support is something you're exited about, I myself certainly am not. I think it would be possible to get a job as an entry level programmer (I have experience in several languages, dunno about you), but getting beyond the code monkey status w
    • There's probably a lot more opportunities in the world of psychology for someone who also knows computers than in the world of computers for someone who knows psychology. I'm not saying it's right, but the technology field doesn't really give a damn about understanding how people process information, interact with their computers, etc. but at least psychologists have taken an interesting in computers as tools for research (and even treatment), so you may find some job opportunities from that.

  • I'm doing the same thing, except without a college degree of any sort.

    I started as Tech Support for a small software company, who plucked me out of the retail/admin assistant ether, and I got that because I put together a resume they really liked with my writing skills. (First hobby is writing, computers is my second). I highlighted my enthusiasm for computers, presented myself in a groovy way, and got hired. Once I was in, the small company environment forced me to wear several hats and pick up new thin

    • Certificates are just pieces of paper. Many managers consider them so much toilet paper. I know I do. The reason behind that is that there are so many "certificate mills" around, which promise to teach you to pass the certificates, but end up not teaching you the basic knowledge the certificates are realing testing for.

      • Many managers consider them so much toilet paper. I know I do. The reason behind that is that there are so many "certificate mills" around, which promise to teach you to pass the certificates, but end up not teaching you the basic knowledge the certificates are realing testing for.

        I've heard this but I've also heard the opposite. I've been in schooling working on an AAAS, or whatever, degree in web programming as a first step. However because I found it difficult to retain what I learned in Java I duri

        • Personally, I don't think that the current crop of certs are worth the paper they are printed on. As for the general managers in the industry, some swear by them, some swear at them. You pays your money, and takes your chances.

          Look for the college being regionally accredited. If it says something like accreditted by the state of xx, then it is garbage. Also, read this page: http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html [state.or.us] This page is the state of Oregon tracking down which schools are valid and which

          • Look for the college being regionally accredited. If it says something like accreditted by the state of xx, then it is garbage. Also, read this page: http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html [state.or.us] [state.or.us] This page is the state of Oregon tracking down which schools are valid and which are crap. A really great reference.

            Well my college is a state college. I find it hard learning some subjects the way a certain professors teach and retaining what I learned between long breaks. What I'm intereste

  • No big deal (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (reggoh.gip)> on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:04PM (#15808007) Journal
    More than 25 years ago I was hired by a fortune 500, without even as much as a high-school diploma to work on a microcomputer project.

    Ever since, I worked in IT, my experience being more meaningful than degrees.

    • More than 25 years ago I was hired by a fortune 500, without even as much as a high-school diploma to work on a microcomputer project.

      Yeah, I got hired by a retail chain to do stuff for them with Lotus 1-2-3 and dBASE when I was still in college 22 years ago. But that was a lot easier to get hired for back then (when micros were new and nobody in DP knew anything about them) than it is today.

  • A Tech School (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikesd81 ( 518581 ) <.mikesd1. .at. .verizon.net.> on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:09PM (#15808038) Homepage
    I went to a technical school and got a dgree in Network and Internet Technology. We learned network methods and each mod class we could get certified in that field. We started with A+ and went to NT (back then it was NT now I'm sure you'd learn XP/2003) and we had a Novell and Linux classes. We didn't have a coding class. The linux course touched on Bash and Perl like it rightly should. Maybe you could look into that.

  • Rule Number One... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) * <{moc.liamg} {ta} {RVonaryc}> on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:12PM (#15808047) Homepage Journal
    Rule number one is to never apologize for not having a Comp Sci degree in an interview.

    (Rule number two is that you don't want to work anywhere that strictly requires it)

    I have a Liberals Arts degree and I'm a completely self-taught, working Java developer. The only thing I did do to help my job search was get a Sun Certified Java Programmer certification [sun.com]. Almost no experienced developers give any merit to the thing, but during my job search it was useful to "prove" to the skeptical that I really do know Java.

