Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Getting a Tech Job With Skills But No Formal Degree?
fmatthew5876 writes "I have a friend who graduated with a degree in philosophy and sociology. He has been spending a lot of his spare time for the last couple years learning system administration and web development. He has set up web servers, database servers, web proxies and more. He has taught himself PHP, MySQL, and how to use Linux and openBSD without any formal education. I believe that if given the chance with an entry level position somewhere and a good mentor he could really be a great Unix admin, but the problem is that he doesn't have a degree in computer science or any related field. He is doing stuff now that a lot of people I graduated with (I was a CS major) could not do when they had a bachelor's degree. Does Slashdot have any advice on what my friend could do to build up his resume and find a job? I know a lot of people think certifications are pretty useless or even harmful, but in his case do you think it would be a good idea?"
Certs are good for non-IT degree folks. Heck, certs are good for everyone. Yes, there are people running around with certs that cannot problem solve their way out of a cardboard box while holding a knife. But mostly, they make you look better. Definitely go for them.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Same here; art school drop out (was having too much fun playing with computers and then making money freelancing repairs). The first actual in was meeting a guy at a wake and talking computers. He said his team at Honeywell needed desktop support and that go me into the door. From there, writing documentation (learning systems/processes), some classes and certs and now am admining HPC clusters. My coworkers are mostly CS/EE degree holders, all the way up to PhD but turns out most of the actual job requirements are still job related knowledge (be able to learn quickly), basic problem solving skills, able to communicate clearly and straight forward and having decent people skills.
Oh yeah, in last two years, have started picking up people at the help desk and training up support personnel. Some of these folks have moved into our department as well. After our example, other teams are also looking at help desk as a potential talent pool. Used to be the only way out was up the desktop support ladder but that's changing. May want to look at help desk work and ask what their career options are.
I drank what? -- Socrates
We hire people all the time who have talent/skills but no degree, CS or otherwise. We like to teach people how to do it our way. And no degree means they might think for themself, which can give us an advantage over the competition. We look for actual project experience, on project work like what we're hiring to do.
This is a perfect use of time to work on an open source project. Get something real done, and tell us about it. You might use the project at the job where you're hired. If you're known in the community, their responses to our questions will be specific, meaningful ,and come with URLs and downloadable evidence.
--
make install -not war
If that's the case then the CS programme was doing a bad job. A bachelors in any science should prepare you to be a competent scientist with expertise in that field. In the same way an engineering degree should prepare you to be an engineer.
It's true that for someone who is a full time research scientist directing research you pretty much have to have a PhD these days. But that doesn't mean the work the BSc and MSc level people do isn't science. Coming out of a BSc you should be able to pick up a journal in an area you know something about and make sense of it enough to know how you could use that information and re-implement it if you have the resources.
Being able to create new material for the journal....not necessarily BSc level. That's more the defining features of an MSc or PhD (and there it's about rate, novelty, and quality).
Sure, for 3 years after a B.Eng you aren't technically a professional engineer, but you're doing engineering under supervision of someone who is. But that should be the same with a science degreee. You start out life as a junior scientist under the heavy supervision of someone else.
After a BSc there isn't very far to go up that is actually anything new. An MSc and PhD take a few (4-8) more courses than in a BSc, but all of that course work is something a BSc level person can step into. Doing 'research' is a very specific type of problem that needs to be solved, where you're trying to solve a problem that fits in a publication. That's what MSc and PhD people specifically (myself included) have to do, but we are very marginally better trained than a BSc level person. After the BSc it's more about what sort of problem you're trying to solve, and just how much time you are willing to allocate to the problem and how much risk you're willing to take on it.
I grant you that lots of CS programmes are bad at making scientists though. But that doesn't mean they have to be.
Same as the GP, I didn't finished highschool. Have no degree at all. Started small and now make a bundle (and hire CS degree holders to do the monkey work I don't want to do, 'cause honestly... they suck...).
Experience trumps paper.