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Ask Slashdot: Finding an IT Job Without a Computer-Oriented Undergraduate Degree
An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to what many individuals think, not everybody on Slashdot went to college for a computer-related degree. Graduating in May of this year, my undergraduate degree will be in psychology. Like many undergraduate psychology students, I applied to a multitude of graduate programs but, unfortunately, was not given admission into a single one. Many are aware that a bachelor's degree in psychology is quite limiting, so I undoubtedly have been forced into a complicated situation. Despite my degree being in psychology, I have an immense interest in computers and the typical 'hard science' fields. How can one with a degree that is not related to computers acquire a job that is centered around computers? At the moment, I am self-taught and can easily keep up in a conversation of computer science majors. I also do a decent amount of programming in C, Perl, and Python and have contributed to small open source projects. Would Slashdot users recommend receiving a formal computer science education (only about two years, since the nonsensical general education requirements are already completed) before attempting to get such a job? Anybody else in a similar situation?"
I don't see why not, such a degree, as long as you have the time and money etc. to do it, it would be nothing but benificial.
And since you seem to take a interest in it, you should glide right along.
You like hard sciences but applied to psychology? Why not social sciences, or the arts? Shoulda thought of this before applying.
I dropped out of college (was in the CS program, but barely completed the early requirements), and I have a really good gig as a senior software developer. It takes a bit more to get your feet in, but in general, most places I've seen could care less about the degree if you can get the work done.
...there are too many other people out there with the appropriate degree.
Really?? How many of us really thought that everybody here had a computer degree? I thought that there was a huge diversity of us. I thought that everybody else did too.
Out of millions of readers, did even 10 think that we all had computer degrees?
testing out my trending skills
With a psychology degree, you entryway into the field of computing will probably be user experience design/testing. If you really do know some things about coding, the developers on the project will love you - too many "designers" have no idea how difficult it is to actually implement the pie-in-the-sky concepts they draw up.
If you are good at what you do and live in a place that can evaluate a person based on their skills and not what's on a piece of paper you can do very well for yourself. If not, your career is going to suck.
Why not apply at places like blizzard to help make games more rewarding for players.
In my experience working in IT is much, MUCH worse than having Computers as a hobby and writing open source software.
Most IT companies have no culture and passion and crap out the same product over and over.
both of my roommates (econ and psych) got programming jobs within the last month because they just spent all day every day for six months after they graduated learning as much javascript as they could. They're both personable, non-insane looking people, and when they applied for those sorts of jobs, they had to submit a bunch of code to be evaluated and were chosen because they could actually do the jobs and because they had a lot to show for themselves, i.e. portfolio.
If you can do the job and do it well, you'll be able to demonstrate that fact without a special document verifying you paid someone else to verify you are at least capable of completing said task whether or not you already have :)
I never finished college. It just wasn't for me.
A few years ago I landed an entry level support position for an IT company that services health care providers.
Just last week I took over as the "main man" in the company.
Maybe I got lucky, I don't know. But here I am, a college dropout, managing a small IT company of 7 employees and the only person I have to answer to internally is the owner, who pretty much sits back and trusts that we will run the company properly.
Yes, I very well could run it into the ground. But he has faith in me, and I like it there.
I myself and some of my friends all got undergraduate degrees that were not "hard science" degrees, and we still managed to get IT careers. How? well in two cases, it was by starting at the bottom and working our way up. If you are lucky you might spend less than a year in a shitty grunt position like taking help desk calls. I paid my dues, and made the extra effort when appropriate to show that I had the skills needed to advance. I can't describe to you how awesome it is to put in your notice someplace after six months, and have them begging you to stay, only to tell them your new salary, and watch their spirits fall as they realize they can't keep you.
In another case, it was who-knows-who. Before you write this path off, ask yourself, do your parents have any connections at any decent companies? Do any of your friends parents? Networking really can be extremely helpful. even if it doesn't work out today, it may come in handy at some point down the road.
You could emphasize the fact that key aspects of solving problems with computers entail understanding customer requirements, building user interfaces, and providing technical support, all of which relate to understanding how people think.
You could also look for working situations that are the intersection of psychology and computers, like AI or cognitive science-related applications.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Get a Job in your degree field, which I assume you've rejected already.
Find somebody willing to take a gamble, or who needs your existing skill set more than the other.
Go back to school. Get your card punched, find a job.
Of those, the third is the least risky to get what you want.
I would go for the degree, to be honest. The economy being what it is, I have some doubts that potential employers are willing to entertain the idea of a non-IT major in an IT major slot. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying you are not capable of doing IT, nor that you are not good at it (some of the best programmers do not have an IT-related degree), only that the current bias is one of fear / a safety strategy when it comes to employers.
One thing in particular, I will note, is your lack of experience with C++ / Java. While it's not required, I do recommend becoming comfortable with those languages. Throw in C# if you want to do MS work (always a money-maker), some web languages (just HTML / Javascript / etc., almost a requirement these days), and perhaps study some Windows / Linux / Unix administration books. If you go the O'Reilly route, it should cost you about $500 to get all the books you'll want (O'Reilly being the standard; if you don't have a zoo, you need one).
I am John Hurt.
I've met a handful of programmers who had a liberal arts background (i.e. Classical studies) who did programming at a non-tech company. For instance, working in the back office of a retailer or a bank to code up some internal desktop apps, web apps, or create-remove-update-delete business apps. For these jobs, knowing trade-type of skills (i.e. some experience programming especially in the "trendy" technologies) I believe is adequate. However, these jobs may not always feel very rewarding, what some computer scientists might call "code monkey" jobs... As a computer scientist, I would say it'd be very good to get a degree in it to strengthen your understanding of the theoretical background, which will help you to get a deeper understanding, helping you to become a smarter programmer and likely open the doors to more interesting projects/positions.
Yup...I am still in this situation...what I am doing is undergraduation in law which is equivalent to J.D. in U.S., being in a country like India I am still thinking if I could get any legal job in any IT company. So, I am thinking if anyone could help me get a decent legal job in an IT company in India or around the world!
Otherwise you will just be exploited and never make it up the career ladder. Sad but true.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I decided that felonies were better than a college degree when I was younger, and ended up doing construction for the last 10 years. Now, I am regretting those choices I have found from a few friends that stayed on the right path that my best bet would be getting a few CompTIA certifications to get my foot in the door and taking it from there.
I work with a linux admin, now an admin supervisor, who just earned his BS in Psychology. He's an excellent admin and probably an even better supervisor.
It's actually really easy to get a job in web hosting as a linux admin. Learn linux/cPanel, other web hosting stuff, then apply for a linux admin job at a web hosting. Your background in programming will help, too, as we do a lot of scripting day to day.
Build a portfolio with what you have accomplished, give examples of skills acquired and show what your contributions to the small open source projects were. A letter of recommendation from someone in the field you are looking in doesn't hurt. If you have the time to do an internship or donate time and effort to other small projects to help build your list of accomplishments in the meantime and show a commitment and passion for the field. An easy add-on is an Oracle certification or something similar. They may not have alot of weight with those who know how easy they are, but they help build a case for getting you that all important first interview. Remember there are alot of people looking for tech sector jobs who DO have those degrees and they are having trouble too. So the important part is standing out from the crowd somehow. If there is a particular position you want, research it and know exatly what they want, and retool your resume and approach to show your strengths that align with their needs. I know there is nothing new here, and it applies to any field or job really, but the basics of job hunting apply. Keep trying and be prepared for alot of "NO", if you can even get an answer.
Getting 'into IT' is done by getting experience, an interest alone will get you nowhere. If you get this experience through a degree or through jobs or through contributions to open source projects is a choice you make yourself.
Myself, I did not have any computer experience having a masters degree in Chemistry. But, during a PhD in chemistry I chose a subject that meant programming for 80-90% of the time. The four years gave me a good basis for programming scientific software, and I've been doing that ever since in various fields.
A huge number of programmers are people in your situation. Perhaps not hard nosed computer systems engineers and developers, but people who use programming to solve problems in their respective fields.
So, my recommendation is to apply to jobs where your knowledge of psychology and programming skills can come together to provide value. Companies that do standardized testing have huge piles of data they want to churn through. Advertizing firms and marketing departments have data crunchers. Those people can code. They also know about more than code.
Just like you.
yet other places want CS and there IT sucks as they get people with loads of theory and it's so bad at some colleges that you can learn more in a 2 year tech / community colleges then in a 4 year CS.
I've spent the last 15 years in IT performing various tasks, from programming to server admin.
You can do what you're looking to do. Here's the problem: Someone, somewhere, has to be the first to take a risk and hire you to do this.
Once you have experience, you're on your way, because IT is still an area where experience and excellence speak louder than degrees or certifications. (although that is starting to change)
The problem is, with the influx of people from around the world, offshoring, and new grads with legitimate degrees every year, who would take you? If you can find that person, great - you're "in". So the key is to network, get yourself in front of people, and highlight your development experience. I guarantee your resume won't get past the HR Drone filter looking for a specific degree. So you need to pound pavement and press flesh. It's what I did for my first 2 jobs; after that it was easier. It will also make your subsequent career easier to navigate.
If that sounds like a bit more than your interpersonal skills and contact network can handle, stretch your graduation day a couple of years out and take the classes you need to get the degree. It will make the task much easier.
I don't have a degree of any kind and managed to have a rather successful career. I taught myself early programming and PC maintenance in the 80s, and UNIX in the early 90s with Linux following shortly thereafter. One continual drawback was the lower starting pay and drudgery tasks, but I quickly demonstrated myself and overcame that in every position held until I was the one in charge of the IT Dept.
I am willing to contemplate that I am an unusual case, and that you might not be able in your life circumstances to start on the extreme low end of the payscale.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Quite a few startups would interview you based on your merits alone, and not really care about a degree. If you can prove you can work and deliver code on deadline, why should they care?
I hire lots of "IT professionals" and our company is growing leaps and bounds. A long time ago I learned that anyone fresh out of college with an "IT" degree isn't the kind of person I want on the team. I would MUCH rather have someone who is self taught and took the initiative to learn the basics themselves. People with degrees tend to think they "know it all", yet I've seen more IT graduates who couldn't even setup an email account, much less do anything complicated. The best employee I've hired used to be a welder, he knows more than any "Cisco" certified tech I've ever met and his attitude is awesome.
Why is IT always considered the dumping grounds of careers? This is why the field is so messed-up; there is no regulation.
In your example alone you mention how anyone with a high level psychology degree is protected even from B.Sc graduates. It would be unheard of for someone outside the psychology field with no credentials to just come in and start lowering the bar; on quality of work, overtime, general working conditions and wages. Yet this happens ALL THE TIME in IT.
I see plenty of people with no proper background make simple mistakes they shouldn't. Or worse, argue about something that is completely wrong.
Why can't I start practicing medicine, prescribing drugs, charging for advice on the law, auditing financials, etc, etc. I promise to self-study really hard. I'm not saying someone can't learn these things on their own. But then how do you distinguish someone who has the fundamentals and someone who doesn't: that's what credentials are for. This is the way it is in EVERY OTHER PROFESSION. Until people stop treating IT like a dumping ground and inject some regulation and standards it will always be looked down upon.
As an IT manager, degrees are all well and good, but what the potential employee has accomplished and understands is most important to me when hiring. A prospect with a BA, code examples, and a good understanding of the real world will get the job 9 times out 10 over a green CS grad. Being self-taught goes a long way too, as it demonstrates that they're capable of growth of their own accord. I also tend to favor certifications over (bachelor) degrees, as I've learned from experience that you get way more out of a Red Hat cert than you do from a couple Linux classes at a state university.
I double-majored in criminal justice and psychology - my true intention was to go into law enforcement but I had always been interested in computers and technology. The second semester of my freshman year I worked for the university doing network and IT support for students in the dorms. That work experience opened my eyes and I decided to pursue a career in IT. I started out by working for a local phone company to get some soft skills, then slowly moved up to being a helpdesk support person, then helpdesk manager, then into server and network administration.
It is true that most companies look at work experience and not degrees - at least that has been my perception on both sides of the interview table. Many of the good IT folks I work with have degrees in accounting, business, and marketing. Some companies, though won't hire programmers unless they have demonstrable experience in the languages they need.
Essentially I would just make sure you get hands-on experience or take a few classes at a local community college in whatever area of IT interests you. Even a certificate goes to show that you're serious about educating yourself and that you can do the job.
"This food is problematic."
I'm a working software developer and I have no degree, only a hell of a passion for coding and the ability to learn on my own.
It's possible. There are plenty of places who will be looking for cheap junior software devs. The work won't be terribly interesting, but they're excellent places to jump start a career.
A recruiting agency like Volt is an easy place to start. You don't pay them a dime. I recommend grabbing some certifications – with a lack of experience or degree, anything can help get your foot in the door to an in-person interview. Even ones from Brainbench will help, and they're pretty cheap.
Hey man,
I've been in the same boat. I graduated in 2007 with a degree in Communication Studies (liberal arts) and about ~6 years of experience writing code and web apps freelance. It was HARD getting a job at that time for everyone, but I got turned down a hell of a lot because I didn't have the CS degree. A few years later I was looking for work again, and in my experience about 50% of the jobs I was qualified for had one poison-pill: "BA CS or equivalent" is what it usually said. The "or equivalent" was never taken into consideration.
So I have two recommendations for you:
1) Go get that degree. Having dual degrees in CS and Psych is a pretty cool twist and has great implications for management, with awesome fallback potential should you need to just get a job as a codemonkey to pay the bills
2) Put your open source contributions and C code on github (where feasible)
The reason I mention github is because I see a LOT of places that want to see actual code commits. They'll look to see what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're testing it (automated testing/agile practices/etc. are big these days) and even what your commit messages say. Even with code commits, be ready for some fairly tough technical screening questions over the phone and with some companies, even tougher interviews.
Bear in mind, I'm speaking strictly from my experience in working as a software engineer and writing code. If you're looking to do sysadmin work instead, which can be every bit as challenging, you'll probably want to find different ways to express your awesomeness to a potential employer. I'll let other more experienced sysadmins comment on how to stand out when looking for a sysadmin position (something I'd be interested in hearing about myself).
Good luck to you!
My bet here is that some Slashdot posters are going to enter this conversation and tell you that you don't need a CS degree to be successful. That you might even be able to get away with taking a few formal classes, working on some more open source projects, and to keep trying. That you can somehow salvage your situation and make something of yourself in this field.
I believe this to be true, but only in an outlier sense... statistically your current situation does not put you in a favorable light to be hired. There are surely people who got into computer science through unconventional methods - but there is always a common driving force behind their efforts. They don't end up being successful with computers by accident, they have a long history of psuedo-study that has given them the ability to be competitive in the space.
To put it bluntly, why should I hire you? You've got a soft-science degree which frankly many people don't respect. People with Masters and PhDs are working in bookstores right now - and you have a basic Psychology degree. This shows a lack of planning on your part that I would hold against you on an interview... and to be clear: I do a lot of interviews. You would never make it to me as our filtering process would eliminate you along with the bus drivers who are also applying for jobs with us (that actually happens, pretty amazing).