  • Writing ability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by daeg ( 828071 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:15PM (#15808058)
    Since from what I know of liberal arts majors, you likely have better writing skills than true computer science graduates. While jumping from pyschology to comp sci would be rough, but your writing ability is a gem. Use it.
    • Here's an idea: tell companies they could hire your for project and code documentation. There aren't nearly enough good people who can do that, and it's essential. Then, once you're on the inside, get to know the dev team and show them you know your stuff. If you do a good job, they will be your allies when you talk to the boss about moving on to coding work. Once you've done some work for the company, you won't have any problems changing jobs later if you need to, since by that time you'll have references.
  • You want to do computers, but got a psychology major? That's not going to impress a lot of employers if you go looking for a job in IT or programming. Did you at least get a minor in computer science? That would help a lot.

    If you're looking to put your psychology degree to work, but still want to deal with computers, you might want to look into something like computer security. For all the hacking attempts made daily, the best way to get access to a machine is through social engineering. You could study how
    • As the title says, forget about security. First off it is a hard enough position to get involved in due to the overall responsibility. A computer security position requires an extremely diligent and knowlegible person who is familiar with just about every piece of software that is deployed on a company network and can analize and debug at the code level in many cases especially when in-house developed software is in place. Debugging software is actually harder then writing it because a) you personally didn'

  • It depends on how well you sell yourself (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:20PM (#15808078)
    Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. But it all boils down to how well you sell yourself, how well you learn under fire, how well you can adapt, and most importantly who you know. I dropped out of high school (early nineties) my Senior year of high school and moved to the closest metro city. Three months later, at age 18, I was making $35/hour as a jack of all trades systems administrator. A year later I had been jacked up to Senior Network Analyst and was pulling in $60k. Two years later I was a systems administrator for a Fortune 100 company with full benefits. Now, only a decade later, I'm pulling in six figures between my systems administration position at my day job and the freelance projects I'm doing on the side.

    Standard headhunters and sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com proved to be utterly useless and every position I've held since entering the professional workforce has been a referral from a close friend or colleague that got me an in with the company and allowed me to bypass conventional hiring channels. This is the most important thing to remember -- managers hire internally first, take referrals second, and then read external resumes; if another employee highly recommends you then you'll be first in line in the interview process.

    Keep track of every professional contact you've ever made. I have two or three hundred page binders to keep business cards in chronological order of each professional contact I've made. Each page holds 16 cards and I write details of the conversation or relationship with each person on the back of each card. My brain works on mnemonics so scanning/inputting each contact's info doesn't work for me; I remember each contact based on where in each binder their business card is and which business cards surround it on the page. So I can say, "yeah, that security guy I met in the bar at PumpCon 1996 was red and was in the binder right after the blue graphic designer's card, I think I'll give him a call".

    So yeah, don't know if this braindump is any help to you, but there is hope out there for degreeless geeks. ;)
    • Actually, you need to things to suceed without a degree:
      a) Being fscking good, and at least, better than the average Comp Sci guy you are competing against.
      b) Find ways to bypass HR and get directly to the technical guys who are doing the selection.
      HR people can't grok the idea of someone who has not a CS degree being a good software engineer. And they are not to blame.

  • degree not needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yonder Way ( 603108 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:26PM (#15808111)
    I've been a sysadmin for 12 years now without a degree and I'm doing fine. I've worked (and work now) at some of the biggest companies in the world and the subject almost never comes up.

    The few companies that have turned me away because of it were companies you've never heard of because they were small and didn't survive long enough to get big.

  • I have a social studies degree (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Skuld-Chan ( 302449 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @08:34PM (#15808157)
    I currently do technical support research for a really big well known software company - it pays really well and the benefiets are quite good, but in the process I had to do some really crappy jobs along the way. One of the hardest was front line technical support, but without it I wouldn't have gained the respect to get the job I have now. I think I have a knack for solving problems :).

    Along the way I've tried picking up programming - I'm learning, but its a long and slow process. I'm sure actual classes in school would help quite a bit.

  • Careers. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Now that I've graduated, I want to find a job that will accept someone who knows a fair amount about computers, but is pretty much self-taught. Where should I start? Are there any classes I should take?""

