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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?"
I barely graduated high school and I hold a high level IT position.
Key plan: don't lie about your college degree!
CS is not IT
I have had friends do this (and myself to a degree) and it can open doors you didn't know you had. Also join some local user groups (like I joined my local VMware User Group) and made a lot of good contacts, one even got me a job when I just got RIF.
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.
BUT things were a lot different then. And without any resume good luck getting a job, I've had to climb hills and start out with far too low salaries to get where I am.
I'm going to go back to school and finish up just because of this reason, you should consider doing that while doing open source projects that you can put in your portfolio
See if the college's placement/career department can find an internship for him. Or perhaps one of your CS professors.
...if you don't have a formal degree.
As a matter of fact, software companies will often have those with degrees who are fresh out of school work in tech support for at least 6 months. Then move them up when a slot opens or they show that they are capable.
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And complete it, for someone. A church, or a nonprofit would be good. Another alternative would be to build a useful application and add it to SourceForge. Nothing spices up a resume like free downloadable open software that you've written, assuming it's well tested.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I wouldn't recommend getting a Cert, probably more trouble and cost than its worth. Not as negative to have on your resume for a SysAdmin than a programmer, but still, it doesn't exactly shine, so it doesn't feel worth it. Its going to be hard, no doubt. There's just so many people who apply for IT jobs that have NO idea what they're doing at all, hiring is a nightmare. So much of the "interview process" is just to weed out people who should never be applying in the first place. You mentioned, "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" There's the answer. That's how you get a job without a degree, you do really impressive stuff that shows you know what you're doing and you care about it. Tell him to do as many personal projects as he can, and try to find everything he can do to show evidence of having done them. Set up a personal website, and make it as in-depth as possible. Write extensive notes on all the stuff he's doing that graduates couldn't even do, and include that with your resume. Take pictures, include links to live things on the web if you can, everything and anything to show that while you don't have a formal education, you still have experience. That's what counts. Other than that, I'd just say apply everywhere imaginable. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part, once he's got a job on his resume or two, people won't care about his education at all.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
make friends and contacts.
And if you already have a degree:
Go to user groups,
make friends and contacts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Given that sysadmin is not in any way equivalent to Computer Sceince, I'd say he's in luck. Anyone who requires a CS degree for a sysadmin job is just ignorant of that fact.
your friend should apply and see what happens, if he dont he'll never know, if he does he loses nothing
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Have something you can demo. A personal project that you put serious time into. Have it well presented (a good website or document that highlights what you are trying to show off).
That's the easy part. The hard part is getting in the door. Focus on smaller companies as most big ones will just bin your resume. Go in there and apply in person. Easy to delete a document when you see there is no degree. If you make the effort and go in there in person, usually they'll at least talk to you.
The fact that he has _a_ degree is good. To many, a degree has little to do with proving you know computers and more to do with proving your character.
IT is one of the few industries where a person can still work his or her way up from the bottom without any formal education in the field. Having a degree is good no matter what it is simply to be able to say that you have a formal education, but not necessary. Your friend has already displayed one of the things that IT hiring managers seek almost above anything else: initiative to learn on his own and the ability to put the knowledge to good use. That alone is going to carry a lot of weight.
The future of IT/sysadmin is automation. You'll need to be good at programming in at least one language like perl/python/ruby. The scripts, recipes, and what not for automating data centers are artifacts that can be created and shown off to potential employers. Look and see what employers you're interested in are using like Chef, Puppet, Fabric, CFEngine, etc... Then learn to use them with a bunch of VMs (VirtualBox is free) and write some libraries and put them up in a public place like github. Find a big complicated open source project like a nosql database and write a bunch of comprehensive recipes/scripts for setting up clusters of it on AWS. Then getting a job will be no problem because people can look and see that you know what you're doing.
You said your friend had no formal degree, yet you describe him as having degrees in philosophy and sociology. Those would be degrees, even if they aren't CS degrees.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I have been lucky. With only high school I have work all over the world doing software development since the early 1980's. I have worked as a consultant for mega corps with a staff of PhD's and invented some world changing algorithms ( which of course the mega corps patented ).
If you are good enough, or have a perspective that is outside the box and produce results, the degree doesn't matter.
It's just harder. Harder to get in the door to present yourself. Harder to win acceptance of your work. Harder in just about every metric you can think of.
Don't let it stop you.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
This is my personal experience, others may vary:
A while ago before I got my degree, I tried getting a basic tech support job within the same medium sized company (2-3k people) that I worked for in a non-technical nature. I had a friend that was a network admin for the company and he personally tried to get me in, talking to the hiring manager, vouching for me, etc. The hiring manager called me and told me that he had over 100 applicants and most of them all had degrees, and that even though one of his own employees was vouching for my skills he had a hard time justifying hiring me over one of the many people who had degrees.