The economy of the situation is clear. There is a huge swath of unemployed people right now with more skills than you, with more experience than you, with better training and a more appropriate degree (lots of EEs are unemployed for example). So it's going to be really tough for you to sort of slip through the cracks and get a job. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.
If you are truly interested in getting into the field, you should consider that at no other time has it been easier to be an independent developer. Work for yourself, make your own projects. Make some games for the apple app store (forget android, so hard to make money there) or something, and get cracking.
Buy a one way ticket to India.
I have a GED, too, and about to start a job with another company in a similar salary range.
"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning." - Mark Twain
It's been my experience that education only gets you so far. Education might get you in the door, but a good portfolio and knowing what the employer needs will get you in a lot quicker. Of course, YMMV depending on which job you're applying for.
At the moment, I am self-taught and can easily keep up in a conversation of computer science majors.
Talking is not the same thing as doing. I can hold my own in a conversation about playing a piano, but I can't build one, and I can't can't play rachmaninoff's piano concerto no 3.
One of the double-edged features of computers, coding and modern IDEs is that anyone can sit down and write a program, and have it work. This is good in one sense- it SHOULD be easy for people to use computers as a tool to do whatever they want. But it is bad in the sense that self-taught developers have all sorts of bad habits, that they generally don't even know are bad.
Techniques and concepts for building modular, maintainable and scalable code are important (even if the words themselves have been used so often by bad management that they have almost lost all meaning), and are typically missed by self-taught programmers who are more interested in getting the program to work than worrying about the architecture.
Having said that - quite a few of the IT and CS courses floating around are so bad that you are better off not doing them. But if you can find a good course, I seriously recommend doing it.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Not quite the same thing: my undergrad was physics, and I did non-CS things for a good many years. I got my first dev job on the strength of a 3D package I wrote on my own, and the fact that no other Mac guys could be found (this was quite a while ago.) Now I have no problem getting work, but the first one is the hardest.
The main advantage to a formal CS education: sounding like a CS guy. I don't instinctively know all the types of sorts or their O()'s (I think of it as being upfront about having to look stuff up), the names of patterns (almost never need to), or UML (never needed it yet except for HR.) That sort of thing will keep you out of google, but not out of a job.
Being able to interview is by far the most important thing: you'll eventually get past HR somewhere, and then you have to impress someone who knows what they're talking about. We've hired some awful losers (didn't have the gift!) because they could sell themselves. Pursue contract work: the bar is lower, the pay is much better than the average postdoc, and it looks almost as good on a resume. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you should have no problems.
I was in the same situation about 15 years ago. You should find a good head hunter, or someone who can assist in your resume because that is what will be necessary to get the initial interview. I had no trouble getting a job by demonstrating what I knew in the field despite the fact I had no CS degree. I was active in various projects and was able to show a current set of skills that someone will pay for as well as potential, self motivation and a true hunger for learning. Your biggest obstacle may be getting in the door so that is why the resume will be critical.
Now, I am in a position where I work in a major corporation, and manage people (from a technical aspect) from top universities with CS degrees. Believe me, when it comes to hire someone. I would rather take an individual with no CS degree who has a good understanding of the basics, is motivated to learn is a self starter over any CS major. From my experience, I have only seen a CS degree serve as a good foundation, which could certainly be self taught. Everything else is up to that individual. This is critical if you are working in the industry for a top company as things change rapidly. The languages you learned in college will have been of no advantage. It's the ability to think analytically and apply it to everyday problems that is really the basis of your future success. There are far too many people in this industry that just do and don't think about the context of the problem. Psychology certainly lends itself to that.
Although hiring seems to be picking up these days and opportunities exist. It's still an employers market. You had better know what is on your resume inside and out and don't get discouraged. I'm sure you will find something and flourish. Good luck!
The best DBA I know is a fellow who only has a Grade 12 education and who was a sheet metal worker/sign maker until he was 45, when he discovered computers.
12 years later, he's one of the best Oracle DBAs I've ever met, and in high demand.
One of the best designers I knew over the years was a Philosophy major at Northern Telecom.
A university education teaches you how to learn, and how to identify what to learn. Within 4-5 years, anything you learn from university programming courses is outdated and obsolete, except for the basic theories of algorithm complexity and your texts of "standard" algorithms. The odds are even the languages you use to program will change within a decade.
So don't sweat it -- point people to your OSS work on your resume to prove you can do it, and let them judge for themselves.
Just don't be surprised if it takes a while to find a good job. It can literally take a couple of years in the current economy to find a "good" job, so be prepared to do some pretty tedious and hideous grunt work, or to get by at a tech support call center for a few years.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Without the computer science degree, you will have to have solid proof of your abilities, probably best done via having a showcase of your work available (your contributions to open source projects will help if they are substantial, otherwise maybe you can set yourself a project, code it, and open source it). You may find it useful to undertake a course in programming, just to get the certificate. You need some OO languages on your CV - Java, C++, C#. With Java you get the jobs by knowing the common APIs used as well as the language itself - Spring (or Struts), Hibernate (+JDBC), JUnit/JMock/EasyMock, Wicket, and so on.
However many companies will not look beyond the fact your resume/cv does not include anything CS, Maths, Engineering or hard science (particularly physics) related on it. You may be able to get a role in testing, and then prove your skills within that company to move up.
how do you feel about tech schools?
As they are not college and they do give more skills then college?
They don't set in a class room for 4+ years before getting a job and they have apprenticeships that tech real job skills.
They also have on going education that is not just go to class for 2 years to get a masters or BA or PHD.
Contrary to what many individuals think, not everybody on Slashdot went to college for a computer-related degree.
I don't know where you got this idea, but in my experience with IT there's actually more people without computer related degrees than with.
Whether you get a computer science degree is really entirely up to your own interests, and economic circumstances. It'll certainly help you, but it's not required. The people I see without degrees are (very generally) less knowledgeable about the field than those with degrees. There's many exceptions, and there's no reason you can't learn everything on your own without formal schooling. Not everyone is a good candidate for self learning, so that's why I suspect the degree holders have an edge (as a group) over the non-degree holders. You sound like you're relatively good at self learning, so this likely doesn't apply to you.
So should you get the degree? Nobody can answer that but you. I will tell you that you don't really need it to get a job. It'll help you a little in starting out at a better job, but after that it doesn't matter terribly much after a few years. If you like school, or have the money (rich parents?), or don't mind more debt, then more school might be a good idea. If you're tired of accumulating more debt, can't afford it, or are tired of college, then I'd encourage you to find a job in IT.
AccountKiller
It might be the bottom rung, but with a good attitude in the right company it's not a bad starting point and you can sell your psychology degree as being a useful skill for doing dealing with the more problematic callers. The initial goal is to get off the front-line and into second line support; take an interest in the day to day running of the company's own IT setup, find things you like doing and volunteer to help out whenever you get the chance. If you can convince your employer that it's worth their while to start sending you on training courses to improve and expand your skill set, then you are on your way; once you have a few of those under your belt you don't need the CS Major anymore as you've got real world, hands on experience instead. If they won't, then use your newfound job experience to look around for somewhere else that will.
After that, you should hopefully have and idea on where you want your career to go. Maybe specialise a little and aim to go beyond the CompTIA stuff most helpdesk types have and go for certifications from Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, etc.; whatever you like doing and have an opportunity for. Perhaps you want to go into software development; look into new languages (C/C++/C# would be a good language set to add to those you already have) and associated certifications. Maybe go into team management, or project management (PRINCE2 or similar).
Finally, don't sweat the paperwork and don't be afraid to switch employers! The former can be useful and can open doors, but if you've got the skills and a proven track record, it can also be largely immaterial, the latter is often necessary to move your career onto the next step and can often get you started on a new area of expertise.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
If at all you can afford it, go for a Masters in CS. I did my bachelors in Dairy Science (don't ask) and decided to get a Masters in CS. Of course, I had to finish many undergrad courses to complete my pre-reqs and it took me a year to do that because I started with zero exposure to anything CS. It took me another year to finish all my grad. courses. I have never looked back ...
Time to make this decision is now. Good luck.
Everything on your resume is a datapoint- nothing more, nothing less. Speaking as an employer, what I'm looking for is things that tell me whether you can do the job, and how much knowledge/experience you already have. So, the fact that you completed a bachelor's degree tells me something. The next thing I'm looking for is some demonstration that I don't have to teach you basic development or IT skills. If you're going for an IT job, then certifications are great resume bullets. There are classes out there you can take that won't set you back for as much time or money as two more years of formal schooling. If you want something more development-oriented, then I'd be looking for something verifiable. A BS in computer science is one such thing, but it's not the only one. Work experience with one or more references is, of course, another. Contributing meaningfully to a well-known open source project is another.
Nobody else will be saying this, so I will
Marketable Degrees DO NOT INCLUDE Psychology.
Know it.
Learn it.
Love it.
The fact that you were stupid ... AND that is exactly what you were ... isn't our fault.
You can make a fantastic living freelancing, but there is no way that I'd hire you into any programming or computer engineering type position. Perhaps helpdesk would be the best you can hope for in a larger company.
Be certain to tell all your soft-degree friends of the diffuculties you face. Heck, I think a Polysci or history major would have an easier time finding a job than you.
If you want to be hired from college, get a math, physics, engineering degree.
The sad part is that folks who get those types of degrees generally are not risk takers, so they will be stuck working in a cube farm for most of their careers.
Self-taugh means diddly + squat ; unless you are the lead of an extremely popular and useful F/LOSS project.
I'm not saying that psychology is a worthless degree, far from it, just that nobody will hire anyone so stupid as to think that a psychology degree makes them ready for a computer industry job in anyway. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Sorry to be so harsh, but perhaps if someone was before this point, you wouldn't be stuck now?
How can one with a degree that is not related to computers acquire a job that is centered around computers?
You don't. "Lots of people" with IT degrees are not able to get generic IT jobs, you will not either unless you're incredibly lucky, maybe your future boss graduated from the same place with the same pysch degree, or your best friend works there and is a reference, or parental connections, that kind of thing.
You need to get a job centered around computers at an employer centered around psych.
I had a pretty intense electronics and RF communications background, a long time ago that got me a "tangentially computer-ish" job at an intensely electronics and RF focused company. Eventually I went back for my formal CS degree (corporate tuition reimbursement, back in the "cheaper tuition days" so I didn't pay a cent)
Just a week or two ago there was a /. story where I mentioned my anecdote that most "psych research testing" I saw and heard of is done on or with computers now. Those profs and researchers would kill for a programmer/IT guy who actually knows their language and can intelligently cooperate with them to gather, transfer, and manipulate their data. You better hit the stat analysis programs hard, like R and S and all that. And work on your skills with graph generation.
Your sales pitch at the interview will have to be something along the lines of "so... you run psych research studies... I might not be a certificated expert on cloud based microsoft solutions, but I know psych and what you're trying to do... wouldn't it be nice to talk to a IT guy who speaks your language instead of their language (assuming this isn't a multicultural interview, in which case that language would be kind of awkward, better rephrase that). Make sure to talk in their terms about their work about a quarter of their time... too much and they'll think you're an unqualified guy trying to interview for a PHD position, too little and they won't get the idea that you live in their world.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
In my experience, a computer science degree is not needed to work within IT, what mainly counts is your skills. That being said, a lot of companies weed out applicants based on education; however, most are just looking for a degree of some sort, not necessarily a degree in computer science. Put together a portfolio of your work and be able to discuss technical issues when they do the techie call and you should be fine.
I'm not sure what else to tell you, but if you hit the job market and see what's out there, it will probably be more informative than advice from people here. I worked at a time where you didn't even need a college degree as long as you knew how to use a computer. Things have become more difficult in the last 10 years since the tech crash, since then HR generally weeds out people without degrees, but I don't think they've gotten to the point where they require a computer science degree. Most students in the computer science field won't have the skills that someone interested in computers and spends their own time working on them will have. And since most college is just proving that you can learn, and since most graduates need to learn about the actual job they take, it shouldn't be a big deal.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
My entire tech team is full of people with liberal arts undergrad degrees (Classics, Philosophy, Humanities), and equally non-techy advanced degrees (International Policy, Journalism). You need to find the right team to connect with. Look in non-traditional spots for jobs; interesting non-profits who need generalists, thinktanks who could use your research skills as well as some coding skills, startups who need your psychology chops to help with marketing and your coding chops to build what they manage to sell. That being said, make sure your self-taught programming is top-notch; audit some courses and find some mentors as you go along to help you not only write beautiful code, but understand the architecture.
Overall, you just need one first employer to bite, and everything after that is built in to "or equivalent experience"
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Job hunting is all about the filters, whether Monster.com literal ones or HR dumping resumes in the trash based on an arbitrary set of written requirements from some one else. I've rarely seen a position that states a specific degree is a requirement, unless you're trying to get into a highly technical field (engineering, medical practice, etc). A degree (of any kind) plus relevant experience is usually sufficient to make it past HR and get the interview. In this case, highlight all the open source work and everything you've been doing, and downplay they KIND of degree you have. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions in the interview about why you chose the degree you did, and what that gains the prospective employer, but you're already 50% of the way there.
Good luck with the hunt!
I majored in history, and worked in IT for five years. The best IT department I worked in was at one of the larger and more famous US universities where two people who never even finished college (myself included at the time) a philosophy major, and a medieval studies major. We also had an EE major, and a Math major. I eventually moved onto into the corporate IT world, then burnt out gloriously. This friday I finally put my two weeks notice on my hopefully last IT-related job in order to start something new in the language field.
So yes, you can get into it, I just don't recommend it. In the academic world you can get away with having more of a merit based qualification, in the corporate world, not so much.
Be aware that anything that started out as a hobby that you now do as a job, you will end up hating, and will eventually be unable to do as a hobby.
So, the dirty secret is that most IT employers know that degrees and certificates mean absolutely nothing. The bottom lines of them is that the individual was able to memorize the required information long enough to pass a test. Most do not retain that knowledge for longer than is required...and nearly all students do not practice what they have learned long enough to gain any true experience. There are exceptions to this rule, but far-and-few between.
When IT managers are not directly doing the hiring, HR departments are often asked to include the phrase "blah degree or equivalent experience" in the job postings. This opens the door for those with X number of years doing hands-on work and no degree to get past the submission process. But it often comes down to who actually hires the individual. Some bottom-line oriented companies will hire droves of fresh graduates for no other reason than they are cheap. It is quite a bit harder to get someone with 5 to 10-years experience to want to work for <30k/yr.
IMHO- I would rather hire someone with 5+ years working experience than a fresh BS recipient. That being said, any BS degree is often sufficient to meet a minimum job posting requirement...at the end of the day, it comes down to how much you really know and how well you can articulate your skills.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I graduated with an even less practical degree (English/Creative Writing), and also didn't get into grad school. I also wasn't able to find a job in publishing or anything else related to my degree. I had a lot of computer skills (mostly sysadmin) and wanted to find a job using them, and also had no luck with that.