    Careers for Computer Buffs and Other Technological Types, 3rd edition [amazon.com]

    The only career book to match the right job to your byte-loving personality The inspiring Careers for Computer Buffs and Other Technological Types encourages you to embrace your individuality by finding the job that matches your character

  • I feel the need to remind you all that computer scientists do not study computers. Computer scientists study computation. There are plenty of computer jobs available to people without degrees, including programming positions (get your feet wet with open source), but more commonly system administration positions.
    • I'll agree with you there. I have a good example when I (with a degree in Middle East studies) worked as a sysadmin in an Engineering/CS school. I was good friends with one of the CS profs. He could barely tell the difference between the CPU and the power supply if you opened up a computer. But, at the same time, he was writing algorithms and computational models for quantum computers - which barely even existed yet.

  • Waste of money (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work with a guy who has a Masters Degree, I have no qualifications other than a few GCSEs (high school) and yet I'm earning more than he is and I'm 12 years younger than him. So to me it seems a degree is worthless.

  • No degree at all here, and doing fine. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In 1993, I dropped out of college because the comp sci curriculum was horseshit, heavy on chemistry and physics that I would never need. I returned to my co-op job for a while, selling computers and providing some support in the computer department of the bookstore at another local university. I got very good at troubleshooting Macs. In 1996 I ended up at MacTemps (now known as Aquent). Through them I worked a couple brief Mac support jobs followed by a longer one which led to a permanent position in late 1
    • And I have a degree in Computer Engineering that I busted my ass for. I earn in excess of $100K ($132K last year) and those heavy Chemistry and Physics classes teach you how to think and problem solve. Those classes lead to your basic electronics classes where you are exposed to the creation of the diode. This leads to transistors, logic gates, circuits. On the flip side the computer langauage and automata theory leads you down logic and programming / problem solving using computer algorithms. You take
      • Well said. It seems like part of the problem is people thinking $60,000 is some sort of holy grail when those with a degree can quickly hit 6 figures... You'd have to rack up a lot of student loan debt to make skipping college/skipping a technical degree worth that.
  • Since you have a psychology degree, you might want to consider going into a graduate program in Human Factors or in Human-Computer interaction.

    The program at New Mexico Tech is pretty good.

  • You may want to follow the path I am borrowing.

    After I graduated, I spend almost a year studying CS in college, and dropped. I didn't know what to do so I looked for crappy jobs, and eventually I heard about a french thing call a professionalisation contract.

    The principle is the following, during 18 months, you spend one week a month at some kind of school (although it's for adults) studying system administration and the rest of the time you learn while working as a sysadmin in an enterprise, and you're pai

  • What made you think that there is anything close to an industry wide default requirement for any degree, and that it's not based instead on social networking and directly demonstrated proof of competency like virtually every other industry? Did you believe something that your college advisors or some statistic told you? Why?
  • At my workplace, I have met IT people who didn't even have degrees related to computers. There's a Sr. QA guy who majored in biochemistry. Some didn't even go to college!
  • If your degree is not computer related but you want a tech job you will probably have to build your resume from the bottom up. Most companies want a tech related position to be held by someone with a technical based degree OR...wait for it...lots of experience in the field. Many of us don't have a degree at all but have worked our way up through the ranks. The position we apply for may say a degree is required but the job is available to those of us without any degree because of our prior experience. He
  • If you're looking for a job doing system integration or administration, certifications are by far the best way to go along with some entry level experience, maybe even volunteering. It doesn't matter that the certifications really don't prove much except some exposure to the product, it's a measurable metric that human resource people love.

    Don't get me wrong, a degree doesn't hurt, but if a company is looking for someone to deal with Redhat, VMWare, Microsoft, or any other specific software solution they'r

  • Sysadmins Need to Know How to Code (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @11:09PM (#15808834) Homepage
    I took 3 years of CS classes, dropped out, with disgust and contempt for the department I might add. Later I returned to finish college, this time as a history major. I swore I'd never take another CS class as long as I lived, and settled for the minor. I've currently got about 20 hours left for the BA. Which will take forever, since I work full time as a Network Admin, and I love my job far more than I ever loved college. I still maintain that all college did for me was network me with some great friends, the degree has become a matter of pride for me, and little else.

    So, I have no credentials to speak of, other than a self built business, mostly consulting work, and a load of time spent learning anything that sparked my interest, and certifcations are a waste of money IMHO. But I can code, a good admin has to be able to write, read, and alter code. A good admin has to be able to make programs accross the network work together, and shoe horn stuff together when need be, all while keeping the whole thing secure and stable. You might find yourself reading C one day, figureing out why the billing system suspends accounts for 24 hours after successfully proccessing credit cards, if the credit card was ran on the last day before the account would have gone deliquent(true story), and the nexy day, you are manually patching a hacked phpBB because the owner customized so much of it that you can't just upgrade their forum....