It was shortly after that when I started on my degree. Immediately after my degree (actually 2 months before I finished) I was hired.
I know some older people that became senior network admins and started (in the late 80's) with no degree at all. One of which owns a successful small (2-3 people) consulting company. I just think that in modern times without a degree the odds are heavily stacked against you. Even though it sounds like a long time..4 years goes quickly.
You don't need a degree to do programming, web, development or syadmin type jobs. What you need is experience. Lots of it. experience.experience.experience. That's what the last 17 odd years in development taught me. I have no formal education at all, self taught all the way and I'm pretty good at what I do (if I do say so myself) You are going to have to prove yourself in the beginning, but once you gain their trust along with some good solid experience, nothing can stand in your way if you persevere. It's easier if you have a passion for it. Good luck.
If that sounds too smug for someone, hell, I deserve it - 60-80 hour weeks, total dedication and loyalty to customers, and always on time and in budget - time to market is worth a lot to the right customers, and part of it is finding those guys in the first place to work for. I earned it - an hour at a time. And so did the guys I hired when it was time to expand the outfit. Now retired, but that's what has worked for me.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
He has a degree that's what is important to a lot of employer, now he just have to spin the logic part of the philosophy classes, if he took descriptive logic's even more so, emphasize his societal knowledge he should list his relevant experience, then provide a link to a demo. With that he should be quite ahead of the bottom of the classes CS grads, as far as the recruiter is concerned.
For a monetary interesting UNIX admin position, a cert*1, from redhat or from oracle, is a fast-track to a corporate position as he already have the degree.
1- CS major are not good at system administration usually
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
This isn't a huge issue. There are a lot of IT jobs with no requirement formal training or education. However, in addition to not having any training or education, he also apparently has no experience.
Oh, I get it. He set up a server and has taught himself PHP. There can be a significant divide, though, between "someone who knows how to run a Linux server" and "someone who is qualified to be a Linux sysadmin." It's not all technical knowledge; it's also about understanding how businesses work, how to work with other people, how to manage your workload, and how to cope with problems and mistakes. Experience counts for a lot.
So your friend has no formal training and not a lot of experience. He'll probably need to start at the bottom, which means being a low-level tech.
Study part-time (you can fit one or two courses a semester around a full-time job without too much pain) for whatever degree fits best for high level system administration (it's not, or shouldn't, be Computer Science). Put that degree on your resume, with the projected completion date in the future--if you're worried, put a bullet point underneath stating that it's a degree in progress. This will get you past quick filter passes which throw out resumes that have no undergrad degree.
Anyone who is looking at these resumes closely enough to notice the undergrad isn't actually completed yet will likely be more interested in work experience than in education, so you're okay on that front. Once you get to the interview you can spin it as a positive: you're qualified to do the job based on past experience, and you're sufficiently ambitious to get the degree anyway to 'round out your skillset', or however you want to phrase it.
It's so nice that the editors post this same question once a week. I might just look back at the last few times this question was asked so that I can get a few +5 mods.
Everyone already pointed out a bunch of things. The key is this - if you don't have a degree, what can you show? Is there a website? A blog? A job somewhere, be it nopay/littlepay/volunteer that shows what you did? What can you show a potential employer as something you can do?
Second - show that you have a good attitude about learning. Show how you made mistakes, and then fixed them, and improved upon them.
Next - network! Join local usergroups. Help others. Answer questions. But please don't give stupid answers if you don't know what the hell you're doing. Like that guy who swore up and down that "tracert" is the Microsoft Trace Report tool. Or that idiot "hacker" who posted on youtube a traceroute to google, and then claiming the numbers indicate how many users are on each google server. Please don't embarrass yourself like that...
Also, find something and *FOCUS* on it. I have a ex-network guy on my team who makes $120k. He focused on networks and did that for a long time. Now he's doing something else for us, and doing a damned good job at it. Doesn't have a degree.
My degree was in Manufacturing Engineering, but by the time I graduated there was no money and few opportunities in manufacturing in the UK where I lived compared to IT. So I went into IT. Started at the bottom of the ladder at PC support. I was able to talk my way into that job because I had a bit of CAD/CAM knowledge and some experience as a CAD draughtsman, but it actually didn't work out very well because it was in a small company where I was thrown in at the deep end and expected to learn a million things all on my own. It was more than I could take in.
I ended up doing various agency jobs doing clerical work, but along the way I was able to teach myself little scripting tricks using the macro languages of those office software tools. It was around this time that I got a lucky break and got some free Microsoft training that could have led to certification. The training company also set me up with a job interview for a position as a UNIX administrator. At that interview I openly admitted that I had limited UNIX experience (just as a user) but I talked up the self-teaching aspect of what I did in those clerical jobs and assured them that I wasn't intimidated by complexity or a different system from what I'm used to.