This was more than a decade ago, but I think I'd still recommend the same strategy I went down to a temp agency, and filled out all the skills inventories. I took the typing test, etc. And I got a job answering phones, typing letters, working weekends, etc. This was at a small company (15 employees), and I eventually got promoted when the "computer guy" quit. This gave me some decent computer-related experience to put on my resume, and got me taken seriously when I applied for jobs.
My temp job wasn't fun. There was a lot of crap work and overtime. But it got me started, and my next job was much better.
You could also look for working situations that are the intersection of psychology and computers, like AI or cognitive science-related applications.
User interface design? Although given recent trends a patent lawyer would probably be better at navigating that minefield. Lots of modern user interfaces are somewhat indicative of abnormal psych so you could travel that route too. What mental illness makes people think Microsoft is ready for the enterprise, etc?
Take some accounting classes, especially forensic, you might "synergy" it all together into investigation work?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Pay for the cheapest web server from a place like linode or elsewhere. Get everything installed, setup, and design yourself a simple "about me" website. Make your resume on that website and direct potential employers there.
There's nothing like demonstrating that you know the content to land you a job.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Seriously. It'd be nice to have a UI designed by someone who actually knows how we work rather than how the computer expects us to work. Larry Wall is a linguistics expert - he took that skill and wrote perl.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I grew up with computers (the early days, think Atari ST, Commodore 64). In order to reconcile my self taught skills with the real world I took a 9 month tech degree course and have not looked back. In computer related fields the most important thing is "what have you done lately". I might also suggest you get some experience in more commercial packages like Java or .NET. I am not saying they are better than python or anything of the sort but you want a job making money you go with tools with a high business market saturation in my opinion.
What you need to do is find jobs that will give you experience in the job you actually want.
It might be things you already know how to do, which means the job should be easy, but you can put on hard experience showing
you know what you're doing and work in this field. You do that and climb up jobs until you get the one you want.
If you are willing to put in huge hours to impress people it doesn't matter what your degree is in or even if you have one. Degree or no degree, what's really valued are entirely company-culture things. You don't even have to be all that smart. Just be a good technician, be loyal and enthusiastic. Getting a job may not be that easy for anyone these days, but it sounds like you have enough experience to start anywhere. Keeping a job and building a career is another problem. If you have the intestinal fortitude to put in extraordinary hours, be enthusiastically interested in understanding the Goldberg machines and the mess that other people have created, and deluded enough to plan to stay for a lifetime at a single job (or single company) - you should be fine and will eventually become astonishingly well-paid, comfortable and arrogant. That's what you're aiming-for, right?
Yes, actually studying mathematics and computer science in undergraduate school would have been the correct choice of major and to built a solid foundation of understanding of the underpinnings of the occupation, but nobody in the business world really cares about that. They just want people who work like dogs and are loyal to their masters. No degree required.
I'm a big fan of college degrees. Academically and socially, I probably learned as much in college as I did in high school. That being said, experience is what employers want. If you can do the job well, then you deserve the job.
Being able to "keep up in a conversation with computer science majors" means nothing; I can keep up conversations about black holes and relativity with some physics major friends - talking about something isn't the same as truly understanding, yet you can still have intelligent conversation.
Unless they had some real talent or worked on something in a significant way, I generally wouldn't hire someone without a computer-related degree for computer-related work. There's not a lot of reason I'd really have to, either... there are lots of people with CS degrees looking for work. Argue it if you like, but having the degree gives some credibility; being able to apply what you've learned gives a whole lot more. That's not to say there aren't exceptions.
What's the down side to having a psych degree AND a CS degree, apart from some more time in school?
Contrary to what many individuals think, not everybody with a Masters in Computer Science got their bachelors in the same field. Why don't you go for a Graduate degree in CS? You'll have to take a lot of catch up courses to meet certain prerequisites. You claim to be interested in "hard science". CS is much more than learning Technology. I know many people who learned to program without school. Far fewer go further to study Computational Theory, algorithms, and data structures on their own. So, go ahead. Apply for grad school as a CS student.
You don't need a CS degree to be a professional developer. If you have time and money to blow, then sure, why not get a CS degree. Most of us dont have that luxury. There is a lot of useless theory taught in CS that is not directly applicable to the types of solutions that are needed. I see many CS grads who don't have the skills we need to create business web applications. To much theory, not enough practical experience. The majority of developers I have worked with in my career do not have CS degrees, myself included. Keep writing code, and read Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell. If you want to be a back-end developer, read a book on Data Structures and Algorithms, and learn how to use a database. If you want to be a front-end web developer, learn html, css, and javascript. Basically, decide what you want to do for a living every day, and learn it. There are many, many software shops that dont care what your degree is, or even if you have one. If you show up to work everyday, write good code, and finish tasks on time, you will do well.
Apply for a job as a Project Manager. It's actually a good fit for someone with a degree in Psychology, same withe Sales. Customer Support is another obvious but far less desirable alternative.
I'd highly recommend working part-time at a helpdesk, phone support if you must, tier 2 desk-side if you can get it, while working on the computer science degree.
Far too many "IT people" are running around in the trenches without the necessary education to do it well. Far too many people with the IT education have never worked helpdesk, deskside, or WAN support.
If you want to have a real understanding of what it takes to do IT effectively from the user, to the servers, to the enterprise, that experience is ABSOLUTELY critical.
Academics talk about solutions that any 2-year tech could tell you are unworkable. Grunts do things that any academic could tell you could be easily automated or the need for eliminated. Educated pragmatism is the secret to real-world success.
Note: I test systems for a living, and I've met MANY computer science PhDs who are completely incapable of designing and running even a small system effectively and efficiently. When these guys are done building their multimillion dollar systems, I tear through them like a hot knife through butter.
You can do it, but you've chosen the hard way to do it. Like you I also have a non-science degree and I've been successful in IT. Without the science degree you will absolutely have to be better and work harder. As already mentioned you will also need someone who will take that first risk on you.
I strongly suggest you start working on a BS in comp sci, even if it's part time. That will help you get your foot in the door.
As to others ranting about "soft" degrees messing up IT, this past week it was my "hard" degreeed teammate who destroyed our sudo files on 12 production servers not once but twice in two days. It was my other "hard" degreeed teammate who had changed the root password on the same servers but didn't follow process to update the password in our vault so we couldn't login to fix the sudo problem. A hard degree will make it easier to get a job, but some of the best admins I've worked with don't have hard degrees and some of the worst do.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
I earned my bachelors in Business Management. That led nowhere fast, so I went to community college and took some IT Security courses. Some of these course were geared toward certifications. Getting those certifications helped me get my first IT job.
I've read and believe that certs help get your foot in the door, at least in my area. Practical experience then adds to the resume.
Starting in the IT field generally means low pay. This, added to the fact that companies have a hard time bumping your salary that much after they have you, and you are left with corporate migration every few years. Get as much experience at those beginning jobs as you can and ask for more work than is given to you. Continue getting certs, as they are not just for getting your foot in the door.
There is nothing employers hate more than "training people for their next job." If an employer hires Americans with no tech background, then as soon as those employees get up to speed, the employees will take their valuable experience, and leave for better jobs.
By contrast, and H-1B is something of an indentured servant. No matter how much the H1B is abused, it is very difficult for the H1B to leave and work elsewhere.
So an employer is much safer hiring a foreign workers.
If you doubt this, watch the hdnet, Dan Rather, documentary "No Thanks For Everything." There is a segment where actual job ads, from an h1b website, are examined. When employers hire h1bs they clearly have much lower standards than when the employers hire Americans.
The company I work for has lots of openings, and we recently hired a guy with a PhD in Nuclear Physics but no CS background to be one of our testers. The qualifications for the job involve some Python knowledge, and the ability to think.
Actually, we'd probably hire someone in Dev without a degree in CS as long as they again met the basic qualifications of knowing something about the relevant programming language (for us, C, C++, and Python), knew CS fundamentals (data structures, analysis of algorithms, etc), and had the ability to think.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
I'm a doctoral student in industrial & organizational psychology and work at a start-up. I'm also technically inclined, but by no stretch of the imagination a serious programmer. Good psychologists can set behaviorally based seeds for machine learning to increase accuracy from the get-go. Psychology & machine learning are very complementary, as are the statistics skills needed to make sense of big data - I would suggest you ensure your statistics skills are strong if they aren't already. That's usually not a problem for programmers since statistics boils down to algorithms.
I would expect your chances of falling into a job at hot-tech-company-of-the-month are low, but there are so many small companies trying to make sense of their data that I think you could carve out quite a niche while combining your interests. Best of luck!
I've spent the last 15 years in IT performing various tasks, from programming to server admin.
It is only fair to note that, when you got in, anybody who could spell "I.T." could get an IT jobs. There was an explosion of tech job in the late 1990s, but that bubble has, long since, burst.
The field totally crashed in 2000, and before it recovered, there were more massive layoffs in 2009.
Today, IT jobs are offshored at a furious rate. And the few IT jobs that cannot be offshored, are being filled by foreign visa workers. The IT field may be okay for those who got in at the right time, and now have 15 years of experience. But I think other Americans may be well advised to avoid the field.
Just because something worked for, at a very different time, does not mean the same strategy will work for others.
I've been 'the computer guy' all my life - when I was 13-15, I was volunteering at a non-profit computer repair place that ripped apart donated computers, fixed them, and gave them back to other non-profits like churches and social organizations. By the end of my time there, I was actually teaching weekly repair classes to other volunteers, often 30-50 years old.
Anyways, I'm not meaning to wank off, but when I went to college, I specifically didn't study computer science, because I was pretty secure with my tech abilities, and figured I'd always be able to find a job. I double majored in Psych and Philosophy.
After college, it was a little hard to find a job, but I don't think it had anything to do with my lack of a CS background. I just explained my choice of major at university, and spun it in a positive light. IE "The analytical skills I learned in my philosophy program are directly applicable to the type of complex problem solving needed in IT environments, and in fact give me an edge of 'outside the box' thinking over my CS major counterparts" or whatever.
After I had my first job, college began mattering less and less - employers look more at past experience. In fact, I think it matters so little that I went and quit my job for a year to get a masters in Cognitive Science. No problem finding a job when I got back, and I've since started my own small business IT company that is doing quite well. Point is, if you have the skills, you'll be fine!
As others have said, it's perfectly possible to get a job in IT without the corresponding degree. But if that's what you're interested in, and you're looking at CS programs, why not do both? Apply or start in on the CS degree and simultaneously look for a job in the industry. The fact that you are at least starting down that path educationally might assuage some potential employers who might otherwise look at your move as one tinged with desperation ("Couldn't get into grad school, now hopes we're going to pay him for his tech hobby while he re-groups and looks for another psych program... no thanks!").
I wish I could tell you more about the job environment and the relative merits of comp-sci degrees these days but I suspect they've changed since the late nineties when I got into it. That was the wild west, and employers cared far more about what you could do than what your degree was in. I was already working in IT by the time I started college, and I consciously decided against a CS degree... at the time, the degree programs I was looking at were hopelessly outdated compared to the technologies I was already working with.
I got my degree in English instead, and I've never regretted it. In fact, communications skills have been some of my most valuable assets when competing for jobs. If you have practical knowledge and the ability to articulate it, you're far more valuable in most IT organizations than a geek who may know more, but can't communicate it. So your psych degree might actually prove more useful than you think.
But if you have the resources to go on and get a CS degree also, and you really want to work in the IT industry, then you should go ahead and get started on it.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Either get 'papered' or start your own business.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
With the exception of a few government jobs and higher management promotions you probably won't notice much difference. To make things easier with getting an interview you might want to get certified in whatever your dream job mentions in its description. That said, you should consider using your psychology degree to your advantage. Your diploma coupled with any IT security certification will open many cybersecurty doors. Social engineering detection and data leak prevention are just two examples.
Of course it depends on the job. But if you interview well; if you are smart and can persuade me you're a hard worker; if you can write and speak clearly; if you show me that you can do a good job...then it doesn't matter if you "only" have a psychology degree. What the degree means to me more than anything (this is especially true for post-graduate degrees) is that you know how to complete a long and complex task. The specifics don't matter to me as much as the achievement of having completed the degree. I lead a team of smart researchers, and I "only" have a BA in music.
I have a GED too - and an undergraduate degree in Journalism; and another undergrad degree in CS. I started professionally in the mid-90s, and programming was my hobby long before that. Yet I make 39k, less than half of what you make.
It only goes to show that experience and education do not matter in this field.
Are you kidding? Just read some of the comments and you'll know many never completed college.
I do not have a degree in any subject, yet I have managed to land a technical support/lab technician job and rise to be one of their best technicians/builders within a year. It is possible for someone without a degree to make it in the tech industry, but it will require a lot of hard work and dedication. If anyone is curious, the company I work for is Vaultronics LLC.
And to boot, I was primarily skilled in Cocoa/Objective-C development. Which really wasn't very popular in 2005 when I graduated. "Cocoa? What's that? Did you work at Starbucks?" I eventually got a call out of the blue from the lead tech guy of a very small company in the rust-belt to come up and fix a programming project that had gone terribly awry. The key to me getting that job was that the company was too small for the HR drone to block my path.
You might want to take a look at smaller companies where the first person who reads your resume is a technical person. It also helps if you work with recruiters because they might possibly be able to get you past an HR drone. Finally, I'd say that if relegating the initial tossing of resumes is assigned to an HR person, you might find that if you get the job a lot of other technical decisions at the business might be frustratingly assigned to non-technical people who are least able to effectively make those decisions. So sometimes being filtered by the HR drone is a blessing in disguise.
The difference between a psychology major and a CS major doing software engineering is that when the CS major has someone report a bug in a feature that doesn't exist in the software, they want to strangle the person who reported it. When a psychology major gets a bug in a nonexistent feature, they understand that human memory is a constantly and actively reconstructed process and isn't surprised that the human mind invented a feature that doesn't currently exist.
I was in the same situation about 15 years ago. You should find a good head hunter, or someone who can assist in your resume because that is what will be necessary to get the initial interview. I had no trouble getting a job by demonstrating what I knew in the field despite the fact I had no CS degree.
Sorry, but I feel compelled to repeat myself.
When you got in, anybody who could spell "I.T." could get an IT jobs. There was an explosion of tech job in the late 1990s, but that bubble has, long since, burst.
The field totally crashed in 2000, and before it recovered, there were more massive layoffs in 2009.
Today, IT jobs are offshored at a furious rate. And the few IT jobs that cannot be offshored, are being filled by foreign visa workers. The IT field may be okay for those who got in at the right time, and now have 15 years of experience. But I think other Americans may be well advised to avoid the field.
Just because something worked for, at a very different time, does not mean the same strategy will work for others.