    I tend to ramble, but my point is, you won't make it very high up the ladder in the CS/CE world without the ability to code, it is a fundemental skill.

  • Experience Helps (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dJCL ( 183345 ) on Saturday July 29, 2006 @11:30PM (#15808939) Homepage
    I don't have more then a half dozen courses of post secondary education( I know the stuff, or can learn it, just not in the normal post secondary environments - and found that I don't need to).

    I also have over 6 years of experience, working my way up the chain of tech support. I'm now a server admin and general troubleshooter for an organization that supports over 3000 desktops, 150 servers from Vancouver to Angola, with 9 techs.

    I didn't get the job for my education, I got it for my experience. The 4 years that I put in while most people were in college have earned me a larger pay increase on average then the techs I know(both in and out of my organization) have earned from 4 years in college.

    I know someone is going to say, it will matter in the future - years down the road they will make more then me. But 6 years ago, I was told that after 4 years I would be making less. Don't buy it just because they say so.

    Besides, the work is rewarding and I enjoy it, so I don't really care at this point.
  • at bigger companies, at least.

    Most of the larger corporations will have salary bands, and where you end up (i.e., the gross salary they offer) is a function of variables such as the type of job, years experience, difficulty recruiting and EDUCATION.

    So at a larger corporation, you may end up at the lower end of a salary band, doing the same job (and perhaps better work) as your peers but for less pay. It's just the way bigger companies are run; standardised as much as possible across the board.

    Smaller compa
  • You sound like a clever guy. I sympathise with your plight of having the skills but not the qualifications. I couldnt get a job as a coder on the basis that I had no CS degree and no 'commercial experience' despite having written several small apps quite easily, and sailing through all the 'aptitude tests' people would set. I had to get a bottom-rung IT support job, despite being a fluent C++ coder.
    Most employers have a brick wall when it comes to self-taught people, so why play them at their own game? Why

  • I did it. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ocbwilg ( 259828 ) on Sunday July 30, 2006 @04:36AM (#15810053)
    It's not impossible to do, but it does take a lot of hard work. First, learn everything that you can about what you want to do, and expect to start low on the totem pole. If you lack a degree or certification, then resume experience (or having good contacts) will be your only hope. I got started professionally in IT in the years just before Y2K, so everyone was always hiring, and I got a job as a PC Technician through a "consulting" company that did staff augmentation. After a couple of years and numerous assignments I was able to demonstrate competency and a wide range of technical knowledge, and began getting placements as a junior-level server admin. I continued working and learning, yadda yadda yadda, until I started getting more senior-level jobs (like as a consultant on large Exchange migrations, etc). If you work hard and learn everything that you can, you will continue building useful resume experience. Working at numerous jobs via consulting companies really helps here. If you keep at it you'll eventually be able to get that cool sysadmin job that you want. I've worked for organizations ranging from small nonprofits to Fortune 50 companies. At the moment I'm the senior engineer for a small company with an IT staff of eight people and make about $75k (in central Ohio). Granted, that's not riches beyond your wildest dreams, but for someone with no degree and no certifications who was largely self-taught that's pretty good.

    If your goal is to get into development or some other more specialized area, then the barrier to entry is much higher. You might want to consider working on some OSS pojects to build experience and get your name out there. What I have found in life is that degrees and certs really only demonstrate a basic level of training and competence. Once you have the degree/cert, you still are fairly useless until you have accumulated some experience working in the real world. Some people are able to accumulate the experience without the degree, and as long as they can get past pre-screening for a job (where HR usually weeds out people who don't meet the paper requirements) then they can usually do quite well. That's why consulting companies are a good place to work, as their customers rarely ask to see anything other than experience. But if you have neither experience nor a degree/certs, prepare to start at the bottom and work your way up. Usually it's faster just to get the degree.
  • You could win big in the lottery, almost as easily.