That's what swung it for me in the end and I got the job, although it helped that I was able to get across that I'm a good communicator. All other job applicants had computer science degrees, but mine was unique and it helped me to stand out from the crowd.
The fact that your friend has a degree of some sort means that he's in the running (the headline of this post is very misleading, it implies that your friend has no degree at all). If he's a good communicator and can give examples that show he can learn and apply new skills then I think he has every chance. I'd tell him to pick up any scrap of knowledge from any source that he can get it from. If he can do pro-bono work for non-profit organisations, friends or anyone else on a tight budget then that might help to build up his resume. I was able to do that with my web developer skills, building websites for friends' sports clubs free of charge (apart from hosting expenses).
To answer your question about certification, I don't completely discard the value of it and if he can go down that route then by all means do so. But I think his energy might be better spent getting practical experience under his belt and grabbing any scrap of training he can get from any source.
Good luck!
PS, I never followed through with the certification in the end.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
... such as Austin. Opportunities abound. There many small companies who are eager to hire smart, motivated folks with demonstrated capabilities, regardless of the field of their degree. Wait... *don't* move here. There are already too many people here.
If he has actual demonstrable knowledge and skills, then he needs to build contacts with people working in the field, specifically, people working in places with sufficiently non-bureaucratic hiring practices that a recommendation from a skilled current employee can help him get to an interview where he can demonstrate that to a hiring manager.
At least, that's how I got my first technical job with a degree in the social sciences and minimal formal experience (e.g., coursework) in computer-related fields. (I didn't actually build connections for that purpose, they were preexisting.)
When I'm hiring for unix admin jobs, I don't give a fig about what degree you have. Just what you can do and how fast you can learn.
Demonstrate that, and there will be no shortage of job offers.
Here's one idea that works really well. If you have a non-IT degree, consider getting an MBA with a concentration in MIS. That "Management Information Systems" bit is equivalent to "IT" for most recruiters.
Do your MBA part time. Continue getting experience. Then you have both a degree *AND* experience when you're done.
As the IT admin with no CS degree that has a healthy job with decent pay...Allow me to elaborate on a couple small things:
1. CS is not IT. So many newbies come out with a CS degree and think they're shit-hot at running a network. Then they dont even know how to swap the tapes out.
2. Social Networking is EVERYTHING. It's not alllll what you know, but who you know -- you may be great with GPO's and cisco gear and write a mean shell script, but if you dont have the industry connections, you're not likely to get that special job that someone knows YOU are perfect for.
3. Idiotic HR departments & Municipalities look for a degree over real experience. I've been told before that I got 2nd place in an interview to someone who had 1/10th the experience but had the degree. Subsequently he was fired a couple of months later, but ALAS the door was still closed because I didnt have my papers. Then I became an IT director for an insurance company with a healthy six figure budget. Their loss is my gain, I guess.
TL;DR: MAKE FRIENDS & KNOW YOUR SHIT. I dont demand you're a cisco god, or anything like that, but smart and willing to learn doesnt hurt. Everyone gets experience on the job, but the really good guys are eager to learn EVERYTHING, inside & out.
"I have a friend who graduated with a degree in philosophy and sociology." I wouldn't consider that a formal degree either...
The degree's subject doesn't matter. Just having one will give him a leg up.
As long as he knows what he's talking about, he should be able to find work at a hosting company which will have plenty of entry- to low-level sys admin type work. Some sort of volunteer work beforehand to prove that he's not totally inept would help, too.
Working...
I got a psychology degree 15 years ago, and in my last 3 jobs, I've been the highest technical person in the company (two jobs ago, that excepts the CIO, who was non technical). Start low, work hard, and get some certifications. I know Slashdot hates certs, but so many people doing hiring require some paper support for skills.
Learn to love Alaska
The market is completely flooded with "shade tree" sysadmins/IT who fit that exact same description. No one cares about the degrees they just care about *anything* that will help them weed out the thousands of applications from home grown (no experience) Sysadmin/IT Tech. No offense to you or your friend.
Small businesses need people who are flexible, and who are ready and willing to learn. A business with the need for his skills might not be tech-focused, and might not be looking for someone with a CS degree. Having a degree in Philosophy has never hurt me, and it makes for a great interview question. In some respects, I have (and he has) a degree in "figuring things out".
Because small business need greater flexibility in their employees, and all the independent learning he's done would demonstrate that flexibility. There are down sides to working for small companies, but not everyone is cut out for corporate culture.
If he can combine his skills with another interest, he'll be valuable to a small company in that area.
