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IT Job Without a Degree?
adh0c writes "I have been lurking Slashdot for some time now without registering and I don't think this question has been answered yet. Is it possible to get a good IT job (assuming that there is such a thing), preferably a sysadmin position, without having a BS or other degree? From browsing the job postings on Monster and such, it would seem that everyone wants university papers. Is there hope for computer enthusiasts who didn't go to college?"
Since, there are lots of people who have the degree, I think that you will be in bad shape to compete against them.
Without a degree, the only way to really get a sysadmin job would be a few years of experience, certifications, and some good recommendations/connections.
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
There's no way you can start as a sysadmin without having the degree, but there are other ways. I'd suggest starting at a lower level with a company that will pay for your certs, get your MSCE, CCNE, etc and work your way up.
I'm the senior network administrator for an S&P 500 company and I have some college but no degree. I do have a ton of industry certifications, but I only got those for employers who asked for AND payed for them. Of course before I got my first "real" IT job I had already owned my own PC company for 5 years and volunteered for a number of different schools and charitable organizations so it wasn't like I went in with zero experience to show on the resume. I also started near the bottom as a deskside support guy. I think the only way to get in today without any formal education would definitely be to work a helpdesk position. Personally I would look for a midsized company because if you show good initiative, hard work, and some smarts it's a lot more likely you will move up from within. That's what happened to my junior admin, he had been stuck at the helpdesk level at a number of very large companies but within 2 years of starting with my company he was advanced because he showed all the traits needed to be a good sysadmin.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
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
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.
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
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
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. :(
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
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
Of course you can. I left High school 2 years early, got a diploma (dunno what that equates to in the US?) and now Im contracting in an unrelated discipline (Diploma in Network Engineering, working Web Design/Development). And before someone mentions $$ - both by previous and current contracts are six figures. I was somewhat lucky, but I am also living proof you don't always need a piece of paper.
What is...?
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.
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.
You can have a proper understanding of computers with out going to a University. It just takes more dedication and willingness then the average person has.
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.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
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.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I worked in the IT field for 8 years before moving. When looking for a job after moving, I was willing to take a wide variety. I applied for a front-line tech support position, and was denied to be considered because I didn't have a degree in CS. I had done support my first year out of college (I got a non-technical degree). I since moved on to other things, had my MCSE and CCNA and such at the time. And with 8 years experience and an MCSE, the HR department refused to forward on the application to the hiring department because it didn't meet the minimum requirements. That's why it's required. So many places will not even consider you without it, and there's nothing you could do to change their minds because the people making the initial filtering selections have no idea what is required for the position, nor what the words on a resume mean.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
The important part of all your replies is TIME. 10 or 15years ago the number of people working in IT and the proportion of them with a CS degree was significantly less. Also take into account the amount of people who are encouraged to transfer to IT. The number of university graduates in CS increases every year. In the current market getting a job without a degree is almost impossible. Unless you have experience. Getting experience requires either contacts or a DEGREE. You can only show what you know once you get to an interview. With the shear amount of people who think there good at IT out there every job vacancy has hundreds of applicants. Certificates show you know about the systems involved while a degree shows you know the theory. This is in principle the only way to be sure is to interview. So while you can get a job without a degree its better to go for it. As if you don't you will be competing with people with 10 or 15 years experience on you which you will never catch up on.
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...)
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.
And here I thought that college was just a way to prove you know how to spend an exorbitant amount of money to have someone who isn't actually in the field teach you something you could learn on your own with outdated equipment and concepts.
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".
hmmm....
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.
Because you can - or because you should?
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?