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Ask Slashdot: Best Degree For a Late Career Boost?
Qbertino writes "I'm in my early 40s, and after a little more than 10 years of web, scripting and software development as a freelancer and some gigs as a regular, full-time employee, I'm seriously considering giving my IT career a boost by getting a degree. I'm your regular 1980s computer kid and made a career switch to IT during the dot-bomb days. I have quite a bit of programming and project experience, but no degree. I find myself hitting somewhat of a glass ceiling (with maybe a little age discrimination thrown in there). Since I'm in Germany, degrees count for a lot (70% of IT staff have a degree) so getting one seems fitting and a nice addition to my portfolio. However, I'm pondering wether I should go for Computer Science or Business Informatics. I'd like to move into Project Management or Technical Account Management, which causes my dilemma: CS gives me the pro credibility and proves my knowledge with low-level and technical stuff, and I'd be honing my C/C++ and *nix skills. Business Informatics would teach me some bean-counting skills; I'd be doing modelling, ERP with Java or .NET all day. It would give me some BA cred, but I'd lose karma with the T-shirt wearing crew and the decision-makers in that camp. I'm leaning toward Business Informatics because I suspect that's where the money is, but I'm not quite sure wether a classic CS degree wouldn't still be better — even if I'm wearing a suit. Any suggestions?"
I'm curious when people find the glass ceiling beginning to show it's face in their respective countries. The age discrimination the poster hints are starts pretty early in the USA, I've seen it start in as early as one's late 20s (though usually it seems to pick up in the early 30s).
Wait.. wait.. hear me out. The MBA will give you insight into how those who are MBAs think (and therefore, most of management). Also, your experience will say "I can do IT/CS", while the degree will say "I can do business". Which means you're more likely to be able to make a jump to management if you find your career options topping out on the IT/CS end.
And you'd be following in the footsteps of Alan Cox.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Since you're doing this for the money, and hitting the "glass ceiling", honing your business skills will give you the best chance of moving into a position where you can make significantly more money. You say that you want to go into project management, and having business skills in achieving the trifecta of a successful project (scope, schedule, and budget) will go far. Since you've spent a significant part of your career in deep technical fields, it will also give you a different perspective on what your employer thinks is important. It will also give you a hand-up on your peer competition, because being able to tell when the tech folks are bullshitting the "suits" is extremely valuable.
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
Age discrimination must be the government's fault since no business would ever discriminate against any particular group of people for fear of going instantly bust due to the magic market fairy [/libertarian]
I'm pretty sure that any limits are really ageism and not related to whether you have a degree or not. It's all about how many hours-per-week they can get out of you for $X per month. The older you are the fewer those hours are.
Even if the hours you do provide are really worth more in terms of productivity because your experience means that you do not go off on unproductive tangents.
But just in case the limit really is the degree .... get the fastest cheapest degree you can. It does NOT matter what the subject is. As long as it is fast and cheap. It is just the first step and at this point you really aren't concerned about making the correct relationships with the other kids in the frats.
THEN start working on an advanced degree in the subject that you really want. Such as computer science. Or whatever.
I don't know how it is in Germany, but here in the USA (especially in the Silicon Valley) if you want a late career boost, go get an MBA. Having an MBA isn't a four-letter word around here, especially if you get one from a good program. MIT has an excellent executive MBA program that can be done remotely, and everyone I've encountered with one has been top-notch. Same goes for an MBA from Stanford or even the other colleges local to the area.
Having an MBA opens a lot more doors for you. If you already have a good amount of experience in IT and Software Development, go get a degree in something outside of those fields to help expand your options.
You could also get a degree in something you enjoy personally but won't directly get you a job. Education doesn't just have to be for professional development.
"They told me it was impossible. I replied with maniacal laughter." http://www.mydailyrant.com/
Anything you go for will take time and put you into debt. What are the odds you will make enough money so that the degree pays for itself? It's something I've thought of myself. I'd rather plug along and slowly build or maintain what I have rather than incur a great deal of debt. Maybe a cert here and there, but that's it.
Where do you want to be 10-15 years from now? Aim towards that.
You did not mention if you have a higher education degree in anything else. This makes a big difference. If you have a university degree in a science field, I would not bother. I see plenty of successful IT folks who are retreads with physics, chemistry or other engineering degrees. If you have none at all, or something in arts or social science, I would consider getting a degree.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
. . .my bachelor's dates to 1983. Lot of been-there-done-that IT engineering since then.