The main thing college and university provide are motivation for people to learn and guidance / direction on what you should learn, but the majority of this is done in your own time. If you have the capacity to motivate yourself to learning these things then you may find university to be an expensive waste of time teaching you things you already know or are very capable of teaching yourself. The one advantage university provides is the certificate that many jobs in the field do not even require any more and tutors who are sometimes capable of showing you what you did wrong. It's also quite possible that the things you spend time learning in University may be obsolete by the time you graduate.
There are many great, free resources out there. Learning does not need to be expensive. Such as: ::maths is always handy for computer science) ::complete degree level courses for free as long as you don't mind lecturers with Indian accents.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses.php?disciplineId=106
Man, your problems probably stem from being a shitty student not from your choice of major...
If so, then I think you need to account for the fact that IT today is very different game.
Go to developer.android.com, download the sdk and learn Android. Develop an Android application and publish it, then you will have some actual experience. There is huge demand for Android now, so that would be a great way to get started.
Mark
I would try one of the big consultancies, like Accenture or Cap Gemini. I do work with this companies all the time, and many of their resources have degrees in other fields, usually with a strong self-taught demonstratable interest in programming. Although not all the roles would be programming (some are analyst, testing, subject matter expert, training, etc), they are all in the industry.
And you'd be wrong on the going for a degree thing. Not in that potential employers are willing to take risks, but rather your assumption that employers are currently interested in college grads with no experience any more than they're interested in novices with no degree. He'll have a hard time getting a job now. If he goes to college and comes out, he'll have a hard time getting a job, and he'll be two years older and a lot poorer.
Agreed on all of paragraph two. If he's going to self-educate, he should look at the jobs offered and learn whatever's in demand. He just needs a first job. Once he has that he'll be able to go out and get a second job quickly.
But right now, he's better of hustling and getting a first job, no matter how crappy, then getting a CS degree.
Getting started before 2001, is very different than getting started after 2001.
I've had a very successful career in IT with only a BA in liberal arts. In IT, there really is no need for formal credentials, the entire industry essentially follows a sink-or-swim model. If you've got what it takes, you'll do well.
The interesting part, is the "got what it takes" bit. It's probably not what you think it is.
For example, my employer is arguably the single most successful IT consulting company. One of the "big 5". We do a lot of different work, in a lot of different industries, with a lot of different technologies. You might think that hiring for all these industries and technologies is difficult - but you'd be wrong. In fact, this Big Time Consulting firm typically searches out smart competitive people, often those with little no technology or specific industry knowledge. We take people who know how to work hard and learn, and then we put them in situations where they'll learn the technologies, and learn the industry, and (hopefully) prosper. The idea that the 4 years you spend in college defines your career is to us, categorically false.
I'm (right now), in the middle of teaching a class of our new recruits how to program in Java. %80 of my class has effectively no technological background. Some of them have engineering degrees, but some also have geography degrees. If my class is typical (and I hear that it is...) then less than %10 of them come from CS type backgrounds. And, we take these people, and eventually - they'll build the next stock exchange, or 911 system, or flight control system on a large passenger aircraft, because that's the work that we do.
Which is all interesting, but ultimately, just one example of how to get started in IT. Strangely, my career didn't follow this path at all. When I graduated with my BA, I went to work for Molson Breweries (dream job for a recent grad!) and focused on their growing Internet and Intranet projects. I was writing Microsoft .asp, but keep in mind this was 12 years ago, so most of the open stuff we love now didn't exist back then. But still, .asp was lame and I knew it, but I also knew that job was the only step I needed, and when I left Molson I had the credentials I needed to get hired elsewhere.
The truth is, that there are a lot of companies like consulting firms that won't care what kind of degree you've got as long as you like to run with the bulls, and there's companies like Molson that will hire you if you've got the skills they need. Ultimately, once you get just a touch of experience, nobody will ever care what your degree is, only what you can do for them.
None of the companies I've worked for, nor the clients I've consulted for, valued a graduate degree in CS any more than an undergrad one. Knowing how to design an OS will not help you one bit when you're asked to design a trading system, for example.
_Am
Look up Human-Computer Interaction. Read the works of Dan Norman, Jakob Nielsen Bruce Tognazzini and many, many others. There are numerous opportunities for people whose primary concern is how users interact with computer applications.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I have had a BSCS for 12 years and I can tell you right now that not much code is being done in the U.S. for much money. Just look at RentACoder, Elance, xcoder, and other sites. They pay about 2 dollars an hour if your lucky. So it is kind of pointless. Even with 10 years of developing code you won't make much developing software in the U.S. If you want customer support or something then it is possible, but that isn't really tech related.
True story. My previous contract was with LPS - Aptitude Solutions in Maitland. One of the top developers there was a long haul trucker who after getting injured on the job was offered cross training. They gave him an IQ test and he scored in the 140s but they forced him to take it again because he was 6'4" 300 lbs and looked like he could snap your neck with one hand like a twig.
After realizing that he wasn't stupid they put him in a six month C class. Not C++, not C#, not objective C but plain old pain in the ass C. By the third month he was conducting the class when the teacher was out sick or otherwise.
So what the hell does this mean?
1) College will never teach you how to program in the real world, not now, not ever.
2) If you get a CS degree but can't program you may find work but it will never pay a high salary until you moved into PM.
3) The demand for natural programmers completely outweighs the need for a degree.
So what do you do?
This part is actually simpler than I thought when I started writing this post.
1) Whether you are a Freshman in High School or someone who has just graduated with a non-CS degree, your best bet is to endure the joy, the pain, the good, the evil that is C. Buy any book on it, download free compilers from anywhere and program, program, program. If you can successfully program seriously basic applications such as a Calculator or a Text Editor without putting a bullet in your head, you may very well be a natural programmer.
2) Pick your poison. I committed to C# in 2005 and have never looked back. Short term contracts for me have been the most lucrative and most reliable and generally speaking pay in the range of $45.00 to $75.00 per hour and usually last three to six months. The longest I went between contracts in the past three years has been about three weeks. I will defer to the Java, C++ developers on slashdot but believe that if you are highly skilled you will be successful in those languages as well.
Try larger companies like Progressive. I know that they have hired many such like you having worked there for over 12 years. Many times they are looking for bright people with different perspectives that can learn.
I'm a network engineer with 30 years of experience and I can tell you that the IT field is experience driven. Mostly, it is those with various degrees that insist that you must have one, but it's not true. In fact, it could even hurt you.
The IT field changes way too fast for the universities to keep up. By the time they have a class set up, the technology is already out dated. The real training comes from the companies that make the products. They come up with the training and sell that as another service, and are not going to just give that to some university to make money from.
There are some companies that will hire and pay more just because you have the degree, but those are run by somebody that comes from different backgrounds than IT. A vast majority are expecting real world results, and you can either produce, or you can't.
When you apply for a job in the IT field, you will likely be given a hands on test. Not just a written test, but a real world set of events. They might hand you a box of parts and say, build a working file server. All the degrees in the world are no substitute for experience, and it is those that pass the tests that are going to get the job.
Google DevOps. Being cross-departmental requires not only diverse technical knowledge, but people skills too. In my experience doing informal DevOps type stuff, a very common challenge is finding ways of making sure group-assigned responsibilities with no owner don't fall through the cracks, as well as being able to write procedure documentation that people can actually read (a low signal-to-noise ratio makes people start skimming and skipping critical steps, for example). This sort of thing requires a basic understanding of human cognitive processes, and the ability to view the situation from someone else's perspective.
Not to mention the ability to interface with management and convince them of the value of investing some technical bandwidth on infrastructure tasks that don't directly translate to new sales.
When I was in undergrad for civil engineering, I looked for a computer related job on campus. I ended up in a doctoral research lab on campus implementing the code that the researchers wanted, but had little clue how to do. I got paid to do what I loved. Later, during a demonstration of some research for some corporate types, one of them asked who had done the implementation they had seen. They hired me away from the research lab. This put finishing my degree on the 8 year plan since I was mostly part time from then on, but was making money, learning lots, and having a good time usually.
A big part of getting a computer job is being able to say you have verifiable experience. Experience you can gain on campus can give you this. You just have to look for it. Going around to the labs, and talk with professors there. Some neat stuff out there. For example, my local four year has a lab just for doing human/computer interface, and nobody in there is a real coder. They might not have funds to pay someone, but I doubt they would turn away someone willing to work for the experience.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Depending on your psych emphasis (please say experimental/cognitive/research and analysis and NOT counseling), you have a shot at a "big data" gig. Emphasize your OSS contributions, any research you did in college, your stats and research methods and data analysis coursework.
In fact, I have no degree at all ... because I was recruited before I could even get one. But the hiring manager was no PHB, and 8 jobs later over 33 years, that first boss is today in my Linkedin contacts. PHB types would not be there.
If you can "do the stuff" and show that you can, a smart manager will hire you if they have an opening. Some will even if there isn't an opening (got one job in the past like that, too). Trouble is, too many managers out there (generally PHBs) don't know how to figure out if you know your stuff or not. And others make hiring decisions to keep department "points" up (someone higher up is tracking numbers of degrees and certifications, not how well the department gets stuff done with not enough resources).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
He was being sarcastic - doh!
Having a degree in maths, physics or electrical engineering is best.
Having a degree in computer science is good.
Having a degree in anything else doesn't add any value.
Ironically, a degree in computer science is not the best degree to work in computer software (unless it's a phd, but then you'd have to find a job that's interested in your specific research subjects).
However, whatever your degree is, at the end of the day what matters is your skills. A lot of employers, especially start-ups, will spend 1 day subjecting you to tests before hiring you. That will be your chance to prove what you're worth.
Having some open-source projects to show-off can help, too.
But the submitter did say something about coding, so I assume that the part of the computer gig they want is coding. In that case the best thing to do is get some experience coding. Read the books on how to create an application, not just be a code monkey. Find people who need code written, and write it. Create more open source software. I see ads for Android and iOS developers. Write some app that utilizes your personal knowledge and skills. iOS is where the PC was 25 years ago. Lean and efficient, with employers needing people who knew what they are doing, not just with the proper degrees.
I know this is easier said than done. For the most part I code when I am paid for it. It requires a discipline to put together a professional product for grins. But that is the point. The employer knows that if you do it for free, then you will do it for pay. Again, a masters degree will probably help in whatever you do, so two years to a masters in another field, maybe three, is maybe worthwhile. But code monkeys respect code.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I won't point out the details, but there are things in your post that apply to me and explains why I have been unemployed for so long. Unfortunately, I have been unemployed for so long that I'm unemployable - especially in IT.
If I knew why I wasn't being hired; let alone just getting an interview, I would have rectified the issues. Instead, all I ever received for feedback was "We're going with another candidate." - if any.
And the few times I asked for feedback, all I got was "You look fine." No one was honest or withheld feedback.
I have studied computer science but never finished a degree. I am a skilled programmer and the companies do want to interview me but they never care to hire me for some stupid reason or another.
Probably the best bet is to try to start your own enterprise.
I'm going to (currently) ask you to (amongst other stuff):
1) Design a simple hash table implementation.
2) Show an understanding of complexity: the differences between lookup times of said hash table, linear lists, trees. Why and when you would use these different data structures.
3) Do fairly well in a pretty tough hour-long programming test involving chopping up a text file and data mining it which goes into what we talked about in (1) and (2).
4) Tell me roughly how a heat pipe works.
5) Tell me roughly how an MP3 works.
I don't care about qualifications and barely look at that on the CV. Experience and some sign of fascination with the engineering of IT is what I want to see. Having said that, I'm in a small company without an HR department...
Why should experience and education matter? It should be about how much value one can bring to the company.
Sig: I stole this sig.
There is absolutely nothing keeping you from rounding up the four or so undergrad courses required for prerequisites by most midstream accredited universities to get into their master's CS programs. Most of the so-described 'analog' math required for a BSCS has nothing to do with the science of computing. So, change horses and come on over!
Now, my current job working with computing in and around rockets has kicked my math ass, so YMMV....
Your so dumb! You need to get tens of thousands of dollars in debt paying for a degree before you can fail to find work just like me!
It's the way this country works! Way to go free market!
This post sums it up.
A degree is reputation. It tells someone who doesn't know you from Jack that you accomplished something, and that what you accomplished is being acknowledged by someone (entity) that you *do* know.
Obviously, having a degree is always preferable to not having a degree, all other things equal. But it is just the first rung in the reputation ladder. Once you have been hired and work a while, you must demonstrate that you can produce, and do so with quality and in a timely fashion, and your peers/superiors will be happy to spread the good news. Even better, they will invite you to join them at other companies after they move on. After a while, who remembers whether or not you had a degree?
Spoken by someone who has been professionally developing software (communications/networking/real-time/OS) for nearly 40 years - with no degree.
Oh, and how do you get that first job without a degree? Beg! (it worked for me )
I also earned my BA in Psychology, fully intending to proceed down that path. No graduate programs wanted me though, which was baffling because I exceeded all the requirements. My fallback was code because throughout earning my degree, I never stopped working in C++, PHP, JavaScript, etc... and I was quite fortunate because as soon as I gave up my search for a grad school, a friend helped me land a job programming for a C++ Windows Mobile app. Kind of a tough gig upon which to cut one's teeth, but it worked. :) These days, I'm moving out of the coder role and more into leadership and management.
You can survive in the tech sector without a tech-oriented degree, but someone has to be willing to give you a chance to prove yourself. Once you've gotten that first job, you will most likely be in the clear. That's how it went for me, anyway -- although it was all just before the recession, so your mileage may vary...
Why do you think you can get an easy degree and then get paid lots of money to work in a tech field? If you don't put in the work, you don't deserve the job.
We're in a temporary phase where computer skills are not considered basic necessities like reading and basic math and taught to all students in high school or before. It won't be like this forever and I believe we'll start to see computer programming taught prior to college-age students, but for our generation, it's too late for this to change. What that means is that the majority of work with computers is done by those who've studied it in school since it's considered easier for someone who knows computers to learn the domain they're programming to rather than teaching a domain expert computer skills.
But people like you are in a unique position. You have domain knowledge in psychology and computer skills. If you can find a position to apply both skills, you'll be more attractive to employers and shouldn't need a CS degree. It will mean that you're more specialized than most programmers, but finding a niche is not necessarily a bad thing if you enjoy the work.
If you know computers as you claim, just take some tests to get some certifications.
Go get a masters in CS, then apply to IBM: pretty soon now they are going to need people who have psych & CS to work with the human & animal simulations. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphic-science-ibm-simulates-4-percent-human-brain-all-of-cat-brain
And if that doesn't interest you, your degree is most valuable in the year or so after you've gained it, until you have experience of your chosen field. If you don't want to study more, perhaps something where you can leverage the degree to gain operational IT experience - for instance something in user interface design. There are consultancies which specialise in this. Look for opportunities which leverage your degree.
Ethics sidenote: When you have simulated a brain and you killall on the processes, have you just done a bad thing? At what point is the cat simulation conscious? And should we be concerned about live animal experimentation? Now there's still a lot we have to learn about the ways that brains work - just look at the recently proposed microtubule idea for memory (can't find the original reference where I read about it, but Google shows a few results), but I think we are on the cusp of the where questions like this matter. Maybe models need aging built in, so that the cat dies a simulated death. And then there's the issue of whether keeping a conciousness in isolation is cruel. Should the simulation have simulated toys? Companions? Food?
with no degree, you will hit a ceiling. If you want to go into management, it does not matter what the degree is as long as you have one.
