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)
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since, there are lots of people who have the degree, I think that you will be in bad shape to compete against them.
My problem is the inverse one. I have a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science from a respectable scientific institute (app. 10% of our MSc graduates are recruited by Google each year), but I can't find a Software Developer position. Alas, nobody wants to take in someone without experience in this economy - nobody wants to invest in the shaky future. I've seen many job listings with "Bachelor's degree a plus", but the experience dominates.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:4, Informative)
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:Not in this economy. (Score:5, Informative)
If you are smart you don't need the piece of paper to indicate such. It may take you a little longer to get moving upwards but experience is really what they want and you only get that by doing. If however you are not able to convince others you have a brain then get a piece of paper as this will help you.
I don't have a degree (in fact dropped out during my second year), but now work for the IT department of the university I went to, and I like to think my prospects for the future are good. But it did take a little while in a shitty job to get some experience to get this far.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not in this economy. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about who you know.
They call it "networking" but I dislike this term as it has a well defined technical meaning.
I got my first job because I knew a guy who recommended it to me and mentioned me to those who later interviewed me.
I got my next job because a co-worker from my first job told me about a position, handed over my resume and gave me a nice talking-up to the people doing the hiring.
He got his job there because someone he knew in school recommended him.
Do you see a pattern here? In an uncertain world it's hard to know what to believe. I've seen people with great resumes, claiming experience AND education, who couldn't do the jobs they were hired to do. I've seen people with no degrees and no experience excel. How do you tell the difference between the two when you're doing the hiring? You rely on the advice and recommendations of people you trust, i.e. people you've already worked with. In this down economy the tendency to go with the safe bet will be even higher.
Knowing people helps you get a job. It's not absolutely essential but it really, really helps.
Re: (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' f
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Since, there are lots of people who have the degree, I think that you will be in bad shape to compete against them.
I look for sneaky, greedy little shits. I find University dulls humanity's natural feral instincts.
That said, I've met some wonderfully devious graduates so I don't discriminate.
You need to look into their eyes for glintiness if their CV turns out to be genuine.
Re: (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 experien
Experiance (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (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 pl
Re:Experiance (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually prefer non-university grads when I am hiring. I Got burned too many times with grads that tooks computers because of there is money in IT but they are not actually interested in computers (and therefore not interested in learning more )
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 seri
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You get maybe 100 CVs. You have 5 interview slots.
If all you've got on your CV is 'I have a cool qualification' then yes, I'll assume that you're in it for the money and bin it.
If you have lots of experience out of work, have played with Linux, your first computer was a hand built ZX80 *and* you have a cool qualification then you might get as far as interview.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Best route is, as a previous poster suggests, is to learn by yourself (networking is the thing!) join a small company and sysadmin for them. As long as you know more than the owner, can manage the boss, and know how to find out answers you don't know quickly you'll do well. Beware though it will be high pressure: it's a small bus
dead. end. job. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you really want to be a computer janitor? It's a good part-time or summer job but should only be a whistle stop on your way to CS degree or other useful education.
Re:dead. end. job. (Score:4, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Informative)
anecdotal evidence does not qualify as scientific evidence
If you are very good, you will excel without Uni. Half the reason you go to Uni is to make your mind work in a certain way. It's like doing lateral thinking questions of trivia. After a while you get good at it.
You do math questions your brain conditions it self to think in a particular way. You cannot replace that by reading C++ in 24h
There are exceptions, but the rule is
Re: (Score:3)
Yes you do, because you have to get past Hr - and they aren't.
Really? Are you saying that there are people out there who were born with the knowledge to be nuclear physicist, engineers, or doctors?
You think that's a typical or representative situation?
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)
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: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: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: (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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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%.
Re:start small (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (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 rout
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: (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 fam
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well partly true, but the question was about a sysadmin job, not a software development job. Sysadmins probably would need to write small shell scripts or whatnot, but they probably aren't going to be designing and building major new pieces of software. Rather, they will be configuring, deploy, and administering software that has already been built. It's a different skill set. And even in the real of software development, 99% of the developers out there will not need to ever design a new language or a n
Re: (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
Re: (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 li
Re: (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
Re:start small (Score:4, Informative)
From what I've seen, and it might not be true everywhere, but people want to see your on-the-job experience. They basically want to see that what you did in your last job is the same as what you will be doing in the new job. And they mean last job, they want you to have experience and they want the experience to be current.