2006, got TOLD that if I wanted to advance, I'd need a Masters' and at least one advanced certification. I went and got a Masters' in Management Information Systems online (fairly painless, other than writing 20-30 pages every weekend) and followed it with a CISSP cert and a CEH cert.
Income is up 50% since I started the Master's program. Except for a few things, like an introduction to Forensics, and crawling into database theory, it wasn't anything new and/or hard. And most of my fellow students (who were either just out of undergrad, or late 20s) weren't much competition. The few that WERE, I'm still in contact with: their inputs and opinions are as valuable as anything I'd learned in the classes.
Mind you. my employer paid for most of it, I had (at max point) about 7K in student loans. But considering the uptick in salary, even doing it ALL on student loans would probably have been somewhere between a good and very-good investment.
Your mileage may. of course, vary: I was a security geek BEFORE my Masters', CISSP, and CEH. . . but all three combined opened doors and definitely raised compensation. . . .
do something useful. Write software. School is there so when you get stuck someone's there to help you over that hump. You've got the Internet now. Google + forums. There's nothing in this world you can't do. Nothing. P.S. I'm not against school as a social construct. It gives us something to do with people we don't need in the job market. Just sayin' in you're goal is to succeed you don't NEED school anymore. That said, we've got plenty of room in society for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Stop working for Faceless Corps and switch to a smaller company where you rub elbows with the Owners daily. They are not stupid and do the "only youngsters here" stupidity. They realize the older worker is a pro in the field they have been in for the past 20 years and use them to compete with the morons that have MBA's
I'll never work for another Fortune 500 company again. I prefer having beers at the end of the day with the guys that own the business.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My assumption is that the degree is not so much to teach you something, as to "check a box" and get you through the glass ceiling....
That being said, I would go for the Business Informatics track rather than pure CS. You are more likely to learn new things which are useful in the future career you describe there.
All you have to do to earn cred with the t-shirt crowd is to format your CV in TeX, show up with a linux laptop for your interview, and build a RepRap.
Red
Age discrimination must be the government's fault since no business would ever discriminate against any particular group of people for fear of going instantly bust due to the magic market fairy [/libertarian]
People will be people, and people are prejudiced. [/realist]
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The submitter's not in America, he's in Germany, so ranting about US attitudes is off-topic. I don't know much about the German market, but having a BA is pretty commonly useful in business, and if you're thinking about doing project management professionally, here in the US it helps to have some professional certification in that. Also, I don't know how much college you have taken already; whether you're looking for two years or four can make a big difference in your plans.
If you haven't had a good course in algorithms and data structures, you'll benefit from that, and you're going to need math if you don't have that, but you can take those along with the Business Informatics, and if you're thinking about going into management, you're not going to be doing compiler design or operating system development yourself anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Degree may not boost your career, do you see so many jobless PhDs around ? Take some risk to start up your own company may give you a boost.
Because you posted AC, I'm going to assume that you don't realize that a Ph.D can take, on average, between 6 and 10 years, lacking any undergraduate work. Also, starting your own company may give a boost - but that's not really answering the question.
There is one thing that the AC/OP got right - the type degree doesn't matter nearly so much (notice: I qualified that with "nearly") as the fact that you hold a degree. What I'd suggest, is to get a degree in the type of management that you'd like to be - If you're planning on overseeing a bunch of programmers, figure out what they would have, and try for that. In other words - your "promotability" doesn't depend on your degree, it depends on the success of your direct reports (your area of responsibility).
If you connect with your direct reports in a way that makes them more productive (and it sounds as if you plan to use the degree to do this), then going "higher" will happen. You'll be a top performer, as a manager, and in most companies, performance is the #1 factor in promotion. Isn't that your goal?
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
In IT in the UK degrees are pretty much worthless bits of paper. Companies that want degrees only care that you have a degree, they don't care what the subject is, and frankly if you've had that much working experience in your field then the content of a degree isn't likely to teach you anything you don't already know.
Therefore do something for yourself, a subject you want to learn about that may not even be related at all to your working life, archaeology, history, politics, philosophy, physics, music, literature... the list is endless, have fun, life isn't all about work.
Try telling any libertarian that logical and realistic piece of common sense.
I'm in my 40's and just completed a Masters degree in IT Management from Brandeis University, I already had a Bachelors in both Business and Computer Science. The degree spanned two employers, both of which offered employee education reimbursement.