Fortunately in this case, by the time the OP hits the "any degree, I don't care which" ceiling, the OP will already have one in psychology. But in the short term, how should one keep a roof over one's head while contributing to open source projects to gain experience?
You were already planning on going to graduate school, right? The way I see it there are three ways to get a piece of paper with the word computer on it:
1. Second BS in CS. If you go this route, you might aim for CS program that has a less rigorous option that doesn't require all the undergrad science and math-it'll just bog you down and unless you are going to grad school, probably won't help too much in the job hunt.
2. Community college for an AA.
3. Certificate program at a 4 year school
Where I work, we don't care what degrees or certifications you have as long as you can get the job done and are a nice person to be around. I've found, actually, that one of the strongest indicators on a resume of whether a person will be successful in an interview is the number of certifications on the resume. Specifically--the more certifications they have, the less likely they will succeed in the interview.
We interview for technical skills, and whether you're self-taught or learned them at MIT--we don't care. My recommendation would be to find a similar place and work there. These places would likely tend to be smaller or more startup-y, as a general rule.
If you're interested in where I work, and you live in the Metro Detroit area, feel free to apply:
http://www.workforcesoftware.com/about/careers/
A psy degree gives you a natural advantage for IT at the side of creating interfaces for humans, as opposed to system designers (you know what I mean). Field research, cognitive principles and surveys design is the basis for User Centered Design, the most common technique of UxD.
This profession is also full of self-made people, since there are few schools that directly specialize in . Given that you already know how to program, talking to your web designers and back-end developers will be a breeze.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Before you put yourself through 4-5 years of debt acquisition process they like to call 'higher education', fancy this:
If instead of doing it, you take 4-5 years and right away hit the pavement and go look for a job in IT, without any skills at all, whatever, just come to a shop and say: let me do some documentation for you, I'll do it very very very cheaply, just let me in the doors. Let me do some stupid stuff, that you don't want to do, but needs to be done, and I'll do it really really really cheap for you, just let me work and learn on my own, I won't bother you too much.
Give me a 6 week trial period, I don't even want a single dollar for that time I'll spend fixing fixing your printers, running papers around, whatever you have to do. Try me, I am very motivated and I really want to do this without getting into stupid debt that the country seems dead set at piling on top of me.
--
I bet you take that speech and you learn it and go around the block a few times, in 2 weeks you'll have your first tech related job and in 4-5 years you'll be way ahead: no debt, no wasted time, but 4-5 years of experience, a salary that may not be stellar, but you'll be CLEAR OF DEBT and you'll be rising on that corporate ladder, doing something you may find you either like or not and all of this you'd do on your own.
You can't handle the truth.
You would be scared (or amazed) at how much day to day management is done by ad-hoc (ie sloppy, get it to run and don't document anything) Access and Excel databases/sheet.
The heavy lifting/big money software is done on dedicated hardware and usually has dedicated staff... but at my last two jobs ACCESS and EXCEL allowed middle management to operate without having to bother the software solutions group... plus SSG would take 6 months just to figure out that the business side wants, and then run it through the retarded processes they have to follow furthering the delay.
It you can get to a functional level of VB/ACCESS/Excel then management will scarf you up. Then you can be thankful that you are NOT IT who has to deal with these orphaned, undocumented, and most likely breaking every security protocol in place 'critical apps'.
I was an undergrad is psych myself, though I graduated hundreds of years ago.. well, not quite. But we did use FORTRAN on punch cards when I was in school. Nonetheless, like you, I knew I wanted to be in a tech field, so I took every CS-related class I could find – assembler, numerical analysis, etc. Nonetheless, I’ve worked at HP for several years., two high tech start-ups, and now own my own software consulting company.
Times were a bit different then, but the way I got into computer field was using the skills my degree came with – ability to interact with people as well as understand the tech. Virtually every company in high tech has a need for that – the role is called ‘System Engineering’ (or some places ‘Sales Engineer’) and the job is to be technical resource for sales guy out selling tech products to customers.
Don’t let the ‘sales’ role put you off – sales guys are, for the most part, clueless about what they sell. The only thing that keeps them successful is having a trusted SE who can tell them when they are working on a good deal for the product; or when they should blow off on prospect and move on. And good sales guys will treat their SE’s like kings because they know that, without a smart, tech-savvy SE, they can’t sell squat.
The career path ONCE YOU ARE IN and have proven yourself, is whatever you want it to be. For some reason, a lot of SE guys decide to get into sales, into consulting (actually implementing the products and customizing them for customers after they buy). And some big companies love to make offers to the guys who worked at a company from which they bought some major software. And many do move into development.
So – use the plus of your psych degree – hopefully the ability to mingle and interact with people, be presentable to customers, and as deep technically as most developers – to get into high tech.
And move to Silicon Valley. It’s expensive but it’s the place to be in tech. Meetups every week somewhere, lots of companies looking for good people. Find some that have one or two rounds of VC.. have a tech heavy product.. and need smart technical help for their sales reps. Some companies I’d look at if I were starting out might include Lucid Imagination; Spigit; Microsoft (good training., need SEs.. great on your resume at your NEXT job); HP (not as much as it used to be, but still a great place to have been); Broadcom or Qualcomm (both in So Cal w/ offices here), Maybe SalesForce.com. Of course there are hot properties too like Google – hard to get an interview and harder to get in.. but probably easier for SE than for developer at first blush). I would advise against Oracle, Facebook, and even Apple. All are long term solid companies, but the first two don’t need systems engineers and Oracle is not a good place to learn; the latter doesn’t USE system engineers or sales guys as far as I know.
Good luck!
If you want it bad enough, you'll get it.
But...
You'll have to keep at it 'till you get it. You'll have to be willing to get paid less than others who have a better background. You'll have to stick to it through the inevitable round of layoffs of those around you and may even be subject to layoffs yourself, and when that happens, you have to get right back in there and make it happen all over again.
If you never settle for less than what you want, you'll either get it or you'll find a thousand ways you can't get it, and to pharaphrase Edison, your goal is to eliminate the ways that don't work. You'll be that much closer!
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Well those nonsensical classes will help you out if you ever want to do anything other than program. Also anyone can write code, but you really want to learn design patterns for the language that you are using as well as algorithms. Not all OOP languages use the same design patterns. JavaScript can only use a subset of Java / C++ design patterns. I find so many developers that can churn out code, but so much of it is bad and hard to maintain.
Only 'flamers' flame!
I've interviewed lots of CS graduates and was disappointed to learn that many couldn't explain simple things such as Semaphores, explain differences you'd typically see between processes and threads or choose the best data structure for a given job.
If that's the level of CS hatchlings, I'd never even consider interviewing a no degree inexperienced person. Think of the bugs they might introduce...
Sure, we do peer reviews and testing, but bugs sneak through. Serious bugs cost millions...
"Graduating in May of this year, my undergraduate degree will be in psychology. Like many undergraduate psychology students, I applied to a multitude of graduate programs but, unfortunately, was not given admission into a single one. Many are aware that a bachelor's degree in psychology is quite limiting, so I undoubtedly have been forced into a complicated situation."
Not to be a dick, but how is it that you went through college for nearly 4 years before the prospect of being denied entrance to a graduate program was on your radar? Did you walk in to it eyes wide shut? I wasn't even studying engineering, but as I freshmen, I was privy to the horror stories from the students about to graduate without being admitted to "pro school".
When I graduated high-school in '07 it was obvious at the time that higher education was a bubble which, at the tuition rates of the time, didn't merit the cost of attendance. Every year I've lived in the "real world" since then has further cemented this belief.
The statistics about ROI on a college degree rarely are adjusted to take in to account the amount of money invested by those who didn't achieve their degree of choice. There is a high level of risk involved in the investment of beginning a program of study at university. It's a little bit exploitative and absurd that we allow 18 year olds to leverage this investment on credit with government loans.
Why did you do psychology and now want to work in IT ? What kind of job in IT do you want to do ?
From what I can see you don't have a clue, so I first suggest that you think about this. If you do know but just didn't explain it properly, then I suggest you work on your pitch, get networking going, AND find a way to sell the fact that psychology will make you a better XXX. (suppose you want to do GUI programming, that's a fairly easy sell !)
If you DO NOT KNOW, then go to for a degree. College is also a place where you learn what you want to do and what you don't want to do. Meanwhile keep on working on the project you are involved in, it will be invaluable experience.
Even when you've worked in IT, it's not always possible to work in IT. I spent many years doing desktop support, network administration, and related items. Worked for a company and had my job downsized - the famous "you've been awesome at the position and we really like you, but you don't have a job anymore" speech. Now, I'm nowhere near the IT field, and haven't been for over 5 years. Anytime a position opens, there is a plethora of resumes. Since I'm not fresh out of school, I'm not hire-able at the cheap wage that companies are willing to pay (their decision, not mine). At this point, I'm just grateful to be employed.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
...all you have to do is approach the right kind of company, and impress the fuck out of them - BEFORE you ask for a job. You might even find (as I did) the company *offering* you a job.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I too have a degree in psychology. These days, I design architectures for automated testing systems which I then code. Also coded up the network control systems to control 60 or so virtual machines which I set up on 12 HP servers. I've coded services. I've coded QA tools. I've coded items that ship with the company's main app.
Self taught. Completely. Tried to take a C course once, but never had time to finish it. I was working 12 hours a day coding in C++ at the time.
As to getting hired, it's become a chore. Idiots rule the roost in corporate hiring. Try smaller companies that need specialized skills. Write yourself something salable and get that going. It proves you have the determination. Don't overspecialize. Do technical writing, technical support, marketing, configuration management, web applications and so on. If you have to specialize, pick a c-form language like Java, C# or C++. VB-form languages aren't bad either, but the current hierarchy of stupidity means that you'll receive less money for using them despite the slightly higher productivity.
The big lesson is "Think." There's money to be made from corporate mistakes. I'm about to write an app that auto-restarts my phone's hot-spot server automatically when it disconnects. An obvious feature that should have been there in the first place. Larger companies are famous for overlooking utterly obvious things. Exploit this.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
That the best you are going to get unless you have any real experience and examples of how you are highly skilled in a field that is completely unrelated to your education.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In IT, if you're over 40 you'll probably be limited to "contract jobs". If you're over 50, NOBODY WILL CARE WHAT DEGREES YOU HAVE! because they won't hire you! PERIOD! Age discrimination is rampant in IT and for the last eight years of my working life the only "contract jobs" I got were the ones that related to Y2K, and even then if I got a face to face interview I didn't get the job (with all age revealing details removed from my resume)!
Next thing some dipshit will reply and say how successful they are at finding work at 60, Hey dipshit, save yourself the trouble, let me call you a liar in advance
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Otherwise you will just be exploited and never make it up the career ladder. Sad but true.
Getting the degree won't change that result for almost all employees.
Not true, at least not in my case (and in similar cases I know). The degree is what has always saved me, specially in drought times like the dot-com crash and 2008. I started with a AA degree, and while working full-time I worked my way to a BS degree in CS. That opened me a lot of doors. I kept going to a MS, and even though I didn't finished, the work I did during my grad studies (a couple of papers and a half-baked thesis) opened me doors a lot more. Now I'm back to grad school, getting a MS in CE, and that is opening more doors.
It's not only college degrees. It's certificates as well. During 2008, I lost my job 6 days short of my wife giving birth to our daughter. Fortunately, we have been very frugal and we were well prepared for that. It is still not an enviable position. I put resumes to the left and right, had my resume inspected and proof-read by ex-colleagues, but nothing was coming my way.
At some point a friend of mine suggested that I asked the headhunters I trusted the most to give me copies of the latest (and best paid) positions they have filled (with personal info blacked out of course.) Most of their resumes looked equivalent to mine in terms of education and work experience.... with the exception of several certificates.
It dawned on me that there was so much competition (and there is still) that employers and HR departments (right or wrong) were also counting education and industry certificates to prune the tree. I crash-studied for a couple, took the exams, pasted that shit on my CV, and voila, interviews coming my way. Shortly thereafter, I was employed once again (and in much better terms.)
So, right or wrong, educational credentials (both academic and IT vocational) do help. Won't make you a better professional, but it helps getting through the HR filters, and that ladies and gents, in this downturn economy, that is shit you want on your side.
That's my personal experience, purely anecdotal, so obviously YMMV.
I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and got into an industry that I didn't particularly care for out of college. I sat at a computer working in 2d autocad all day. It was supposed to just be a pay check while i searched for my dream job and ended up lasting 6 years. Long story short, through my entire year long search for a "dream job", every company I interviewed with said they didn't care about degrees, they just wanted someone with experience. When I interviewed for programming positions, they just wanted a strong portfolio. When i got tired of interviewing for programming positions for over a year and not even getting one offer, I changed my search to linux system administration and found a job within a month. I got a junior position and my boss said he didn't really mind that I am lacking in the more technical aspects of networking and such. I think it mostly came down to me presenting myself in a professional manner at my interview, having general corporate experience, being organized, and generally not being an idiot. Apparently the only other person they interviewed didn't even come in, it was over skype and the girl didn't even dress up. And there were about 30 other resumes, some of them were University of Phoenix grads. My boss just laughed at them. so, tl;dr: as long as you know your stuff, it doesn't matter what your degree is in.
How can one with a degree that is not related to computers acquire a job that is centered around computers?
As I mentioned in another post in this thread, I started my programming career with a AA degree. I took programming courses up to the wazoo, and by the time I went for a 4-year CS degree, I had possibly 2-3 times more programming hours than most CS people in their junior years (no exaggeration). But it was people w/o a CS degree who actually shouldered me and gave me a chance to get a full-time job as a programmer when I only had a AA.
So from personal experience I know that there are people out there that can do a hell of a programming job without having a formal CS or MIS background. But in this type of economy, it is very difficult to get your foot in the door without a 4-year degree. It was already becoming very difficult in 1994-95 (which is when I started.) Most programming assignments in the real IT world do not require a full-blown CS or MIS degree. That's the reality. But how to convince HR and management, that's another issue.
At the moment, I am self-taught and can easily keep up in a conversation of computer science majors. I also do a decent amount of programming in C, Perl, and Python and have contributed to small open source projects.
You could leverage that by starting small, getting part-time programming or sysadmin jobs at school, or freelancing in, say, LAMP development. Would Slashdot users recommend receiving a formal computer science education (only about two years, since the nonsensical general education requirements are already completed) before attempting to get such a job?
Yes. I would go for it (that's what I did after landing my first job). Having a formal CS education opens a lot more doors outside of IT. Most importantly, it will guarantee you better chances to get through the HR filters. Remember, this is a numbers game, and you will be competing with people that already have a degree. Without the sheepskin, you are at a disadvantage (and as I said, that is unfortunate because most IT programming jobs do not really require that type of skill set; a AS in CS or Information Technology would suffice.)