A degree or diploma or certificates are all probably enough - if you've got the experience. None are good enough on their own. The last interview I did the rest of the panel were really blown away by this chick who had no formal education at all, but plenty of experience.
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)
Re: (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
Yes, very much so. (Score:5, Interesting)
I never finished my degree, yet I have been able to pursue a computing career without it being a roadblock.
My present role is as an engineer at Google.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The other route these days, Buy a Mac, invest tin he iPhone dev kit, study hard, write a killer iPhone game, ....... profit. 8)
Re: (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.
My company explicitly does not care about degrees. (Score:5, Interesting)
We've had good results with simply giving out actual trial programming tasks and comparing the results of several programmers.
Degrees don't seem to be a strong predictor of usefulness.
Incidentally, we're hiring right now.
https://spideroak.com/blog/200810280100 [spideroak.com]
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.
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.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
For a candidate who has a lot of experience and references, it's less of an issue.
I advise that the best thing to do if you don't have a degree is not to list your college level education at all. If you list that you have some higher education but didn't complete it,
It's a little harder but you can find a job. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are typically two reasons someone will employ you without a degree.
1). They want to get the best skills without paying for them.
2). You have sufficient experience that no-one reads your resume far enough to notice you've never been to college and wouldn't care either way, or you present extremely well at interviews.
I'd say work on (2) because companies that focus on (1) tend to be bad employers, although not always. Sometimes it's just employers who realise the value of the skills you have, not the paper you paid for that claims it.
GrpA
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. :(
Yes... maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
It all depends on a lot of things, of course! Do you have any experience? What is your work background? If all of your experience is customer service at Best Buy, then you're probably not going to have much luck, going in cold.
You've got several options, none of which are easy.
You've got plenty of options... good luck!
--brian
Volunteer (Score:3, Interesting)
I do have a colleague whose first job was right out of highschool at a local AIDS charity, ended up in the regional office for a while, now he works at some hosting firm for pretty decent money
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:Without education, you'll be a poor computer te (Score:4, Informative)
I've had conversations with people that have a "proper CompSci education" and they couldn't hold an intelligent conversation about programming with a monkey.
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.
Temp Jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Get temp jobs doing computer type jobs for small companies. Show that you shine and youll be the "Whizz Kid". Even if its data entry or something. Your first few jobs might be a bit boring but the cunning plan is how you write your CV/Resume. That data entry job suddenly becomes
"Worked in the IT Department assisting with data collection systems and acted as first point of call for members of staff requiring support".
That'll act as a stepping stone for your next career move and before you know it you will be away!
N.
Haven't had luck finding a job with no degree (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't really afford an ivy league 4 year college, and I had to leave community college before my first year was done due to an illness in the family. A few years later I went to a local trade school, that was accredited, in the tech and IT field. I learned a good deal, even though I knew a certain amount already of what they were teaching.
They offered a Associates Degree program you could do, after you graduated, online. This was not covered in your initial tuition cost or factored into any student loans you got, so if you wanted the degree program it would come straight out of your pocket. Long story short, I couldn't afford this program, still can't.
As for certifications, I trained in what they called the C.E.T program (computer electronics technology). Not really IT (that was a different class path) but focused on hardware repair, PC repair, etc basically all the shit you need to be the local tech support in an office or "The Geek Squad". So I could get by with just the A+ and if I really wanted to look good on paper, the Net+. On the plus side, I aced the course that taught you about the A+ cert, so I got a voucher for one-free attempt at taking the test (it's like what, $150-200 normally?) Needless to say I still have the voucher. Why? Well the A+ textbook they gave us to study is a huge book, and as the professor explained not all the stuff we covered in class and other classes would be on the A+. For example we stuck with Windows 2000 mainly as the OS of learning. We never covered XP, Server, etc which were the big thing at the time (2003-2004). So I never took the test. If I failed, I'm out the one and only free voucher. If I fail and attempt it later, that's money out of my pocket. Money I don't have, at all.