I guess you could say that I am now three degrees above zero... ; - )
A Masters degree is 10 courses and can be completed in 3 to 5 years when going part-time. For most Master's programs, if not all, you first need a Bachelors degree. Some educational institutions will recognize work experience as an equivalent.
It sounds like you have not completed a Bachelors degree. A Bachelors degree takes 120 credit hours or 30 per year over 4 years. It's a lot of work and time which is why most students go full time. Basically, you wouldn't be completed in time for it to help your career.
The first step to get a Masters degree, assuming you are working full time and are not a contractor, is to determine if your employer has an education reimbursement program, what their limits are per year, and what you need to do to apply. If they do, you next need to research the type of Masters degree you want and the schools. Narrow down the schools to your top 5 and begin calling their Admissions department to determine if you can use your work experience and what, if any, additional courses you will need to take. While doing this, talk to your manager and let him/her know that you are interested in advancing your career by taking a Masters degree. Go into how it will prepare you to take on a greater leadership role, in project management and as team lead. Once you have all of the information about the school, put it together in a package with your employer education application and begin the employer approval process. Once approved at work, you then need to apply to the school and get accepted. The rest is just a lot of hard work...
David
I hire people and I work with and know a lot of people at big and small companies who hire people, so I'll say this:
Qualifications for most jobs and the amount we pay for them is almost completely unrelated to type or number of degrees. Create a portfolio and be able to answer questions about it. Period.
(There are a few very very large employers who look for specific degrees, but they are shrinking as they can no longer afford to spend a year training a potential candidate if they want to stay competitive.)
First - you are right. A degree is substantially more relevant in D than in the US. A tech without a university degree is presumed to play in a lower league. A guy with a degree gets a certain respect from his peers, but can of course loose it. A guy without is assumed to be a simple mind and has to earn peer respect the hard way - up front. In large organizations, people know exactly who has a degree and who doesn't. Funnily, the exact subject of the degeree is less relevant in practice. Anything remotely serious will get you going, even BA (BWL), though that is borderline for techs.
But - having said that - somewhere in your fourties, going back to University is not an option any more. You can basically do 2 things
- a get a cheap part-time degree. With cheap I mean BA or some such (aka BWL). Part time means internet or study-by-mail - Fernuni Hagen comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
- accumulate non-academic/professional certifications. If you want to go into project management, there are at least 2 relevant certification bodies. You could mix that with tech vendor certs, or not.
And whatever route you go - start going. Now. Your time has run out, If you want to do project management, start getting into project management roles in large projects now.
Yah, about that lawyer thing. I have a degree in CS. IAAL and got my degree from a decent Florida Law School. However, I just started medical school to get out of the legal field. Law is an odd field. There are many states where there are actually too many lawyers. You can make a respectable living as a lawyer, but it won't be doing the "cool" stuff you normally think of. If you are not in the top 10% of your law class, many of those "cool" jobs will not be even an option until you get 2-5 years of experience doing something horribly boring for very little pay. Also coming from an IT field you may undervalue yourself in the work that you do, I know I did. Also, whatever you do, don't do family law. Please I did, and it was what turned me off of the legal profession completely. That is my 2 cents.
OP mentioned project management background and desire to move more in that direction. One thing to consider is the PRINCE 2 certification in Europe or PMP for those in the States in similar situtations.
Being myself without diploma, but with 26 years of experience (I'm in my middle fourties), I think that you should try to find what is your value for a company, and make yourself known in this area.
In my case, I realized that I have technical skills, but my human skills were most important (perhaps 30% technical skills, and 70% human skills).
So I'm trying to become a coach, and competition in this domain is tough, so I had to learn how to sell my product: me.
It's not as obvious as it seems.
You need to work to increase your visibility:
- I'm using linkedin to create my own network
- I'm using a blog to convey my ideas
- I'm trying to discover new ideas, which might be of interest
- I'll probably write a book (not for the money, but for the reputation, you can easily become an expert with a single book)
Degrees are useless if your goal is to make money ("making money" is a terrible goal, you can make money in almost any domain, as long as you believe in what you do), you really need to know what you want to do, and this comes after discovering what you don't want to do anymore.
After that, you need to discover what you want to share with people (I call that "passion").
I recommend that you keep your current job, and negotiate to attend all the conferences about your subject.
You'll discover that most of the speakers don't master the domains they talk about, and that you can do a better job than them.
The next step is presenting conferences related to your domain.