    I've *got* a BS in CIS, and my resume shows jobs back to '89 (I leave out the stuff before that, because it wasn't in Unix), and I've been looking for six months. "Oh, sorry, you don't have C+-script in Aunt, Commix, under Frunix 12.4, and 5 years of Orabase SQLiposuction (released four years ago), we've got no interest in you."

    mark, software develper, Unix/Linux sysadmin, software configuration/build/release management"
    • Dude. You have an ugly website with links to NUDIST organizations, and you can't figure out why you're unemployed?? Sometimes it seems like Slashdot is a portal to an alternate reality...
  • A well-connected friend managed to find work close to home
    in the Subj job. Being near home (& contacts) made it seem
    OK, even if the job involved a good bit of "DP" work.

    It can still be who yhou know as much as what, I guess...

    So, maybe "network, network, network" is the best advice.

    (This guy used to be involved in local cultural exhibits,
    after doing informal, on-the-spot investigative research;
    maybe his generalist nature also helped him land this job)

    Or maybe the logic was: Hey, if you can understand Ph
  • I'm a high school drop-out with a 2-year liberal arts degree from a community college. But I am also a self-taught programmer since age 10. And I'm the Chief Technical Officer of a small but successful company. Two friends of mine started the company 10 years ago and I joined about 8 years ago when they decided to do everything online rather than via phone/fax. At the time I was the only tech guy in the company; now I'm in charge of the IT department.

    Even before this job, my lack of a degree never hurt me.
  • I certainly hope that you mean you can't build a proper program in C++ with 100,000 lines of code or some such. Sysadmins need to code. They typically do it in higher-level languages like sh or perl, and their programs are typically less than 500 lines, but there's a million little things that need to be automated in a sysadmin's job. Office automation is the single most important application of sysadminning. It's why they pay us the big bucks (heh).
  • Judging candidates by college degree is an obsolete practice from a bygone era where few people were truly educated. At some point, before I was born having a degree was apparently the key to wealth, health and success. Now days, nearly everyone goes to college, and the value of a degree is much lower than in the past. The most promising people learn what they want and go to work - just like the most tallented athletes leave school early for the pros.

    If you don't have the right degree or don't have one the
  • Computer professionals need to grow up and act like truly professional positions in other fields. That includes degrees that are relevant to the work at hand, testing and licensure.

    None of these trends have really started whole-hog yet, and they may never if technology workers don't grow up.

    There's a reason ROI is crap in computers -- computer "professionals" typically aren't as professional as they'd like you to believe, until they have pretty high-level jobs at very large organizations. Small companies
  • Bachlors of Fine Arts - my first technician job I worked with three other very smart geeks; one had a zoology degree, one a filmwriting degree, and another was working on a Poetry degree. Regardless, we've all made careers out of computers and love it. You'll need to start at the bottom (phone or desktop support) but it can be done and rewarding, I've loved it. Oh, and I can still paint on the side and even sell things here and there.
  • Where I work, two of the best programmers we have do not have formal qualifications (ie degrees) yet alone CS degrees. They are excellent resources, really world class, but they came to us having established their track record and _real_ experience already so they could prove their worth the moment they hit the interview.

    In my job, I hire people from time to time. When scanning dozens of resumes to find the dozen or so I will read carefully, no degree is almost a disqualifier. Why? Well mostly we hire young
  • I have been working in IT from about 1994. I have worked as a Unix admin, Win admin, Network admin, project manager, IT manager, telephone support, field tech, application support analyst, and a few other things I am sure I am forgetting. I even worked freelance with my own business for a while.

    While one does not need a degree to do an IT job, a degree helps one get the job. Remember, chances are your resume' is going to be seen by HR first. HR generally makes out the job descriptions. If the job descriptio
  • I got my BA in Psychology, but during college I took a job doing crappy phone tech support for a few PC OEMs. I caught the programming bug but finished by Psy. BA anyway.
    I got into a company doing entry level GIS mapping stuff as an analyst, and gradually taught myself Perl until I was writing scripts that made my job easier. The right people noticed and now my job is writing Perl scripts for the entire project. I also am getting paid a decent salary because I had a BACHELORS DEGREE period. However I'm sti
  • Judging by the team I've found myself on since taking a new job (more money, sunnier climate), there's plenty of work out there for people who want to get into computers. Knowledge optional.

    HALP!

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