So after I graduate I got six months to find a job before I gotta start paying student loans back. The school had a job placement option which was practically guaranteed. They never found me a job. I looked myself. Locally all places want a degree, or 3-5 years experience even on Entry Level jobs.
4 years later I'm still unemployed, and my student loans that were $3,500 I owed in summer of 2003, are now over $15,000 due to interest rate and non payment.
Yea if it were bad enough a normal person would break down and take a shit job at Walmart or your local McDonalds. Sadly I am not able to stand on my feet for more than an hour or so without getting extreme pain in my lower back, ankles and feet. Not just pain that makes you think "damn this is sore, but I gotta tough it out for 8 hours then go home". It's pain that is like "holy fuck, if I don't sit down in a minute I feel like my bones in my feet are going to shatter". (Let's not get into seeing a doctor, that's something for a whole other discussion).
So while I could easily work say, an office IT/tech job where I'm not on my feet for 8 hours minus a lunch break, I can't fill store shelves at Walmart, even part time, without the absolute need to sit down and rest every hour or so.
Luckily I have family to fall back on, other wise I'd be homeless, starving and not posting on
I knew going in, degrees matter. Sure they don't really mean squat in the "real world" but when it comes to a job, the more good stuff you have about you on paper, matters. Sadly, I just could not afford to get a degree. Couldn't pay for it out of my pocket and couldn't get any more student loans at the time (long before my dues went from 3k to 15k).
Get a degree if you can. It's a hassle, it's just a piece of paper, but that piece of paper can make the difference between you saying "So, your cd rom drive is acting up?" and "Would you like fries with that?"
Comment removed (Score:4, 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: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure who you are addressing this to. I have a bachelors and a masters degree. Mine are non-technical. At the time I applied, I had a BS and MCSE and CCNA and 5+ years of experience. The HR department refuesed to pass my application on to the hiring department (I presume IT, but for all I know it was a customer service department) because I didn't have a degree in Computer
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.
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.
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.
The degree is just an entrance ticket... (Score:3, Interesting)
For people with zero experience. Degree, Certs are the tickets to pass the screening and interviews.
Say two people, one with degree and one without. Both have zero experience, and I only have time to interview one...you do the math.
But if you get some experiences, like self employ, or volunteer, or some recommendations and connections that can bring you to the Interview room, degree is not a must. As long as you get the ticket...
The interview would play an important role. Make sure you are prepared. Don't try to play smart and think the interviewer is stupid, that just says that you can't work in teamwork and can't communicate. Try your best to demostrate that your are passionate in the field, and is a quick learner.
Knowledge does play a role but not a top factor. People are most likely looking for those who can communicate well, and quick learners that can upgrade oneself from time to time, especially in IT field where speed of technology changes are blazing fast.
After you get the job. The degree and cert is a past. No one cares about your past history.
Some people learn a lot in the degree (say they might have participated in extra-curriculum activates, or simply means they learned how to interact with people and do teamwork), some people learn nothing and wasted 4-years just on WoW. The HR and interviewers all know this fact, but if it's still better than nothing.
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.
I did (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually got a job as a sysadmin and was making 6 figures without ever making a degree in any related field... however, it all depends on what you know and (pardon me for saying it) how good you are. I was able to pull it off because I grew up in a household where my father worked in the computer industry (as a Salesman) and literally brought minicomputers home for me to play with. I spent my whole childhood programming, fiddling, and hacking, and developed an incredible intuitive grasp for computers and what makes them tick. I followed that up by going to college and flunking out of everything by spending all my time in the computer lab learning everything I could about UNIX and Networking back in the early nineties, just before the Internet hit big.
However, even then it took a lucky break--I was working in the college computer center as an assistant to the chief systems engineer on campus when he got fired. Since I was the only hand on deck who could do his job, I got to do the job (for peanuts) while this state institution tried to hire someone. After three search committees failed to find someone qualified willing to work for what the university was willing to pay, they gave me the job officially.
For what it's worth, I did eventually get a degree... a B.A. in Philosophy concentrating in Religious Studies, followed up with a Masters in Theological Studies. But that was for me, and hasn't had any impact on my job prospects.