After a few years, you'll be well known and you'll be able to earn your life with your passion.
In my case, I had to learn how to speak in public, and how to convey my ideas with powerful words, but I'm still working at my job, since I don't earn enough money with my new part-time activity.
My way requires dedication, but I don't take tremendous risks, since I still work at my last job.
I'll be able to quit when I have enough business.
Mr. Plow, that's his name, his name again is Mr. Plow.
Program Intellivision!
In this industry, age discrimination is common knowledge, and several groups have tried to get laws passed to eliminate it, to no effect.
Yes, in some cases old people are discriminated against but I'd say in total I've seen more young people discriminated against. I'm your elder and I've been in this business longer than you have so I'm right and you're wrong and I'll be damned if I get passed up by a young whippersnapper like you. Many career ladders enforce this with a straight up "years of experience" limit that translates into an age limit, even if you're performing at an equal or better level. That is also abused to make really bright young people work at wage levels far below what they're worth. Many people have a hard time accepting that a lot of their old skills and knowledge is obsolete and while they've probably gained some sort of wisdom with age they have 20 years of experience but still perform no better than the guy with 5 years of experience.
If I try to be objective on my own job performance, I'd have to agree there's a diminishing return on experience. There was a huge difference between being fresh out of school and having a few years of experience, but now? The difference between 8 and 10 years seems completely marginal to the difference between 0 and 2 or even 2 and 4 years. Of course I'm now somewhat more experienced than I was, but I felt pretty experienced two years ago too. I'd say this is reflected in the career ladder as well, if I want to move up I have to improve in team management and customer management, if I just keep becoming a super-experienced expert in what I do now I've hit the ceiling already. Okay sure I expect a little pay raise if I get 20 or 30 years of experience instead of 10, but it won't be the kind of continued rise some people seem to expect.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Libertarians are perfectly aware that people have prejudices and do not recognize the need to do anything about it.
If a "prejudiced" employer only hires young people and an "enlightened" employer only hires experienced people, and the "prejudiced" employer outperforms the "enlightened" employer, then he has proven that his "prejudice" is a correct reflection of reality. Results speak for themselves. If the "enlightened" employer wins, than kudos to him.
You don't get magical treatment just because you are old. Why don't we force the NBA to hire 50 year old to play basketball?
Just get a bachelor's degree - any degree. The people who say you don't need a degree are probably people without a degree. It doesn't matter whether the degree is useful or not, and in most cases it doesn't matter where the degree came from or what major it is - what matters is that you have it. The hiring processes of most companies (big or small) are fairly similar. The job description is written and given to the HR recruiter. If the job description says "Bachelor's Degree", then anyone without that requirement will most likely be excluded. The entire point of your resume is to NOT be eliminated from contention so that you get a chance to actually talk to the hiring manager. If you can't get into the manager's office, you never have a chance to wow them with your brilliance and charm. So, if you get a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving, your resume is perfectly accurate if it simply says: Bachelor's Degree, University of Late Bloomers, 2012. You really don't need to say more than that, and you will have passed that hurdle. If they want to know more than that, let them ask you - at least you will be talking to them!
Here is what I did, last year I came off a really good year, 6 figure income from my personal consulting business so I took a year off, and went back to UW-Madison to finish my foreign language requirements and took one advanced course towards degree CS credit.
I however, am back to work full time with my business and am making Bioinformatics tool sets for the mobile genomic researcher.
Now, if you can take a year off an pay for cash all of your expenses, plusd have a independant income like I have then you can do what you want.
However, even I would never consider taking all the time off to get a CS degree. That would be nuts and too costly.
So I do it when I have the time and money.
If you are thinking about taking off, or quitting your job, and taking out loans, you should see a doctor and have your head looked at to insure you haven't had a recent stroke or something.
-Hack
PS: It was a nice vacation too. The student lifestyle is pretty nice. Most of my friend at my age (47) look at me in wonder because they have no independent income, have a huge mortgage, and are in my view no better off than I am with thier degrees in hand. (Certainly far more stressed out it would seem.)
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
We know people are prejudiced but we just don't care because people have a right to their own biases and to their by voluntarily associate with whom they choose.
What is illogical is that you lot think you can change people by just making it illegal to think how you don't want them to think, only by letting people do as they wish (they does not include acts of force) then talking about it will you see any real change.