I can't speak for any other workplace, but when I go through resumes I pay very little attention to the "Education" section. This is due to encountering so many people with Bachelor degrees in Computer Science that can barely write "Hello World" when asked to, and Masters degrees who can't write a simple recursive script to crawl a directory structure and do X to files with criteria Y. Putting it bluntly, college degrees have lost their credibility.
The industry I am in is network performance; I'm in QA. We need people who understand IP networking, who are good enough with Linux to administer their own test machines and get around on the command line of our (Linux-based) product, and who can write test automation scripts in Perl, Python, or bash. When I interview someone, I ask them to write a couple of very simple scripts in the language of their choice. I give them a couple of straightforward network-based problems (hint: the answer is that it's not working because of NAT). I ask a couple of simple Linux questions. And it's still damned hard to find anyone who can even do THAT, regardless of what their degree or GPA is.
In other words, at least from my perspective, the lack of a degree isn't an issue. What's important are specific skills, the ability to discuss them, and to demonstrate that they can perform those skills. Having projects that you can point to (such as a t1.micro instance in Amazon EC2 that's a fully-functional LAMP system that you can give a tour of, and demonstrate skills upon) is important. If coding skills are being claimed, something on Sourceforge that can be examined is good. Breaking in to the tech industry is very doable, and people are doing it all the time. But you have to have something that gets you past the first filtering session of resumes, and projects is the best way of doing that.
Suggestion: since your friend seems heavily Web-oriented, have him find a local non-profit group that interests him that has a crappy website. You can figure out what step 2 is... bam. Instance experience and project people can look at, complete with warm fuzzies for helping out a nonprofit.
And once he has his first tech job on his resume, the degree (or lack thereof) becomes much less important. Your degree gets you your first job, but not your second; after that, it's almost purely experience and references that matters. Recent password issues nonwithstanding, LinkedIn is a major pathway for getting into tech. It's served me very well, as well as most of my techy friends, and showing the initiative of tracking down recruiters on LinkedIn will eventually pay off with an interview.
Of course, the best way to get an interview is personal recommendations. Unless the hiring manager is a friend, the friend can only get you the interview; you still have to convince the manager and the rest of the team to take you on.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
I wouldn't notice if a resume I got for the positions we are advertizing didn't have a degree listed. And he would have one for the places that deal with HR requiring such a thing.
Of course lack of experience is a harder nut to crack but having a degree in CS doesn't make up for that anyway.
This social site (minus the current security issues) has become a great networking and job hunting tool, IMO. He could, for example, create a full profile complete with as much detail about the skills he is really comfortable with, and start networking just with friends and his non-IT coworkers at first. He could then start to do IT as odd jobs (rent a coder, craigslist, etc) or volunteer work even for Churches and non-profits, etc. and ask the contacts he makes through those efforts to give him recommendations about his work, if they are happy with it, on linkedin. Recruiters seem to contact me through linkedin, more than any other service (Monster.com, dice.com, etc.) now.
Tech support? Why don't you suggest this guy suicides right away?!
I've been continuously employed in a variety of IT roles (Sysadmin, project manager, network manager, InfoSec among others) since '92. I don't have a degree of any kind and while that's kept me from interviewing for a few jobs, it hasn't really negatively affected my career. Certs and degrees are nice, but there's no substitute for experience.
That's why I usually recommend getting a tech support/help desk job to those trying to break into IT (if you want to be as developer, tester is a good starting place) IT if you don't have a degree or prior experience. That's the advice I give most folks who want to get into IT. Since quality IT people are few and far between, IT management will pick from the best of the TS/HD folks and move them up quickly if they show they have the right attitude/skills/outlook.
Yes, tech support/help desk work blows, but we all have to pay our dues. If you don't want to pay your dues, then you should consider suicide because you're a worthless piece of shit.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
No, you didn't grasp my point: he's not missing anything by not knowing CS. Many places ask for a BS, but don't give a specific field. If he has a BS and lots of related experience, he could easily turn that into a job and not feel under-qualified lacking of a CS degree.
Experience and certs can be acquired concurrently, pick certs up for the technologies you work with and do the reading/hands on rather than braindumping it. You'll learn and make your C.V. look better. If nothing else a lot of shops need certified people to maintain partner agreements and if they've had a couple people leave then that CCNA or MCITP might push you into a job over the more experienced non-certified applicant, or into an interview for a position with 1000 applicants. Just don't take advanced certs for techs you have no experience with, these paper certs make job-hunting difficult for everyone and waste time for recruiters and hiring managers. Some certification programs are quite challenging and intellectually rewarding and make a candidate stand out from the crowd.
I think that was the most poorly written post I've ever done on /. My apologies.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Start with a simple tech support job which can be had anywhere. After 6 months or so you could spruce up your resume and get a better job. If he thinks he's good enough right now, look for local companies and start freelancing.