So... I guess the short answer is, it's possible, but you'll need a lucky break at some point. And I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you've got the skills to make everybody ignore your lack of degree.
Always read it as "Degree or Experience" (Score:3, Interesting)
The degree requirement is there for a couple of reasons. It weeds out the people who are truly and completely unqualified and it demonstrates a minimum requirement for someone with little or no experience in the actual work force.
Every job I've had for the past decade "required" a degree that I don't have. If you bring the experience to the table, the degree requirement isn't even discussed.
Now, having said that, I do wish I had a degree and I encourage anyone who has the time and wherewithal to get one -- not necessarily in CS or engineering -- even history or literature. Because I do feel like I have missed out by not having gone through that experience. Every now and then I'll hear somebody mention something and I have to go wiki it and get a quick primer and then, if it sounds interesting enough, I can learn more about it on my own. A solid university education gives you a nice broad exposure to a lot of things that you don't have time to get to in the work force.
I did the military instead and I swear I don't know how anybody grows up without either college or the military.
It's still possible, but it may take a while (Score:3, Informative)
Unless you are well connected (a good network), it will be difficult to jump into a sysadmin position without a degree or significant prior experience. You may need to start in an entry level job and pray that you move through the ranks quickly. Alternately, and perhaps a better way for the enthusiast, would be to document all of the significant projects on which you've worked, and then seek out volunteer positions with non-profits. The non-profits will (most often) be more concerned about your skills, and since you won't be paid, they have less to lose in taking a chance on a non-degreed person. The non-profits will then give you those experience items on your resume (like a list of jobs--people perspective employers may call for references).
In any case, be sure to structure your resume to focus on your technical expertise, rather than your employment history. Start with a list of major projects and IT skills, then employment history, and finally education (if you have any degrees or certifications of any type). When preparing to interview, be sure to have stories and illustrations ready that demonstrate your level of skill, and the complexity of the environments in which you have served.
I landed my first two full-time IT gigs without a degree, but I started in support positions. Over time, I went back to school and earned a degree (in business management with an IT emphasis), mostly as a "just in case" degree--in case I ever needed to apply for another job, since degrees were starting to become a litmus test. In time, that degree served me well, and helped me to parley my way into some better positions.
So, it can be done, but it can be a long road.
Entrepreneurship (Score:4, 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: (Score:3, Informative)
That's not completely true. You can also do well going to a trade school instead of college.
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:5, Informative)
Seconded. I dropped out of high school my junior year, got my GED, immediately started working for a web dev firm doing sysadmin work. 10 years later (Just turned 26) I own my own professional services/hosting firm. Don't let anyone lie to you and say you need a degree, for what you lack with paper you'll just need to make up for with effort.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you don't have the paper DUE to a lack of effort! Not that I would know...
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:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do you live in a van down by the river? (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's gonna hire you if you're the kind of person who did phone support?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
According to USA Today, 20.4% of farmers have a 4 year degree and 90% of farmers are self-employed and the middle half of farmers earn from $766 to $1382 a week in 2006. College degrees and income are in line with the r
Re:Of Course.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the country and how snobby the company is. There are plenty of smart companies hiring autodidact people, but they just have to prove their credentials through other means, and will be tested harder at interviews.
Personally I work as CDO without any degree, but that is because I've studied at the highest IT education in Denmark where it is common for students to quit before finishing the degree because they are offered 6 figured salaries (in dollars).
On the other hand, I turned down a job offer from Google, because their mentality there is such that you can't have a career there without a Ph.D.
So if you want to get hired as an autodidact, either work you way from the bottom, or get involved in open source and write some really awesome code that proves your proficiency.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 th
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Informative)
I think the big thing a lot of people seem to forget about college is that it forces you to jump through hoops. Lots of them, every day. Tons and tons of hoops. Hoops you wouldn't otherwise give a damn about, but you do it because you have to.
Proving you can do this, and do it well, is pretty much exactly what I need to know about you. Guess what? Most of any modern job is doing just that; jumping through hoops. Sometimes the hoops in question are complex, and it'd be nice knowing you were able to manage your way through those at some point at a University.
Basically: given two people of equal knowledge, one with a college degree and one without, barring any personality concerns, I'll pick the university degree over the person without one any day.