Also unlike them, you are completely free to start your own business and employ the people that are being excluded by your competitors. Since your workers are more productive, you can produce more for less cost. Less cost means more customers for you and you make a better living than you would have if you were working for them.
Or, in terms /. will understand:
1. start company,
2. hire most productive workers available,
3. lower cost,
4. Profit!
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
What are you talking about? Libertarians have never been a significant political force and are relatively small in number. Socialists and fascists and truck loads of innocent people are the ones that end up dead after revolutions (depending on the situation).
Libertarian (in concept) is a human rights platform where all consequences derive from a "no use of force" antecedent. Your personal political philosophy (assumption here) is a grab bag of biases and opinion plus the belief that you can do whatever you want to other people as long as you get majority consensus (that is of course assuming that you even believe in democracy).
Just so you know also, libertarian != anarchist (most people don't seem to understand the difference).
Not sure what Informatics is, but Accounting (despite a few scandals) maybe with a minor in Business Management seems to hold up pretty well in the US, one of the four top tracks in the US is "Bean Counter" based.
The ruthless secret at least for the US is that the "techs" are never allowed into the Upper Mgt, it's all people skills and politics up there. It's an (ugly) art how much you can avoid doing any number crunching and get other people to produce your documents while you live in People Interaction world.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think what he's saying that libertarianism is just another form of aristocracy, except they cite their success in the rigged 'free' market as the justification for their superiority over the common folk instead of divine right like the old aristocracies claimed.
I agree with much of what you said here. But the problem I've always had with the idea that a "good" I.T. worker being one who is constantly learning new things and adding items to a resume is, it's not that realistic when one works for a small to mid-sized company. (Even more unrealistic given a slow economy.)
I've been pretty much self-taught and self-motivated to try out new technologies and computer solutions since I got into this stuff in the mid 1980's, but I've never been the type to hop around from job to job. Most of my job changes actually came about only because the place I worked for closed up. (I started out working for several "mom and pop" type computer stores, for example, all of whom eventually went out of business.)
The problem is, my peers in I.T. who were basically "in it for themselves" without much regard for their employers racked up more impressive resumes than me, especially in the dot com boom days, when it was possible to accept a position, stay JUST long enough to claim you were responsible for X,Y and Z (cool new technologies of whatever type the place happened to be using), and then jump ship in the middle of a project for better pay at the next place needing someone who used those same technologies before. Lots of burnt bridges behind them? Sure -- but there are plenty of companies out there, especially for the young and single who can move from city to city if and when it's needed.
I, on the other hand, honestly hated the stress and uncertainty of job interviews ... and just wanted a stable job doing what I enjoy.
So where did that get me? Well, I was able to ride out much of the commotion from all the failed start-ups when the dot com era went bust, so that was a plus I guess. But the places I've worked for 5+ years in a row always stuck with the same "tried and true" technology. Sure, we'd do incremental upgrades on such things as Microsoft Office, or migrate Windows Server to newer versions eventually. But there's really only so much "resume building" one can do by staying at the same company, when their budget doesn't allow for buying lots of new software or hardware -- and they're (rightly, IMO!) trying to avoid high costs of re-training people on all new ways of doing things, once they've got something in place that's effective.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is -- it's not necessarily "resting on one's laurels", just because one hasn't added all sorts of new products to a resume. But I really do think recruiters and hiring managers look at it that way, most of the time. If a business paid me for 5-6 years to take care of the same set of technologies for them, that likely means those were good, solid choices that really got them their money's worth. There's no negative in having a deep familiarity with such solutions, vs. the next guy who can list of 5x as many technologies -- most of which were failures, so got removed after money was WASTED on them.
Check out www.coursera.org The quality and price are perfect for an older person needing to sharpen skills/develop new skills. No degree or college credit, but a lot of street cred, I hope (I'm taking three of them right now.)
Look. You're 40. It's time to sit down and think for a while. No, really. Just sit and think.
Think about where you've been, and where your career has been. Think about where you want your career to go.
Factor in the fact that you probably have 20 more years of work ahead of you, if you're lucky.
Think about all the things you hate about the current scope of your work, and think about whether you still want to be doing them when you're 50.
Think about the things you can do if you hire two young buck programmers, teach them right, and have them do your programming for you.
Think about what people have said about what you excel at, and if it's different from what you've been doing, think about going that way.
Think about going into management.
IT (I'm using IT as the whole sphere of computer related degrees) + MBA = CIO position.
