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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 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.
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
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.
Hush. Some of the more interesting CS professors out there dual-majored in Psychology. They usually end up doing Human/Computer Interfaces.
With a Psychology degree alone, they end up doing a lot of Lisp / Scheme.
And what more, I see it as a good thing that someone wants to expand their understanding of other fields, if only for monetary gain. That's something to be encouraged, not mocked.
I am John Hurt.
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.
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.
Because game programming is hell on earth. To people who are not IT, it sounds awesome (design your own game! could it be cooler?). But to those inside, it's working the coal mines.
I am John Hurt.
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.
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.
Look around at what software, systems and/or online services you're currently using and are well familiar with. Then look for a job at one of these companies doing phone (or other) support. Your psychology degree will help to establish you has someone who can help people. Once you get in the door and can get your hands on the internals, you can use what you learn talking to customers to propose improvements (including offering to develop them yourself).
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.
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.
So this is how shitty developers are created? What's that, you're searching through an array instead of using a hash... Or pulling an entire table in SQL instead of optimizing the query. But it works right, who cares?
I see a reason why not... It does not matter that much. When I am hiring, I am looking for experience and skills more than degree. Get some entry level support jobs to train up, or a summer IT internship. And once you have some experience, that Psychology degree will help a lot. I have 25 years in the IT industry, and a Social Science degree. I have no formal cirts either, but I helped develop a few...
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.
Self-taugh means diddly + squat ; unless you are the lead of an extremely popular and useful F/LOSS project.
I've heard of people contributing to an OSS project to land work. It demonstrates ability, and that's all a degree does anyway.
Having said that, I do agree with your sentiment. I lived through the .com bubble and went to college during the aftermath. For a while there, everyone and their brother was saying they could "program". I'm sure that tendency still exists, and not having a CS/IT oriented degree does not help differentiate yourself from the crowd of fakers.
I know I said a degree "only demonstrates ability", but I only partially agree with that sentiment. My background is math. If you call yourself a mathematician because you like reading math books, well, I might half believe your claim. If you have a BS degree in math, I'll still only have so much confidence in you. If, how ever, you let me see your college transcripts and they show you took a full complement of math courses (real analysis, logic, discrete/combinatorics, complex analysis, linear algebra, modern algebra, some differential equations, and some decent proof classes) then I'll actually believe you're a mathematician. You can be competent in a subject, probably any subject, and not have a thorough understanding of that subject. But, for certain tasks, you really need a thorough background before your first day on the job. A degree symbolizes that understanding better than simple claims on a resume'.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
That was my degree (cognitive psychology) and I got a job programming. It's what you know and how you can contribute that matters - not who "blessed" you with the acknowledgement of your achievement. I've had no problem with transitioning to technology (then architecture, then management). Like anything, find a craft you love and pursue it. I'll always hire a motivated, intelligent person over someone who holds a certification or degree, but lacks passion.
Personally, I don't think people should expect much out of recent college grads - most places I've worked recognize you'll have to basically start from scratch with most (which is fine) since so much of what you'll be doing is related to domain knowledge.
Your biggest challenge will be getting through the HR "acronym" machine. Network. Get out there and get involved. Volunteer. Blog. Learn stuff. You're already doing the right thing(s) - just stop acting like your degree is some sort of disability. It's a job asset.
Agreed, but also bring to the table your open source contributions. Bring the code in with you on interviews, so if they ask you can show them.
Unfortunately your biggest hurdle is the people in HR who do not have a clue about these things. They will only look at the minimum requirements put forth by the hiring IT manager and weed out those that do not qualify. So more than likely you will be looking at a small company that has a small HR section that just forwards all responses to the hiring IT manager.
But, once you have established that experience (maybe 2-5 years), you will get past that roadblock easily.
To this end, I might be able to help. I occasionally fix up resumes for people (for free), so if the poster (or anyone else) would like help here, just leave a comment below with your email address (modified to use 'at' instead of '@', so the spammers don't pick it up, hopefully). No promises that you will get whatever job you are applying to, of course, but I have noticed most resumes look like train-wrecks.
I'll check back later, to see if anyone takes me up on the offer.
I am John Hurt.
But don't waste your time getting another bachelor's degree - go straight to graduate school. My alma mater (UW-Madison, consistently ranked in the top 15 CS grad schools) had lots of people without CS/CE/EE undergrad degrees, and I suspect other good departments are the same. As long as you can code and show you have academic potential (e.g. a peer reviewed paper, even if it's in an unrelated field), you'll be fine.
Another bachelors degree will mostly be a waste of time, given that you already know the stuff. All you'll be doing is checking a box which you arguably don't need checked anyway. The people in your classes will be unmotivated to work harder than to get whatever grade they want, and in some cases clueless. Contrast this with graduate school, where I learned more from my peers than the courses themselves (as a bonus, these people are actually weird and interesting and have extremely diverse backgrounds).
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 known plenty of people in IT without CS degrees, including English majors. They're great co-workers and seem quite happy getting things like technical documentation and training, which companies always need to handle their attrition, and are a hella more respected than the phone support / QA "infantry".
You might want to look into getting some technical certs to help get your foot in the door... just look at what kinds of requirements some of your job reqs have and invest in some of those certs. You could likely cinch one in maybe a month of cramming with a study guide and an exam for a few hundred $$. If you have a couple thousand to invest, you could even do one of those 1-2 week-long prep courses and get it done faster.
Preferably once you have a nice job, they would be happy to help put you through further certs and degree programs to strengthen their workforce (and your credentials), so try to take advantage of that situation.
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.
Agreed. I didn't major in Computer Science myself (a mix of pyschology, philosophy and other subjects made up my degree). I was able to get my first job by trading on work I'd done in the FOSS community. Rather than going for another degree of any sort - go for experience and build a portfolio. A lot of programming jobs these days ask to see code you've written. If you have a slick portfolio page, a well written project on github, or have submitted patches to a FOSS project related to the job you want - you are giving yourself an edge over someone with a seemingly more relevant degree. Also, don't be afraid to sell the value of having a non-related degree. With an unusual background you will bring novel problem-solving tools to the table.
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 )
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 don't even use the degree when considering someone for a role at my company anymore. There's no difference between schooled/unschooled candidates that have been doing this for awhile, and a huge difference in the ones out of school. If you're fresh out of school with an Information Technology degree, it's going to scare me a little. Some of these fresh grads know less after four years of school than the guy who spent six weeks in his basement obsessing about a new programming language. A lot of them don't have the skill or the experience, and they all feel like they should be able to command top salaries while they "learn the ropes." There's a difference between learning the ropes, and building a skill set which they should have been able to develop in school.
Also, I wish people would stop using the terms "self taught" as though you could magically just know something. There's no such thing.
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.
He is probably scared of the "book smart" which I used to run into quite often when i worked corporate IT. They'd send us this guy with tons of paper and if you gave him some written test on a subject he'd just slaughter. the problem was if he was thrown ANY kind of curveball, anything that wasn't going from step A to step B, they'd be worse than useless. This would be because they were "book smart" and were able to absorb facts like a sponge but they never really had a grasp on how those facts actually applied to the situation.
One of the old server guys gave me this analogy which I thought really nailed it: "Its like you are given this parrot that has been taught how to speak the alphabet in perfect English, his inflection, tone of voice, everything is so damned perfect...until you ask him "Hey bird what letter comes after Q?" and then you find out its just a parrot and it doesn't actually understand what the fuck you are talking about" and that was the book smart ones in a nutshell, they knew everything from rote memorization but really didn't have a clue how to do anything else and when taken out of that comfort zone were just completely clueless.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.