Depending on your finances, I would opt for a part-time job at your Uni IT/CS departments - no lab staff, but actual programming or sysadmin work or tech support (as in installing systems, opening tickets, tracking part orders, etc.) And during that time, finish your 4-year degree asap.
If that's not possible, work in whatever you can (something that can give you a flexible schedule) while pursuing your degree part-time. But you need the degree. It's almost impossible to get past the HR drones without it.
Anybody else in a similar situation?"
My situation is similar in that I also started without a 4-year degree (and even though people helped me, it was still hard to get a few managers to give the IT department the green light for hiring me. That was a very painful time in my life.)
It is also dissimilar in that times are a lot harder now. You are at greater disadvantage than I was when I started. Good luck.
If all the other options fail and you are physically qualified, become a communications officer in one of the armed forces. If you're lucky, you'll get a couple of years of hands on experience followed by management experience.
For what it is worth, I have been in IT for 17 years now. But I have been having a hard time getting into the management level. Now I am in school so I can get a BA in Management. I have no real interest in an IT degree, it won't do me any good. I already have the experience in IT.
My ex-GF was hired by Oracle last year, and she works on a software project. She was a marketing major.
You probably didn't study enough. Even if you don't study in college, you still need to study. Even after college you need to study.
If it has been 10 years without a job, and you still didn't figure that out, I'd have reservations about hiring you too.
"nonsensical general education" wow.. go to a cert mill school next time you pass through Samsara
you can, without college, learn any subject on your own, even better than college can teach you.
but the other subjects required for a degree are typically to balance you out as a functional and 'edumacated' induhvidual.
the ability to be well rounded, and to learn new material is not the least of what college grants you-- it is that precisely that college gives you, that training schools don't.
"nonsensical general education" indeed.. Christ.. so you attended classes in a topic other than psychology at all.. those animals... get the hell off my lawn!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The degree isn't really that big of a deal. My undergraduates are in Microbiology and Psychology and I'm currently the Head of Software Engineering at a large University Library. What is important however is experience. So if you're talking about breaking into IT it's a rough road without something to base a hiring decision on other than "I really like computers" or something like that. One of my best Software Engineers has no degree at all but plenty of experience, having started with callcenter help though.
BFA and MFA with 20+ years in the supplier side of healthcare software and hardware field. 5 years as a DOD contractor/support specialist with no military experience. But times were different then.
Yes, you can get in and once you have the experience, your set. BUT why bother? Programming is a "rock pit" in most companies. Sales staff move to management. With a Psych major AND a background in software, you should be able to get in and go up. I think even kamelkev would agree that's a better fit for you.
I expect to retire wealthy in a few years (if I have hedged properly against the next financial crisis), thanks to a long run in a career of software development.
I have only a BA in Religious Studies, but got a great job as a Compiler Developer in the late 1970's. My supervisor's degree was in Arabic Language. I managed to get a college friend a job as an Operating Systems Developer, whose only degree was a BA in Greek.
And, last I heard, my Psychology major ex-roommate, who could not get into graduate school, is a big deal in the trans-national network IT for a large multinational food service company.
Oh, for the good old days, when all you had to do was to be able to spell "bit"...
But, as others have said, having a degree is essential. It still opens doors that might otherwise stay closed.
A degree is reputation. It tells someone who doesn't know you from Jack that you accomplished something, and that what you accomplished is being acknowledged by someone (entity) that you *do* know.
Spoken like someone without a degree.
A degree is irrelevant. The experience you gain while getting the degree matters far more.
This is why a degree from a British university counts far more than a degree from an Indian one. The Indian one could (and maybe even does) have an identical curriculum, I'm sure it has an equivalent academic standard in the exams. But it doesn't come with a British university education, which includes the extra-curricular activities, the ethos, approaches and expectations involved.
I had a job interview on Friday. The interviewer was interested in what I did at University. Not the degree - that's on my CV - but the other stuff that I did. I left university over 17 years ago; it's still being used as a measure of my approach to life.
The academic qualification I got? Useful, sure, but given the chance again I'd still take those three years even without the certificate at the end.
someone who has been professionally developing software (communications/networking/real-time/OS) for nearly 40 years
Good. The blase requirement for a Degree in Computer Science on so many job adverts is an insult to people that know their stuff. I hope you never miss out on a job because of that unnecessary bias.
Just wanted to give some advice.... I was in exactly the same situation. I ended up getting into a non-Psych M.A. program using my B.A. in Psych. I finished that, then due to my grades in that graduate program (and my GRE scores) was able to get into an M.S. program in Comp Sci. I get funny looks (and questions) about my educational track during interviews, but I have a great job now as a software engineer and I've been very successful. You CAN do it, you just have to find a crack in that barrier to entry.
I have a degree in psych, but realized after I had gotten through a good portion of the degree that I actually couldn't stomach the thought of being a counselor. I had a pretty solid background in IT, knew a couple languages, and had done a bunch of different types of IT work. I started applying to IT jobs, and wound up landing a position pretty quickly. What worked for me was explaining that software development is as much about understanding how a human behaves with a computer as it is about writing code. Because of that, my understanding of human behavior gives me unique insight into the how to build systems that humans will interact with more efficiently/happily/addictively/etc. It's kind of a load of BS, but human resources eats it up- heck, they friggin love it. As long as you can talk the talk to the IT managers (most of whom understand that you can be highly successful without a degree), you're gold. Plus, once you get hired, people will be more likely to listen to you because "you're a psychologist". Drop a few psych terms and even the execs will let you basically call the shots on a lot of things.
My version of that quote is "Never let school get in the way of your education." :-)
I studied (at various times) engineering, genetics, creative writing, English literature, Spanish, music, chemistry, electronics, auto mechanics, and computer programming. Although I never got a degree, I have at various times been an auto mechanic (factory trained), sales person (I sold 3-Com their first 100 PCs), incense manufacturer, printer (achieved a journeyman rating), typesetter, and for the past 30 years, a software engineer. Currently I get a 6 figure income as senior systems engineer for a tier-one mobile phone manufacturer. Go figure! The hard part is getting your foot in the door. Working as a contributor to a major open source project is one way to get some creds in the field.
FYI, your 2 years for a cs degree is full of it (at least where I went to school); Psych and CS do not overlap at all, and generally you are looking at another 3+ years of school. How do I know? I looked at doing a dual CS/Psych major (found out it would be 7 years of school and I could get a Masters in that same amount of time).
I wish you the best of luck, but I don't think you'd have a problem getting in if you have previous programming experience (assuming you're going back for another bachelors), if you want a Masters in CS, I think you will run into a lot of hurdles; AI is about the only place CS and Psych directly overlap, so I hope you're into Artificial Intelligence.
The one suggestion I'd give you is to take what you can. My first IT job was call support in a crappy call center. A year of that, and I moved into a help-desk position with a company. A year after that, and I was Systems Administrator with an MCSE and CCNA (both self study) and am now CCIE level (no company would pay for the test, as it's a trip and a test, not just a test, so I've never been tested, so I'll be one of the many that has the skills, but not that cert) and do quite well.
Take what you can, and get your foot in the door somewhere. Start with crappy jobs, and small jobs in small companies that you can leverage for references or promotions. You'll get there, but you won't get the first job out there at the level you want to be. It takes work and career development.
Oh, and for the post above mine that says "remind people you are a psychologist", don't. You'll just undermine your technical ability in a technical job if you do.
Learn to love Alaska
Right on. A big thing these days is UX (user experience) designers. It used to be that some subset of the development team got assigned to do the UI work, but more development shops are looking for dedicated people for that work.
It probably helps to have some artistic education and/or experience, but I would think that a psychological background would be very helpful. My understanding is that a lot of companies do user testing with multiple mockups to find out the best interface for a certain task, which is basically the same thing as psychology experiments.
But if you have all these other interests, one does wonder why you didn't pursue them at school too. I'm not denying the value of knowledge gained in a psych program, but knowing that it's one of the worst degrees for post-degree employment and underemployment? I coupled my English Lit degree with one in Math, and lots of physics, chem, comp sci and engineering.
If you continue your education (either with training or a degree program) in whatever field you pursue, you'll end up a better, more well-rounded employee for having the psych degree, but as you can tell it's a bit up hill to start.
Where are you located? I could stand to hire someone like you.
And, I say that as an IT guy who's been in the field for 12 years without one. Why do I say that? Three basic reasons:
Finally, if you really are that good at IT, you're going to find yourself in classes with people who aren't IT-saavy and who're basically looking for a high-paying job. You have a great opportunity to excel in school which will make you even more appealing as a new hire.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I believe that people with a background in psychology or psychotherapy would be a good fit for technical support positions. Most of that job involves talking to people and calming them down to help address their actual problems. In technical support, you can potentially get experience for other jobs, or climb through the mentor-ship positions into management. Managers could also benefit from having a psychology background.
Have you seen the people American universities have been churning out in recent years? It's awful. It's almost like they come into the workforce with negative experience, and have to make it up. It started with the for profit schools like Devry that passed pretty much everyone into a "degree." But of late, this trend has spread to the public universities as well. Maybe in your time, a degree was a viable record of some useful accomplishment. I would argue that as of the last decade (at least in North America) you get a piece of paper that's not worth much. Take it from someone who trains fresh grads on a regular basis. I would rather deal with someone who doesn't have a degree with just two year of experience, than a degreed kid I need to teach to unlearn the awful practices he picked up in school.
Funny. Majored in psychology and history. In the 1980s :)
Helped start a dotcom. That worked. Most of my staff (20 odd years later) do NOT have a comp.sci background. There are a couple but they're surrounded by biologists, economists, philosophers and ... a psychologist as king of the geeks...
I graduated with a BA Hons in english. Did 7 years as a self employed webdesigner followed by two years doing an A+ course among other qualifications, a few months woork experience with the local education authority, and then my first full time job doing internal php development. 10 months later I got my second job doing the same thing which I am still doing now.
Basically, you just need to able to prove you can do the stuff. Do your own projects or work on open source ones so you can show code.
Good luck!!
- Think logically and abstractly about issues. As a psychologist, your exposure to experiment design and hypothesis formation will serve you well.
- Deal with the slings and arrows of your outraged (and outrageous) users. As a psychologist, you've probably had to study some child psychology. Don't sell those books back to the bookstore, yet.
-Deal with PHBs and middle management types effectively. A semester or two of poli-sci on top of the aforementioned child psychology courses will be extremely helpful. If you didn't get any poli-sci while pursuing your psychology degree, read "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Mushashi for some keen insights into how to deal with an adversarial environment not entirely of your own making.
NB: You said IT career -- coding is not IT, nor is computer science or electrical engineering. IT is about how technologies are used to manage the flow of information, and the person who is ultimately responsible for that is the sysadmin. Everybody else in IT exists so that the sysadmin can do his job.
Most of the senior people and the best either have no degree, or a degree in EE, Physics, or Math - the reason is CS majors spent all of their time learning how to write compilers, and other useless skills and not actually using computers to DO anything. I want someone who has cut their teeth programming, not someone who can't actually produce anything useful. That's why I tend to see the present trend toward certifications as useless - it just hinders the people who actually get things done, and the people with the certifications can't do anything.
Sad but verifiable...
Get a Law Degree, or a masters in math applied to Wall Street. Assuming you are a citizen of the US, your gov't is decimating computer related workers, by ensuring an oversupply with guest workers, with most of them becoming naturalized citizens who permanently swell the supply. Where supply outstrips demand there are poor career prospects. Most STEM "careers" have poor long-term career prospects. I warned you.
And they were also near the top of their class from a top 15 university, right?
Unless you really think you can get a job doing research about computers, avoid getting a computer science degree.
When I managed a team of software testers, I wanted to hire someone who understood how to use a computer as a tool. I did not want someone to whom a computer was the focus of interest. Thus, I hired individuals with degrees in mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, meteorology, and astronomy but generally rejected applications from individuals with degrees in computer science. I even hired someone with a degree in English because she had used computers to analyze texts.
If you have used computers in your studies, that needs to be emphasized when you apply for a job. Give specific examples, not generalities. For example, did you use a computer to do statistical analyses on psychological experiments? If so, did you do your own programming (good), or did you use an existing statistics package (not so good). Did you create a computer model of a psychological experiment (very, very good)?
There is a way around that particular hurdle... own (at least part of) the business.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
As an autodidact who dropped out of college to go work in a recording studio and thence fell happily sideways into IT, I would offer that it is entirely possible to build a great IT career sans degree, but you're going to have to accept that most of the Corporate World won't hire you.
This is not a bad thing.
You probably don't want to work in corporate IT anyway. It often sucks, and that right hard. Why else would everyone bitch so mightily and with such frequency? Who wants to work for a bunch of shifty-eyed suits? Yeech, no thanks.
SMB consulting will be wide open to you, so long as you have skills. Small development shops won't care a whit about your creds, so long as you've got a sweet portfolio of work and a hunger to excel. Security firms are interested in your l33tness and whether they can trust you not to rob the joint. All of them will require you to simultaneously bust your ass and enjoy it, which is good.
Point being: if you've a modicum of talent and drive, you can do fine without the degree. Don't misunderstand: a degree is a fine thing and not to be discarded lightly, but you can have a great career with zero formal training so long as you really, really, really give a damn and will work very very hard.
Don't Panic!
Don't expect to get your dream programmer/hacker job right of the bat w/o the unrelated degree. You could get a job at a company doing software QA. Use your programming knowledge to automate a lot of the processes (great selling point during the interview, btw). If you really like it you could have a bright future as a software engineer in test. If not, you could move into non QA programming with the QA programming as your gained experience to get you the job.
If that doesn't tickle your fancy and if you are willing to move to a major metropolitan area like DC, you will probably have a much better shot at getting a programming job w/o a degree. Forget about it in the burbs.
If you have what it takes, offer your services free for a couple of weeks,
provided that: If they hire you, you'll be paid for that time, later.
Then impress them with what you can do.
QED
The utility of a CS degree for getting employment varies greatly by region. In my experience, socially conservative areas like New York and especially Boston put a great deal of importance on academic credentials as screening criteria for job applicants. Conversely, in Silicon Valley no one really gives a fuck what you studied in school - rather, they care about your apparent intelligence and demonstrated ability. If you write (and publish) some Free Software to demonstrate your skill at programming, and can discuss software intelligently in an interview, then your liberal education should be no obstacle to landing a job in the Valley.
Nearly anyone can get a job give the right experience and/or a little luck and/or simply working their way up to a position (ie a tech becoming an engineer).
That said, good employers rarely do that because they have good reputations and get a lot of qualified applcants. It usually only happens at employers who are struggling to find people. Also you may work your way up in such a company but unless you have some major accomplishments, it probably wont mean much when looking to change companies.
If you have a degree in the field you are working in and have some additional experience that ends up being just as valuable as a higher degree in the same field. Most companies count a BS with two or more years experience just as valuable as MS in the same field.