After either option, you can pretty much get a job anywhere as a second level support or junior sysadmin.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Then work your way up and make contacts. Leave after 3-4 years using said contacts and get paid 2x more money. That's what I did with my History degree, and it is no longer an issue. Although I still regret not graduating with a CS degree, I now try to spin it as a good thing because it brings a different viewpoint to teams with all CS majors.
I don't have a degree. School bored me to death so I dropped out and took the GED. That's all the paper I have.
I got some things on my resume by working on my own hobby projects that demonstrated that I could work on moderate-scale systems. I also got a bit of white-collar job experience working as a drafting monkey. Those two things demonstrated the two primary things that employers want to see: a) I'm capable of doing technical things; b) I'm capable of showing up for a job sober enough to not get fired for a few months at a time.
With that on my resume, my formal education has never been an issue. It was enough to get an entry-level sysadmin job. It was relatively low pay and under my skill level, but I didn't care - I stuck it out for a year at which point I had solid relevant experience on my resume. From there I was able to jump into jobs that challenged me and made me learn rather than the ones that paid the best - those are solid resume gold, and result in the next job paying much better than this job would have if I'd simply gone for max pay. (I also simply prefer harder jobs - it also keeps me from getting bored.)
The other thing I do is keep learning. I hated school, but I love learning at my own pace and on my own time. It's its own reward, so I don't have any problem with motivation for it, but if you're not like that, do at least try to completely immerse yourself into learning something relevant to your career. Again, hobby projects are great. Then when you're in an interview you get to show off all the things you know.
Perhaps I'm biased, but when I'm hiring people the highest weighted thing when I'm scanning resumes is to look at their most recent job and see not what they were responsible for, but what they accomplished. That matters much more than job titles or formal education.
Have him put together a resume and get it online, he should at least be able to get a contract job.
Then there's the big consulting firms like Accenture, they love guys with degrees other than CS.
And as others have said, network.
But do not take a job doing techsupport, it's a career limiting move and it won't actually be developing marketable job skills.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
do some post grad work. some schools have 2-semester programs where you can get trained/certified. the problem is that there are so many resumes out in the wild, that employers use education (and then gpa) as a way to cut lots of them out. it's not always right, but that's the way the world works.
Making assumptions about what other people want out of life is a dangerous hobby. You say you believe you know what he wants and you ask all of slashdotdom for help. Mother Teresa meets highly opinionated technology forum. All I can say is be careful. As for your buddy, as the Moody Blues say just what you want to be you'll be in the end.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
I started programming professionally about 2 years ago. Before that, my education was all in Philosophy, like your friend.
In general, although businesses SAY that they want someone with a CS degree, it hasn't really stopped me - I apply for the job anyway, and then talk about how I think the philosophy degree actually helps. My first job programming came because I went to a Ruby on Rails conference, and at the end they had a jobs board where employers could write their name if they were looking for someone, and potential employees could write their information if they wanted a job. So I wrote my name on the board, and was contact in a few days and offered a position as a Rails software developer. I had no professional experience doing programming, but I was able to sell the philosophy background as being relevant.
So my advice is twofold:
1) Think about ways his background actually helps (for example, being able to conceptualize well and think through the logic of things are very well trained in a philosophy programming).
2) Go to conferences and programming groups. There are groups in every city, you just have to find them.
If your friend is looking for some other tech job, not necessarily a programming one, I imagine the same advice applies.
I hate to burst the bubble of any CS students ... We all sit in the same cubicles churning through millions of lines of legacy Java code, filling in our change requests and putting cover sheets on TPS reports.
No, we do not all do that. Some of us went into CS because we actually had an inherent interesting in coding, not because a parent or guidance councilor told us it was a good career path. Because we had an inherent interest in building things. An inherent curiosity regarding puzzles, practical or academic. We appreciated the theory presented in many classes because it better prepared us to design new things. And many of us matching the preceding sit in our cubes designing and developing new things, not maintaining old things.
I'm sure someone who came up through an IS program can probably make a similar observation.
What you end up doing has a high correlation to what your inherent interests are and to how seriously your took your degree program, CS or IS. I would not trust most of my fellow CS grads to design and develop new things, however these individuals typically were just in class to get a piece of paper to get a higher salary.
Tell him to get his resume at every temp agency he can find. Most IT jobs, at least in my area, are work-to-hire via the temps. In fact, my current job (intranet sysadmin) was obtained by accepting a work-for-hire assignment as a network admin!
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
My degree was in Philosophy but I'd been programming since Junior High, so that helped. What really helped was that I had skills in a niche language (APL). Later on, it helps to have pertinent non-tech skills like business knowledge or a domain-relevant degree - I got a CFA charter for work in finance.