If you won't even go through the effort to prove to me that you are willing to go through a bunch of bullshit for something you want, then why should I trust you to go through the bullshit that will show up as a matter of course in any job for a paycheck? What is there to tell me that you won't just coast and accept said check and mail it in, day after day after day?
It's not fair to say that you're like that, because it's very possible you're not. However, when it comes down to it, I'm not willing to take that chance.
(Sidenote: I'm not actually a fan of bullshit and jumping through hoops, but to say they don't ever happen is a bit naive at best. Just saying...)
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: (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.
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't think so! (Score:5, Informative)
So you're under the misguided assumption that University actually teaches you important skills that are used in the pursued career?
Listen: college didn't teach me anything I didn't already know about software engineering. Mostly it just took up my time and my money. Showing a willingness to jump through those hoops for the end goal (a degree) was apparently enough to interest my employer, who hired me as an intern. I learned more working on the job in my first 2 months than I did the entire 4 years of University combined.
Add to this was our University president, who at commencement stated "Remember: an undergraduate degree does not mean you are educated. It simply means that you are educatable."
The whole point he was trying to get across was that we didn't go for an undergraduate degree to learn the subject matter so much as we obtained an undergraduate degree to learn how to learn.
The thought process is "teach a man to learn, and he will learn his entire life".
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: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:Don't think so! (Score:4, Interesting)
The majority of the worst programmers/developers I've worked with had degrees, the absolute worst had doctorates or masters degrees in computer science or math. Most of the best developers and architects I've worked with were self taught and had no college degree. In fact, there was one person that we interviewed a while back that I really liked. But three of the interviewers felt like you did, no degree, no job. We discussed many times whether we should hire him over some other people that had Masters degrees but lacked experience. In the end, we hired the person without the college degree and that individual was the best thing that ever happened to the company. He met every deadline, had motivation and imagination like no one else I've met, could solve nearly every problem creatively and very cleanly. Had an incredible ability to interpret what you really want in a spec as opposed to how you describe it. Looking at support tickets, most of what he put into production had very few problems except where a business requirement was misunderstood but otherwise, you could trust that if he implemented the functionality, it was ready to go production when he said it was. That individual understood more about technology trends, design patterns, algorithms and data structures than some of my own college professors. In short, he was one of the best hiring decisions we made for that company and one of the best programmers I ever met. The company later also hired the individual (who had two master in computer science and mathematics) that it wanted to over the same candidate. The company had to let him go about a year later for lack of ability to complete assigned tasks and those he completed often were not reliable.
If anything, while I really don't care whether people have a degree or not (for business type software development positions or most types of heavy-duty server application development); I will pick the one with more experience regardless, depending on whether they can demonstrate the requisite skills and personality. I usually end up interviewing people for positions where they must be technically sound (much higher than average technical abilities) and be able to work very well with people because they will need to jump through hoops (as you put it). Otherwise I have no real bias. If the candidate can demonstrate his/her ability to perform and survive in the work environment, then I'll hire the candidate.
Me, I don't have a degree either. After 12 years I have worked up to be a software architect for one of the credit bureaus. Interviewing for the position was very difficult. Our technical ability must be top-notch to succeed in this company as well as our people skills. I'm accustomed to start ups. This is actually the first large corporation I've worked for and I can say, jumping through hoops is an understatement. But I do fine.
I have been attending college part time. All my schedule could afford is one or two classes per semester and it has taken me 7 years to get finally get an associates degree. I stopped there. I work long enough hours at work than to leave and attend school for 3 hours two or three times per week plus homework. It was beginning to affect my marriage and my ability to keep my skills sharp at work. I don't learn on the job, I learn at home. So I stopped attended school.
You likely wouldn't hire me for that. A lot of others that only look for paper also wouldn't. But can pull my own weight and have outperformed many of my peers wherever I've worked. I also have produced or played very large role in launching many products into the market place that have succeeded very well. But I likely wouldn't be happy working for a place that is so superficial that if you don't have a degree, you don't get a job (for the type of work that I do).
Having a degree does not translate into knowing how to perform your job well. Of course, not having a degree does not mean you can't do can't job well, either. I suppose all things being equal between