I didn't know the point of a CS degree is to be a programmer. Does IT work on algorithm design, artificial intelligence, cryptography, numerical analysis, etc... too?
Unless previously recommended... and if you really have an aptitude for 'hard science' look into the field of HCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_interaction). They usually lap up psych people. You will still have to get a formal PhD to be taken seriously in academia but it is worth it and you can earn it as you go.
I joined my company about 7 years ago, I was about 20. I had no college at all, but I was a decent programmer and their technical support job needed programmers to make change requests for customers, it wasn't high end stuff... but you needed to be able to understand data types, write if statements , functions, for loops, etc. You can imagine that most people with that knowledge are looking for actual programming jobs and not a job labeled as technical support and with a pay to match (about 40k /yr). 40k/yr sounded great for a 20 year old with no college, so I was on board. After the first 6 months I was able to work at home about 90% of the time (1 meeting in office every 2 weeks) and I liked the job.
4 years later a job in R&D opened up, I applied with no professional experience (I do have a few minor personal projects) and since I had been known for writing good code in the support job I got the job. Within a year my pay had almost doubled and I was near 100k/yr and still in a similar situation with working from home, one meeting a week barring unplanned design meetings. Not bad for someone with no college experience. You will likely have to climb the latter unless you have someone that has influence that will vouch for you.
From your point of view, you might want to check out computer based advertising. I know it's a dirty word, but hella, these people need usability people. People that understand how the mind works intimately. The other approach is do the long standing apprecticeship that begins with you on a phone, and through ambition and the fact you give a rats ass parlay's into moving up the ranks. I used to work as a Chef. Started as a dishwasher. I applied the same mentality to IT when I decided to return to it as a career. Don't know what your personal life is like, but I'm a single lad and fluid. I can work anywhere on the planet, and have been able to pre-emptively find something in a city before I get there. Good luck!
Well OP has not specified exactly what kind of work he'd like to do with computers - everyone here is presuming it's some kind of programming/dev job, but there are many other options.
My circumstances were very similar to OP. I took a few steps backwards switching careers by taking some low-level DB admin job. I worked my butt off and proved I could do a lot more - provide good analysis, spot opportunities for improvement, go above and beyond,etc etc. This was in the public health system.
Then I got a promotion to an analyst role, and now I'm a Business Analyst in a project management department at a hospital. I'm also getting interviews now for lead analytical positions at big private sector companies.
If you do want to go to programming then read all the other posts since I don't know about that. Otherwise -
tl;dr - get a foot in the door, then work your butt off and prove you're indispensable. Good work never goes unnoticed.
I work for a hosting company that does a fair amount of in house development, and we never care (even a little) about education in the hiring process. We care a lot about if you're any good of course, but mainly we care if you're an enthusiast.
We've learned over the years that education and current skill set counts for pretty much nothing at all in the long run if you're not INTO your line of work. We had far too many seemingly skilled and highly educated new employees that just seem to stand still. Their idea of further education is that we should pay for courses, when we'd rather spend our money of sending our people to things like Google IO, OSCON, RailsConf and the like. It motivates the hell out of them instead of cramming knowledge down their throats.
I know of several other companies that do the exact opposite, and they claim it works.
Point is, YMMW. Go apply to a few jobs, and stress the fact that you LIKE what you do. It counts for a lot in some places, and even though I can only speak for myself, those places are way more fun and stimulating to work at.
I have to post anonymously and can't name my employer, and you posted anonymously too, so that's a bummer :(
I don't even use the degree when considering someone for a role at my company anymore
I've implemented a similar scheme for my company since 1998
No matter how impressive one's university degree might be, if he can't perform in the real world, whatever sheepskin he carries does not worth nothing
All the people I hired since then, I hired them for their attitude
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sheesh, you fucked up and took a degree that required entry into an exclusive club and you'd not felatted the dean and gotten enough blackmail material to get admitted.
Ok that's the only way some of the retards I've had to talk to have acted. Someone who blew off all of their instructors to become a psychologist. Not because that's a worth while science field but because it's perceived as one when it's nothing more than some moonbat pseudo-science that doesn't sound like a bachelors degree in basket weaving.
You can apply to quantitative psychology programs. Most students come in with a degree in psychology, but also a minor or double major in statistics, mathematics, or computer science. All of us program to some degree, some more than others. Not as many people apply to such programs so the acceptance rate is higher than say, clinical psychology (although I'm basing this on information I received 6 years ago, so maybe more students are applying to quant psych programs now). After you complete the degree you will have a much better chance of receiving a programming job, especially at places like SAS.
I have a math/econometrics background not an IT background. Spent a whole career in systems analysis, risk analysis and modeling.
I did - works well.
We're hiring as well - given the same competencies (smart, reliable, socially skilled) we prefer uncertified candidates. People with degrees usually want higher salaries, or worse, they feel better than the rest.
You have a degree and if you actually know CS, you are probably more qualified than a CS major. A smart shop will understand that you are competent in two domains, both highly relevant at any Tech Firm. In my software development shop, there are roughly 50 technical jobs, 30 qa positions, and 20 supporting staff. With your skill set you are able to fill probably 75 of the 100 roles. Given that you opted for the psych degree rather than CS in the first place, you probably enjoy helping techies do their work more than doing the work yourself. TBH there is such a need for staff who can communicate with the business, the code, and techies, you'll do well going that direction. For instance, if our business analysts could speak in the code's Objective terms and understand psuedo-code, the entire department's efficiency would skyrocket.
... and demand real skills, not necessarily degrees.
Where are you?
hitachi-id.com
For me, I'm working torward a degree myself (Will graduate in May). The easiest route to getting into IT is mainly through a help desk, especially if you're going for SysAdmin or something of that sort. Many places usually only really require a high school degree for your average help desk monkey position. I can say it isn't the most pleasant position (dealing with end users is something you want to avoid if possible), but it is a foot in the door.
I studied English, Russian and French literature in college and for the first 10 years of my career worked as an editor. In the early 1990's I fell into programming quite by accident - through a project at my then employer's. I caught the software bug and never looked back. Today, I run my own software development company and work across Windows, UNIX, and Linux. I think that curiosity and intelligence are paramount, followed by a good dollop of old fashioned perseverance. To build a career in a technology-related field requires that you never stop learning. It's the old story: if you enjoy what you do, it won't seem like work.
We are an exciting company that is specifically not looking for people with experience. We don't want people that planned 4 or more years preparation and hard work to work for us. We want people who change their mind on a whim and DESERVE THE BEST. We don't care about capitalism, competitiveness or planning for your future. We only want people who think they really deserve a job, even though they fucked off their chance at an education. Sure, we want our top technology not developed by those who sleep, eat and breath CS, but by those that say "Hey, it looks like they make alot of money, I want to be one of those people!". While your at it why not shoot for King of England?
If you can "talk the talk", but don't have the experience, you may consider IT management. After all the chuckling dies down, you need to realize that your degree does give you a diversity of thought and does have some value. I, too, graduated in psychology and found my options lacking. After 8 years pulling myself up by my bootstraps in the IT industry, I got tired of it and realized that having an understanding and sympathy for mismanaged IT was an asset. A couple years and an MBA later, I'm very happy.
Yet he's worked for Microsoft since the late 90's.
Thing is, it's a very different world today. I think the entry requirements are a lot higher than they used to be and those already in are most likely not aware of that reality.
2 history majors and a psychology major. 1 just got into the internet thing when it started (2000 ish). 2 went and got "graduate certificates" at a college, then got hired.
I was a civil engineer who got into computers,
so I went the "graduate certificate" route, used college to get an internship at IBM, decided I really liked it and got a Masters. It can be done. I did learn a lot of techniques in school that I probably wouldn't have picked up just hacking away, but some are better at learning just by doing.
I've seen people with a masters in CS struggle with a simple PHP script.
I have a degree in biology and i'm the Network Director in my company (although I went and got my CCNP on my own.)
A degree just makes good conversation for the question of "what were you doing while you were unemployed" You can tell the truth (Beer) or tell the half truth (college)
Try UMUC- it's a legitimate graduate school, all online. The only admissions requirement is a bachelors degree. The work gets progressively harder (I'm in the second semester), but if you stick it out it's not too bad. They have some IT degree tracks that will get you the required paperwork. www.umuc.edu
You need credibility indicators, including the degree. Firstly, to make it past the automated resume filters. Secondly, to connect with often non-technical hiring managers. Start the process to finish the degree. In the breaks between degree work, get certifications in technologies that pay well. Yes, there are lots of people who have certs, but don't know really know anything useful. But I usually hear about them, because they actually got through to the interview rounds before getting found out. If you actually have IT/Tech chops, and have (the desired) certs, and are working on your degree, getting a decent job, while still not easy, will be at least easy-er. Finally, if you have time, do a good job at some volunteer IT work for a charity in return for a recommendation. Or do a really good job at some reasonable, concrete contract work and make a recommendation part of the compensation if they're happy. Hiring is a tough process for the hiring manager. Try to make his/her job easier with respect to hiring you.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
And I'd bet you have the only 40 hour workweek in this thread
I've seen too much poorly-written code to accept the statements that you don't need a degree to code well. It is true that you can write code that works without getting a broader CS education, much like you can do your own wiring or plumbing in your house. Much of the time, things will work. But then, one time your incorrect wire gauge will start a fire that can burn down your house, or (more likely in the business world) the house of the poor shmuck who bought the house from you (or inherited your code). I wouldn't hire someone who does not have a broad and systematic introduction to computer science.
A degree in psychology sounds like a win for mobile development. Mobile apps are mostly about the interface. Under the hood, most don't do much. (There are spectacular exceptions, but they are rare.)
With a psych degree, you know how to conduct experiments with people. That's what real usability testing looks like. You give somebody a device and a list of tasks, you record what they do, and you go through the video carefully, noting where people got stuck, where they had to back up, and where they got frustrated or angry. Then you have an idea of what needs to be fixed.
Most programmers have no clue that this is necessary, let alone how to do it.
and don't forget to say that you know how to program in fortan and share common interests with fellow internet wizards. You were nominated as chairman of the internet by the council of XII; the internet seers to become a guardian which entails your role as a security expert of the entire internet. This should grab their attention one way or another. Statistically, if you send out a copy of your resume to every company in the world, you're bound to get hired somewhere.
In college I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. First I was an English major. Thought I wanted to write novels. Then I switched to Electrical Engineering. My parents were paying for it, but after 5 years they said to hell with it and I was dumped into the job market with 2 years of English and 3 years of Electrical Engineering.
During my EE degree I took programming courses and I discovered that I absolutely loved it. Assembly language, C, Pascal... It was all great. I loved the process of building a kind of machine from nothing and then winding it up and watching it go. I wrote lots of programs and spent more time on coding than I probably should have somewhat to the detriment of my math and physics classes.
I was dumped from the academic world around '91 and I searched for programming jobs for literally years. I guess it was mostly looking through newspaper ads. Maybe other stuff as well. I can't remember. Every single ad, without exception, had a requirement of 2 years of experience minimum and a CS degree. Only very rarely did I see a job that only required the CS degree. Those were the "no experience necessary" jobs. Boy was that depressing. I always thought I would enjoy working as a programmer because I really do love programming for its own sake. It doesn't even seem like work. It's fun.
I was sad about it but never bitter because it made sense to me. As some have pointed out you can't just get a job in most other serious professions without a degree. Why should we expect to do so in computer science?
I eventually took a job doing CAD for a manufacturer and just stayed there for more than a decade after college because it was better than washing dishes or something.
So the merit based world you guys are describing seems totally alien to me. I wish some of you would describe how you got the job in the first place. I've never seen a programmer listing that didn't require either a degree or years of work experience and nearly always both. It seriously is like you guys are describing something that happened on another planet.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
i was under the illusion HR people knew the fundamentals of the jobs they were hiring for.
applying to a RAM manufacturer? i assume the interviewer might know a little about timings, RAM frequency, voltage, SOMETHING BASIC.
nope nope nope, apparently. total blank stare. (@ Super Talent in San Jose).
they want something thats safely demonstrable. an engineering degree falls within this.
you walk a fine line when communicating with a HR person who does not understand any technical aspects of their company's products, and you yourself do not have an overt, formal demonstration of technical understanding.
http://www.traffic-products.net/product/product_30_64_1.html"> Traffic cone
Heh, most information security professionals don't have any sort of IT degree, nor indeed do they have any sort of IT experience. Computer is a four letter word in this sector. So on the one hand, you fit right in with no IT degree (in fact having an IT degree works against you...you won't get interviews if a computing degree is on your CV), but on the other, you won't be in an IT field either. Surprising? It shouldn't be really, considering the daily news headlines.
I went from HTML coding as hobby in 1994 to computer tutor -> Y2K tester/patcher -> Job finding club.
There the host knew my old boss who's into technical/customer support and she also read that I put down computer hardware stuff in my resume. From there, I learned flash and web by myself. Moved to hong kong in 2000 where no one knew flash and joshua davis was just starting out. Made money off it. Learn print, layout stuff with AI. Switch Co., more prints, picked up camera in 2007, learn more prints, learn facebook, wildfire, etc.
Shoot stuff on the side for monies. Day job graphic designer for a PR firm, though not as much graphics nowadays, mostly online stuff. Night job, shoot stuff.
None of my previous employer asked, cared, or seen my degree.
College isn't job training
I have no degree, and maybe 6 units of college. I am 43 and am a CTO of a restaurant chain with restaurants in 32 states. I started in IT 10 years ago as tech support and rose up the chain, found no "ceiling" at all. If you have the tenacity and drive, there is no such thing as a ceiling. College degrees are worthless (but great to have) unless you are a doctor, lawyer, etc. In IT, there is no such thing as a ceiling. I know guys under 30 years old that are IT directors, CIO's, etc and they have no degree but do have desire, common sense and tenacity. I hire my staff (35 staff between IT and Web team) with only skills and experience in mind and no consideration to a degree. A young kid with a degree and no experience is nothing to a person with experience and no degree.
Ouch, no mod points today. Mod parent up!
Check out my cross-platform apps
Valve is hiring Psychologists: http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html
Temple University School of Journalism led to Macs to LANs to WANs to and Network Architecture and Design. The whole Left Brain/Right Brain thing and the ability to actually write documentation while I engineer and design a network has actually brought me more pay since most engineers can't write much less spell to save their lives. You don't *need* to be an EE to learn IT - all it takes is passion, drive, dedication and, most of all, a genuine love for what you're doing. (Many thanks to Bo Gong and the GreyPeak/USWEBCKS senior engineers who gave me a break 18 years ago)
To start, I have worked with many people in IT career fields who don't have a technical degree, I don't think that will hold you up too much. If you have experience, make sure that is listed prominently on your resume. If you think your major is holding you back, then don't list it. Just list your BS degree. A company that is concerned about your major will call. That will give you another opportunity to highlight your experience. If a company is really hung-up on your major, move on, you probably don't want to work for them anyway.