Actually, based on experience, CS majors often are not very good programmers - at least right out of school. Fortunately for them, business and HR people don't know this and have not a clue how to test for it.
Oregon State University now offers an online, one-year, computer science degree. The only requirement is that you have ANY bachelor's degree. This sounds perfect for this "friend." Do the time and work and you'll be employable by any company that wants to hire a CS grad. Reference: http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/new-online-post-baccalaureate-computer-science-degree
A degree can obviously help. Having a degree not in CS may be beneficial anyway. If he wants to do development he just needs to keep up on how to write good, secure software and show his stuff either through a online repo on bitbucket or github or just have an good person site. If he also has previous experience through voluntary means or paid work that will help and trying to get more will only help his cause.
I didn't bother with university at all and haven't had any real problem finding work. In fact, on my employers had their investors pull out and within a week of being given notice I had another job resulting in only one day of unemployment. My current job and previous two I've been working along side plenty of people with PhDs and it's not a problem. In fact, in my experience, the lack of formal education isn't often a problem with the people you'll work with. It's an issue for HR departments or management primarily in larger companies. My disinterest in university hasn't stopped me from being respected by my peers who have done that and it hasn't stopped me from earning what appears to be an above average wage for the sort of work I'm doing in this area. If you can prove you're good at what you're doing there are people who will be interested.
My current employer is happy to pay for training and schooling so I do have the opportunity to consider university now. I probably will appreciate it more now and get more out of it but if I do pursue that option I don't think I'd waste my time with a CS degree or something similar. Something perhaps focusing on math, astronomy or something more interesting.
I have no degree beyond high school but I got my first tech job applying for "Computer Hobbyist" position at an international company that sells business machines. One of our network admins had a degree in philosophy from Duke. You'll have to start at the bottom and work your way up but it can be done. Go test for a few certs and that can really open the door. Just having your cert listed on the Red Hat site will shower you with offers from across the country.
I have a friend who graduated with a degree in TI. He has been spending a lot of his spare time for the last couple years learning epistemology and metaphysics. He has set up lectures about skepticism, rationalism, empiricism and more. He has taught himself infinitism, foundationalism, and how to use coherentism on a daily basis 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 philosophy teacher, but the problem is that he doesn't have a degree in Philosophy or any related field. He is doing stuff now that a lot of people I graduated with (I was a Philosophy 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?
Please check this out to see what i tried to do first you burn my karma
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
Certificates are gilding the lily. And if you haven't skills, I don't care what certs you have. It's the skills and interest enough to pursue the skills that attract me as a hiring manager. I'm sick of spoon feeding new hires only to have them decide "this isn't really what I want to do".
Make sure there is talent though. If you work under the wrong people you will learn to write crappy code. Find the right mentor and you can really learn some cool things. I learned more in 1 year under a good mentor than what I learned in the previous three years.
The lack of a relevant degree may be a problem getting into very large corporate IT, but not elsewhere. Most people I know in the business didn't study anything related in school (I was a Japanese studies major) and it's more useful to have people who have learned on the job and worked their way up. The fact that my #2 has a CS degree has nothing to do with him getting his job - I never even asked about his education background, I just wanted to know about what he could do as a sysadmin. An IT guy with CS training can be very useful, but only in an organization that gives you enough freedom to wear multiple hats and propose solutions you can create.
It wasn't too bad overall. That last line was unnecessary, though.
I studied Philosophy but have been in IT for 10 years plus all the years I was in college working side jobs and projects. I do a lot of tech interviews -- I am a consultant in a very rapidly growing cloud services field. I specifically look for people who have learned from their own side projects and hands-on experience. Find me on LinkedIn by going to my Slashdot profile page and checking my Journal.
I'm a highschool dropout that spent my spare time tinkering with unix and general tech.
I started as a customer service consultant at a telco, and now I work as a network engineer at a marjor telecom equipment vendor. I never lied about anything, just applied for positions that seemed interesting, and did convincing interviews and solid good work.
It did and does require a considerable amount of self study and eksperimentation, but I really do enjoy tech, so it's not a problem for me.
The tech industry is generaly forgiving with regards to lacking formal education. Basically, whatever gets the job done.
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
Get yourself a programming project. I do a plugin and I did a few projects at work. Those helped a lot. It's hard work (maintaining that plugin can be tough), but worth it.
Also, keep an eye out for stuff at your job that adds value to the company but lets you learn. Let the rest of the guys around you do the easy rut stuff. Take on the challenging stuff so you can get paid to learn.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Have him apply at Verizon wireless. The only company I know where a person can have a completely unrelated degree and get into a high level position without any serious experience.