Think about that. Even if you don't make it to the CIO, and you may not, what you're buying it looking at problems from the 50,000 foot view and choosing the direction of a company.
If you get a master's degree in BioInformatics, you'd better focus on doing something no one else is doing, preferably something forward-looking. By the time you get done with school and what not, it's probably not going to be as forward looking as you thought.
Computer Science could be easy, it could be tough. You've got programming experience, that's great. You're probably reluctant to pull all-nighters though, and there's some 18 year old kid who will. And what is it really going to get you?
Here's what you do.
Look around the world. (Yes, the world.)
Find the people who are a few years older than you doing work that you think you'd want to do.
Shoot them an email. No, seriously, shoot them an email. Get over that fear of "Oh, they're too busy and don't have time for my little measly email." Politely lay out your case, and wait for their advice. It might take them up to 3 weeks to reply. You might have to email them a few times (no more than once every two weeks).
Find out how they got there. Master's degrees? Fellowships? Luck?
Follow in their footsteps as much as you can.
Just remember, you're 40. If you were to quit work and go to school full-time, you'll be 42+ by the time you graduate. In two year's time, some jobs you want will no longer exist. They will have been discovered to be dead ends (see: Ruby on Rails in large applications) The industry will have moved on. You'll have to be above that on some level. Figure out whether going to school is going to pay off. You can finish undergrad in 2.666 years if you set your mind to it. A master's will take two years no matter how you slice it.
Here's a hint: A Master's degree is not as much about the education as the opportunities you will be provided as a side effect of the school you go to and the people you meet there.
Therefore: Go to a good, real, school. Discard the University of Phoenixes of the world right off the bat. Apply somewhere there are people that might be smarter than you. Many companies use specific Master's programs as feeder schools. (Stanford -> Apple + Google, Cornell -> IBM).
Remember, you're already 40. Going back to school is going to be weird.
But it will probably be rewarding.
Reeses
My background parallels yours, except I'm American, so YMMV. In my case, the dot-bomb forced me out of programming because I was in New York and all those jobs were outsourced to India and China. The only jobs left were project management and account management, managing the work done by the programmers in India. As it turned out, the programming background gave me a very large competitive advantage in project management because I understood the technical development process intimately and could also identify when the outsourced developer teams were messing up and get things back on course.
But the part that might be helpful to you is to assert the skills for management that a degree would "certify" you have. Instead of gunning for lower- or same-level positions or losing time and money getting a degree, assert that you have the skills and experience for the job you're hoping the degree will help you get. Spin the experience on your resume to reflect those management qualities rather than the technical ones, per se. Talk about the time that your leadership on a team project rescued it from disaster and saved the day and BIG $. And if you've been around in tech as long as you say you have, you should be able to talk the talk, with confidence. That's all you need.
The dirty little secret is all the MBAs and the vast majority of IT managers are intimidated by real techs who really know what they're talking about, so all you have to do is use that. I don't mean rub their noses in it, but be sweet as pie while having that great tech resume behind you. They'll hire you and pay you lots of money.
That's what I did, and it's taken me to the top of IT here. Of course, top of IT even in New York isn't anywhere near what schmuck investment bankers make for producing nothing of any value to anyone, but that's a different conversation.
Good luck, and trust in yourself and your experience!
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Do not slight the almighty hand of the market fairy, looter, or you will know the wrath of Rand when the the day of Galt is upon us!
May the Maths Be with you!
Not to sure how the uni system works in Germany. In the US you need a BA first before you get to the good stuff. I have a friend who just did what some people are suggesting and do some MA level work and get a certificate. The difference between me and him is I would receive the MA which I can use in varying ways. He has certificate. Guess who did more work for their paper? No me.
Again not sure how Germany works, go do a BA online. While I had all my lower crap taken care it took me only a year to do a pile of credits as they did not limit my speed and I had experience in the field. So while people were going uhm uhm how do you do this. I was done and moving to the next assignment. There were classes that I had to take, which I could easily teach. Took me 2-3 weeks for three credits, most of the time waiting for the graders to grade. Keep in mind I already worked in the field for years. I also invested 8-10 hrs a day as I was unemployed. I did spend some time helping fellow students on the boards.
BTW I went to Western Governors Uni. Fair price donee quick. I got what i needed, a piece of paper dat says i be smurts. Now I am on some MA stuff that is much more fun. Oh yeah I started at 42.
I would suggest that if you can get a BA quickly, do it. Then go for the MBA or something like that.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard