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?"

Comments

Not in this economy.

[FoolishBluntman]

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

Re:Not in this economy.

[neko6]

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

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

Re:Not in this economy.

[iwan-nl]

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:Not in this economy.

[evilbessie]

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:Not in this economy.

[Rysc]

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.

Experiance

[iVasto]

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.

start small

[splatterhead]

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

Re:start small

[dunkelfalke]

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

[unlametheweak]

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:start small

[Fallingcow]

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.

Yes, but

[afidel]

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.

My company explicitly does not care about degrees.

[alanfairless]

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

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

[GrpA]

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

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

[PenguSven]

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

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

[TooMuchToDo]

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

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

[Kjella]

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:dead. end. job.

[tyresyas]

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

[Davidis]

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.

Re:Don't think so!

[Skye16]

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!

[ScuxxletButt]

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.

Re:Don't think so!

[Instine]

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.