I know friends that are CS majors and can't find a job. I have no degree (and no college debt to pay off) and i make far more money then they ever will. Why? Because i know my...erm...shit. *Knowing my shit* doesn't mean being a god a programming either. 70% of my work is IT related and NOT programming (even though i consider myself better at programming.) My advice? If you truly are smart: 1) Figure out your skillset. 2) Target your skillset. 3) Look for smaller businesses (startups especially) that have need of your skills. 4) The time (and money) will follow. 5) Note that you may find a job with shit pay and shit management. If you have no experience under your belt this ok. Use this job to build experience. Afterwards, finding a great job will be easy. -- P.S. i almost dropped out of high school, and only have a high school diploma and make 6 figures a year.
Many of the big IT companies like IBM, Deloitte, etc. won't even talk to you unless you have a degree. Screw them. I have found that smaller companies are more willing to give someone a try if they don't have the degree but they have a good attitude and some aptitude and a willingness to learn. As others have pointed out, once you get some experience the degree becomes less important. What you're looking for in the job description are the three magic words "or equivalent experience" in the list of qualifications. Don't worry about taking a job that you might think is beneath you. Think strategically about the type of job you want to eventually end up in and work towards getting the necessary experience and qualifications. Don't underestimate the importance of networking. Not ass kissing - networking. I am convinced that many of the best jobs are filled through connections with people that have a say in the hiring. Never throw away a business card. A couple of times in my career I took jobs that nobody else seemed to want and yet I picked up skills that proved to be valuable down the road. Don't be afraid to take the crappy job. Learn how to write a resume. If you don't put something in there that will catch the recruiter's eye you won't even get to the interview stage. In an interview enthusiasm is critical. I have interviewed people in the past that didn't seem to give a shit whether I hired them or not. Well, if they don't care neither do I. If it's a face to face interview practice how to give a proper handshake. Seriously. A firm confident handshake says a lot about a person. Make eye contact but don't stare at the person. After the interview send a note to the interviewer thanking them for their time. It's a small gesture but it can make an impact. These things might seem trivial but if you are competing against others with more education or better qualifications then attitude and presentation matters. A lot. Good luck.
I've been in IT for about 20 years now, professionally... to this day I do not have a degree (of any sort actually), yet I'm highly-regarded and paid rather handsomely for my skills.
They key to getting hired initially was to have a portfolio of work. I had done some independent consulting projects before that I could show, but mostly I was showing things I had done on my own. And, a lot of it, most of it even, wasn't remotely work-related: I showed a lot of intros I had written for BBS's years earlier, a couple of games I wrote, little utilities, things like that. That impressed the person interviewing me a lot.
I also made a point to study up on things I suspected I'd be questioned on, things like the basics of OOP, which to that point I hadn't done any of.
I also had an interviewer that was fair, which is a bit of a lucky draw I have to admit, but one thing he did was asked me to write a program in FoxPro over the weekend and bring it back to him Monday. I'd never even HEARD of FoxPro at that point, and this was before the Internet was what it is today, so it wasn't like you could just go download examples and whatnot... I went to the book store, picked up a book, read it all throughout Saturday, then spent all day Sunday hacking the thing together. It wasn't brilliant code to be sure, but it demonstrated a general attitude and ability to learn on-the-fly.
The interviewer later told me that I basically blew away every CS degree holder that came through the door, some of whom couldn't even answer the basic OOP questions ("What is polymorphism?" for example). Very sad.
Now, all these years later, I sit on the other side of the table and I see the overall lack of basic skills that most candidates seem to come to job interviews with, and it's sad. None of them ever bring a portfolio of work either, which is a big deal. Just throwing a resume on a table isn't enough anymore, especially when I've seen first-hand now many times they're nothing but bullshit. SHOW ME what you've done, whether on the job or not... in fact, in some ways I'm MORE interested in what you've done in your spare time. It often-times shows a lot more of your drive and self-help aptitude, something that is sorely lacking in today's IT world it seems.
Mostly though, don't be dissuaded from trying! For a couple of years I didn't even try to get a job in IT because I figured I didn't have a degree so there would be no chance. I was very wrong. Sure, some places won't even consider you without a degree, but frankly, let me tell you that those, generally, aren't places you'd really want to work at anyway (yes, there are exceptions, but I'm talking generally). It even helps to a certain extent because frankly, use hiring people can pay you less! But, we'll also expect a little less, which means that if you perform well, which is a bit easier with those lower expectations, you can usually expect to be taken care of... for example, my salary tripled inside 5 years, even though I started out a bit lower than I would have liked, and has been going up steadily ever since, all because I came in, a little bit of a gamble perhaps, but I exceeded expectations by doing nothing but working hard, putting in effort to learn new stuff outside work (I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS!!!!) and generally doing what was asked of me.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Perhaps GE HR's thought process is that failing to translate "Du yu no host file?" (excuse the eye dialect; I'm trying to make a point) into "Do you know what a hosts file is?" on the fly means you aren't as likely to be able to understand the smattered English of other GE employees whose native language is not English.
