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?"

Comments

Re:Whatever -- Smarts and Work Ethic Come First

[Gilmoure]

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.