I have a BA in biology, and am currently working on my PhD, also in biology. None of my work has anything directly to do with computers. However, as much as I enjoyed learning about science, I've come to understand during my PhD that research is not something which I want to spend the rest of my life doing: I'm not driven sufficiently by it. Instead, I've looked to what I do as a hobby, and am applying for programming jobs.
I have no academic qualifications relating to computers at all - I was massively turned off by "IT" lessons at school, which were in fact "Microsoft Office" lessons - but I do have some summer work experience setting up a database and doing software testing, and I've worked on various small personal projects over the years.
I've been pleasantly surprised at how open companies have been to the prospect of employing me as a programmer, and both companies I've applied to so far have interviewed me. I didn't quite fit with the first company, who seemed rather geared towards mathematicians (one of their earlier hires had a psychology PhD though), but things are going well with the second and I'm very hopeful.
Admittedly, I do have a harder-science background than you (not that biology is really up there with physics/chemistry/maths/engineering in most people's perception) and a PhD-in-progress to catch the eye. But I'd get your CV out there, make sure you mention the languages you know and your open source experience, and do some reading around fundamental CS concepts like computational complexity - you might be surprised. Having practical experience with real-world projects is arguably just as or more valuable as having formal education but never having used it outside of assignments, and being self-taught shows a deep level of interest - you're doing it because you enjoy it, rather than because you saw a paycheck in it. You need to find the right people to see that side, of course; I would in particular see if there are any companies specifically advertising jobs for graduates, since they won't be expecting years of industry experience in the first place.
I've been a programmer for about eighteen years (Economics, B.S. from UTA). In that time, I've worked with dozens of programmers. Maybe, tops, a third of them actually had CS degrees. Probably more like a fourth. The reality is that, outside of kernel development, and some deep blue compiler stuff, programming is much more of a craft than a science.
While such do degrees exist, you wouldn't walk into a wood shop and expect that everyone had degrees in woodworking science, or whatever you would call it. It's just not how things are expected to work - you expect that at some point in the past, the person picked up the craft because they were interested in it, and developed their skills bit by bit. What one knows is nearly irrelevant - it's what one has done, and this is doubly true in IT and IS.
BTW - for I.T., per se, e.g., support and network operations, I've NEVER known anyone with a CS degree.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
It's a gamble, but there are certainly people out there that will hire a person like you. Small businesses are hungry for people that aren't just CS people, or aren't just anything in particular. Small businesses commonly don't have computer guys, but could use them - and also use those same people to wear a lot of hats. If you have a degree in one area, but are proficient in another - find a job where you can do a lot of different things.
I'm one of those people - I wear a lot of hats. The best advice I ever got was to avoid pursuing a CS degree. A family member told me his greatest regret was pursuing a degree in his main area of interest. It's great if you want a Ph.D., but if not - you just made yourself less interesting and made your hobby into your job. He told me that, if I were interested in computers, pursue something else I like but wasn't good at. Now I have a degree in something I couldn't do before, but because I was interested, I stayed up to date in the CS areas I was interested in.
Now I'm not that good compared to a degreed and trained CS guy, but I'm good enough for my job, and I'm competent in many other areas I wouldn't otherwise be.
"At the moment, I am self-taught and can easily keep up in a conversation of computer science majors."
Which of course is not the same thing as knowing what computer science majors do. Especially if they're actual computer science majors (as opposed to Information Technology majors with a featherbedded title), there's a lot more to computer science than slinging code and talking a good game.
These observations are entirely anecdotal, of course... but personally I've found that all job "requirements" can more realistically be described as "desired background". Ergo, don't hesitate to apply for a job which doesn't appear to match perfectly with your qualifications; you might just get the job by being the only applicant who has actually completed a bachelors degree, or by being the most competent interviewee. What's more, even if all you get out of it is an interview, you'll at least be able to use the experience from that interview to improve your odds of nailing the next interview.
Additionally, smaller companies can frequently seem to be more open minded about applicants with less then optimal matches to their stated job "requirements." Two personal examples are:
* The system administrator at a small company where I once worked was a graduate from Purdue University in "animal husbandry", or some such thing. (And yes, he was constantly ribbed about getting his education from Colonel Sanders and other such chicken-related jokes.) I believe he was hired in large part because he was well spoken during the interview and he was very willing (and able) to learn new concepts. (As I recall, he did reasonably well at the job.)
* In my own employment, I've gone back and forth between large and small companies, and the two largest bumps in pay that I've ever received were both granted by smaller companies. My take-away from that observation is that large companies often seem to be more risk averse -- and for some idiotic reason, an employee who is currently being paid significantly less then what they're requesting from a new employer constitutes a risk. (My lesson learned: Know what you're really worth, and don't under-sell yourself.)
I am degree-less. I have been in the IT industry for 16 years now. I am a sr-System Administrator and I have hit the ceiling of what I can make in this position with my education. In retrospect I should have spent the 4-6 years when I was younger to go to school and pick up an IT related degree. My life would have been much easier had I done so and I would not have had to spend so much time proving myself capable. The piece of paper not only serves as a ticket into the industry but also serves as lubrication moving forward.
Speaking from experience there is no worse feeling then having a new fresh out of school graduate with no practical knowledge join your company and make as much or more then you. There is no worse feeling then being over looked by a member of HR only to be told outside the hiring process that the only reason you lost the position was that an applicant with a university degree and not even a 10th your experience got the position because the HR person believes that "If I had to spend 4 years in university to get a job everyone else has to as well".
I make a really good wage and I have a great job, but I live in fear of moving to a new position or being forced to find a new position as the ability to get my foot in the door is always uncertain.
At 37 years old and 16 years in, I am considering going back to school to pick up a piece of paper that states I am capable of learning to do what I have been doing for the last 16 years. So yeah, take the time now to do it, not when you have a family to support and obligations that make it infinity more difficult.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
I have a marketing degree with a minor in Astronomy.
I work as a programmer/DBA making over $100k/yr
So yeah, it can be done if you know your stuff.
Just be aware of what you're getting into with this. A lot of the "entry level" jobs you see out there aren't _really_ entry level. If you want to get into the IT field without having an IT degree, be prepared to really start at the bottom. Find a job where they're willing to pretty much train you in from the ground floor, and be prepared to be working for the same money or less than what you'd make working at a Starbucks.
Get experience, move to a better paying gig. Having the experience is actually far better than having a degree, but also be aware that a lot of larger corporations will dismiss you out of hand for not having a degree because the HR department will use lack of a degree as a first step in weeding out candidates.
Once you have enough experience, lack of an actual degree will hurt you less.
The IT/IS field also has another thing going for it, certifications. Certifications, while having little practical value in performing your job, will make up for lack of experience and lack of an actual degree when trying to find a job. There are plenty of certifications that you can earn quickly and cheaply as long as you're good at retaining information.
Listen, I'm glad you have no formal training in software development. Or IT management. You'll make an excellent employee because you have self taught yourself "stuff". There are plenty of people here who will tell you that formal training is irrelevent and you should just go do. Quite honestly, don't listen to them. Just getting an interview requires a resume that has certain items on it. You have no formal training, and only a small sampling of self taught languages. Just bringing you in for an interview is a waste of time. There are plenty of other candidates out there today who have the formal training already. You're at a huge disadvantage.
First, figure out if you want to do IT, Software Development, or Web Development. If you want to do IT, then you should really focus on getting the proper certifications. If it's development, then go take a C++ or Java class. Understand that teaching yourself is only going to reinforce bad habits and sloppy work that you won't even understand is bad. For web, I suggest making a very splashy and robust webpage showcasing yourself and talents.
Hell, you may even want to do networking. Go get a Cisco certification. Yes it costs a ton, but for jobs that require it, nothing else will do.
My point is, you need something. Something to make yourself qualified and to stand out above the rest. That requires you to focus on one area and shoot for it. Best of luck.
Most weeks, yes, I have a 40 hour workweek. Overtime is on a volunteer basis, and sometimes I volunteer.
IT Business Consultant here, going on 5 years of enterprise level of IT, I have no college Degree. Here is the path I took. Customer Service / Retail > Retail Management > Entry Level IT > Field IT > IT Trainer > IT Business Consultant (started on degree few days ago) People skills are something most IT folks do not have, working dead end jobs builds those. Now you will need to bust your ass, make everyone in your dead end job think you love everything about it and eventually talk to all your higher ups about promotion, Once in management you can refine you business savvy and Customer service mentality. Take all of that into an interview for an entry level IT job (help desk, phone center support, internship ect...) You will take a pay cut so get used to living poor. From there, exemplify the values your organization desires in its employees, kiss TONS of ass, and take on double the work of the other people in the job (and get it done) The above is the hardest part, every time a co worker asked for work, ask for 2 times as much, keep at it (took me 3 years). Get in on projects, job shadow others, acknowledge that you know jack compared to the real IT pros (trust me, its true). Someone will notice, and when you have built a couple years at entry level talk to your boss about how you could move up. Couple years later you're living the dream, nearing 6 figure income and loving every second of rubbing it in the face of anyone who said you were a failure. PM me if you have questions
The job you apply for might decide whether you need a degree. If you apply to Google,Apple,Microsoft or any high profile software company
where they do systems/core/device driver/algorithmic programming, they would need you to have a CS degree. For the 95% of the software/app development
jobs you don't need a CS degree.
I wonder how accepting the field of psychology would be to my application for a job in psychology with my Masters degree in Electrical Engineering.
For junior positions, your CV needs to show that you have experience in the technologies I'm advertising for. If there are a lot of applicants, computer related degree trumps other degree trumps no degree. Experience gives you a boost, hardcore experience in a technology I'm interested in trumps everything. Look for small companies locally; I'd much rather employ someone who already lives here and seems interested in staying here rather then heading for the "big city".
In the interview you need to be able to back up your CV with talk. My questions are to get the conversation going, doesn't matter if you can't give a "good" answer as long as you're interested / interesting while talking about the skills you claim to have.
These days anyone can steal a good idea, localise it and throw up a website. List it as a project on your CV and make sure you can talk about SEO, usage patterns and usability. Doesn't matter if this isn't 100% related to the job you're going for, it's a solid project on your CV that you can talk about. Local crime data / traffic data / emergency services data / anything plus Google maps gives you a site that'll get a few hits as long as you spam Facebook / twitter. Spend a day reading about SEO, monitoring and usability - skip anything you can't understand in 10 minutes, this is a junior position, it's probably not even related to your job.
Or join an open source project. Again, you need to sound interested / interesting as you talk about your contribution and the project.
Seriously, I know there's like zero chance of anyone reading this, but I can't remember the last time I saw any kind of job posting that didn't set a minimum of some sort of CS/IT degree for a position.
People who already have professional experience might be able to get by, but it just seems like the rest of us with zero of either don't have that same opportunity.
Its your first job. Pull out all the stops.
Get the experience, work late nights, cram like crazy and right away be looking for the next job.
If you can do the job you'll be fine. If not you'll get canned and you'll be back where you are now - ie you won't have lost out.
And before you fret about the morality of lying on your resume, let this 25 year veteran tell you how many times you will be lied to by employers in your career about salary, raises, promotions, bonuses, vacation etc etc. Lets say its more than once.
Desparate times call for desparate measures my friend. Stretch or starve.
Mind you, if I had my time again I would be a plumber.
F*&k IT.
It's easy to say one wants a job in IT. But *what kind* of job you want in IT has everything to do with what kind of education and experience in IT you need.
Working for Geek Squad is "working in IT." (And yep, I know I'll get flamed for this if it gets modded up.)
Linus Torvalds works in IT.
Steve Ballmer "works in IT," and has no CS degree AFAIK.
Wrapping it up, "working in IT" as a field is too wide to suggest whether you can, with a Psych degree, jump in. Let alone most jobhunting - even in IT - is based on networking with others. You can probably get closer to being a supervisor or in management than being a code monkey. Good luck to you, though, from someone else who has no IT degree yet works in the field - on the operational side of the stack. (And P.S. - Don't just think "Degrees." Also think "Certifications.")
I am a big fan of all three types of education: College Education, Industry Certification, and Experience.
I got started because I was a natural at computers. I took an NT 4.0 MSCE course (booo yeah!) I finished my first MCP certification in 1999. With this one certification and little to no experience, I started in a Lead Support position when those individuals with a few years of Technical Support experience were placed under me.
I since got English degree because I wanted to round out my skills because with Experience and Industry Certification focusing on Computer Science, I felt my College Education could focus on something else and I was correct.
While experience is a type of education, it is best when coupled with College or an Industry Certification or both. I recommend that everyone get educated. If you can do it with experience alone, great. Just know that it is harder if you only have one of the three. Getting a great job is easiest if you can combine all three: College Education, Industry Certification, and Experience.
I work at a company that makes electronic medial record software, where many of my coworkers don't have degrees in computer science. My team supports the integration of our software with Windows and Citrix. I would say about half of my team holds degrees in CS or something related. Someone has a degree in music, another in education, physics, and economics. I know that the the Implementation team has even fewer people who hold degrees in CS or something related. I also worked at a company where the security engineer on the network team held a degree in psychology as well.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
I would recommend only seeking a formal education if an informal education really doesn't work for you. Sure, you will start off making a lower salary without a degree -- but you also have to account for the fact that you're not trying to pay back astronomical educational costs. The biggest problem with formalized education is that it attempts to serve the least common denominator and leads to teaching lessons in a way that does not encourage personal growth in whatever academic directions most intrigue the student. The passion for learning HAS to be followed for your mind to grow without being stifled! Does an institution truly provide that means? Or can we look deeper and see that we are often simply buying into a capitalist system meant to keep the most individuals in "education" employed?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
I worked at a company where I (a Comp Sc major) was doing graphic design (and also menial clerical work) and the guy they brought in AFTER I started to be the programmer had a BSc majoring in Biology. I asked if he'd ever programmed before, and he said, 'No.' I then asked him how he landed the job, and apparently he was at a party and someone asked him if he wanted the job based only on the fact he had a degree. So, sometimes, it is a matter of who you know and not what you know. I know of similar stories of people who joined computer clubs etc, and ended up meeting someone whom they impressed and got a foot in the door (in spite of no or little qualifications).
I've employed one psychology grad in an IT role and another in a development role. Nothing wrong with a psychology degree (providing you are naturally bright, hardworking and keen). I'm always interested in hearing from people with different backgrounds - those with fine & applied art degrees can be a good as a CS grad. Sorry, don't do any over-seas recruitment
Anecdotal but true: My wife went to UW-Madison and got her Masters in CS, and of her classmates only 30% reported having an IT undergrad degree. My favorite was the girl with the Forestry degree, who learned in the first 4 years she liked being inside more than she liked being out in the woods ...
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
For what it is worth, I got my first 'real' job programming as a junior developer before I have even graduated (admittedly, I am CS major), with a (small) local engineering firm on the basis of my FOSS experience (mostly related to Android), and because I knew what I was talking about when I was asked direct questions.
The pay is pretty bad, comparatively, but it is better than the call center tech support I was doing, and it is something that I can put on a 'real' resume when the time comes to look for greener pastures.