After a BSc there isn't very far to go up that is actually anything new.
There's always an MBA so that you can actually run a business related to the skills from your BSc.
we all have to pay our dues
The question then becomes: why is a specific set of dues necessary? In the case of tech support, it's easy to explain: tech support exposes the new hire to the problems that the end users tend to have with the company's products. That way, once someone gets promoted from tech support, he's so sick of a problem that he has the initiative to find a way to fix it.
On the other hand, someone entering a company through tech support is likely to run into a different problem: Some companies have mostly on-site tech support, and someone without experience is unlikely to already own a suitable motor vehicle to travel to the customer's site.
Without a job, how should one obtain a motor vehicle with which to travel to user groups and make friends and contacts?
Speaking for myself, I've been in IT as a Unix sysadm and a Networking guy since 1988, and I have no college degree, and a night school HS diploma. I'm completely self taught. However, my background as a programmer hobbyist since age thirteen helped a lot here. I likely was a better programmer with more real world experience than the average CS grad by the time I was sixteen, having put out a few shareware programs.
My entry to my first IT job came directly from attending a local Amiga users group meeting. I was showing off some program I wrote, and one of the guys there happened to work for my future employer (a well known Govt agency), and set me up with a sort of internship. And it was actually for more money than I ever made before, and quite a good salary for someone in their early 20s.
So I reiterate some of the other posters advice. Go to users group meetings, and teach yourself stuff. Today, the opportunities for self instruction are WAY better than they were for me back in the early 80s. Back then, I had an 8 bit computer and a few books I had to mail order to help me learn. Today, we have the internet with a vast array of free software and web sites with free tutorials and references everywhere, as well as free visualization software to allow you to explore different OSes, etc. There are pretty much endless opportunities to help learn on the web today.
Just about any degree, even a liberal arts one, is better than no degree for employ-ability. So don't worry about that. I've actually met many extremely good programmers and sysadmins with totally unrelated degrees.
Your friend should get a whole heap of paperwork behind them in the form of certification. Certification in some areas is more important than a degree. Example, most Networking positions advertise asking for things like CCNA's and CCNP's (or equivalent), etc. Some ask for degrees as well, but more often depending on the position, a certification will hold more weight than a Comp Sc degree.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Thanks. You're probably right about the last line. I guess I should let the ACs annoy me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Grr! shouldn't
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Writing software (GNU) != Selling software (Microsoft) != Selling support (RedHat) != Selling solutions (IBM) != Selling gadgets (Apple) != Selling advertisements (Google) != Selling privacy (Facebook) != Selling consulting (Accenture)
Casteism
... and not enough real-world programming.
... Seriously!
My chief complaint about the CS program at was that it was almost all about the science. They would sell the unfortunate undergraduates on the notion that they were being trained to become real programmers. But then almost none of the training that the students were paying for included any real world programming. Essentially after C++ 1 & 2, all the professors talked about was theory. But their homework assignments were expected to be turned in as a C++ implementation of that theory. Unfortunately little instruction was given in advanced topics of actual programming. You were just expected to learn that on your own.
Now, some may argue that this teaches you to learn to program on your own. And that would be true if the work-load wasn't so high that one had very little time to actually do that. So, many students only did just enough to get by, and often "worked together" to write programs. I would overhear them teaching one another how to change things just enough so it looked like they wrote it on their own. I would also overhear when they actually tried to teach each other how to do things. Unfortunately, since they were all just guessing their way through, most of what I heard sounded like this: "So, if you type that, then it will work. Don't ask me how. I just kept changing things till it worked."
From what I have seen, a CS degree actually teaches you BAD programming skills by forcing you to program with limited knowledge, time, and instruction. And I have yet to see a CS course on how to choose a good, reliable preexisting library with a good API. This is probably why so many CS graduates write every darned thing from scratch, ignoring existing programming standards or patterns.
So, it seems the currently most acceptable way to really learn how to program (that is design useable, maintainable code that actually does what the user needs, and can be easily installed by regular people) is to get your CS degree to get past the HR department, then forget all about what you "learned" and start learning on the job from existing, knowledgeable programmers. Unfortunately, one can't "forget" about all those student loans. Another option is to pick an open-source project and really contribute a lot. Also network a lot amongst programmers in your town or in the global developer community. Then use that notoriety to get your foot in the door somewhere so you can then learn from those preexisting experts. But, in a way, that is like using the NBA to get out of the slums. Not everyone can become a "star" programmer in some OS project.
There really needs to be better mentoring programs amongst skilled programmers and some means for those experts to vouch for their "students." Something like an apprentice program, with journeyman and "master" levels. Like one of the "guild's of old.