Kinda in a pickle at the moment....advice?

Nafe92014

Greetings fellow Techies....

Recently, my current position (Best Buy Geek Squad) has cut back our hours. I am now only getting 10 hours a week. Luckily, I had an interview for my old position at my local hospital for the summer. Now here is the tricky part.....they also posted that they are looking for a 1 year term ICT Tech Level II at the hospital as well (which is what my last job was but only for 3 months). However, I already got accepted to go back to college in September to get my tech degree. My head has two words swimming around right now....Diploma or money+experience for another year.

Any advice would be great.

TheFORCE

Nafe92014 wrote: »

Greetings fellow Techies....

Recently, my current position (Best Buy Geek Squad) has cut back our hours. I am now only getting 10 hours a week. Luckily, I had an interview for my old position at my local hospital for the summer. Now here is the tricky part.....they also posted that they are looking for a 1 year term ICT Tech Level II at the hospital as well (which is what my last job was but only for 3 months). However, I already got accepted to go back to college in September to get my tech degree. My head has two words swimming around right now....Diploma or money+experience for another year.

Any advice would be great.

That is a tough decision but ultimately you are the one that will make the choice and live by it so you have to think what you want in your future and how you will go about achieving it. Sacrifice now or sacrifice later.

I had to make a similar decision. I chose the job and the experience, took1 year off from school. I only had 1 year left so i dont know how long you have to finish your degree. Within that 1 year i gained experience and then went back to get my degree. I noticed early on though that the longer i was postponing finishing the degree the more opportunities i was losing. Not only work related but also mentally and psychologically. The idea that i had left something so important unfinished was always in the back of my mind that sometimes i made me feel down when i was seeing people around my age having finished their degree.

So yeah, it depends on the situation you are now. Personally, thinking back i would have done it the same way because it worked for me, the only thing i would change is how hard i tried to get my degree. I think i could have put some more effort.

lsud00d

Finish college ASAP...get it out of the way and never worry about it ever again. The jobs/experience will be there this time next year and you can continue to work part-time to keep the skills fresh.

xD Lucas

College, man. You'll have all your life to make money. College is something you can't replace. I'm 31, never went away to school, and always regret it now.

alias454

There is some debate on the college vs. work if you factor in student debt vs. the additional 4 years of work. I say do both if you think you can handle it. Nothing wrong with taking the job and transferring your credits to WGU or some other online college. Your life will suck for a year or two but you end up with experience and a degree.

lsud00d

That's a good point @alias454 on the surface but please keep in mind that the majority of the non-degree'd workforce will not overcome the ceiling put in place by a degree requirement...only those who are very dedicated, intelligent, and/or high performers are capable of jumping this hurdle (unless you know someone ).

MeanDrunkR2D2

Can you work your school class schedule to work full time while going to college? Sure, it's not easy, but it is doable for those motivated enough. That would be the best way to go about it to be honest as you get both the degree and the work experience.

renacido

With less than $500 worth of used/refurbished hardware, a broadband internet connection, and free (legal) software and training that is readily available to anyone, you can build a home lab loaded with commercial enterprise-class servers and learn the skills of a system admin, network engineer, application developer, etc. All for less than the price of one credit hour at wherever university.

Glass ceiling for those without a degree? Depends on where you are and who you work for. Sure, a lack of a Bachelor's degree may make it harder for you to become a Director of IT at a large company. Masters degrees are rarely asked for let alone "required". But I know quite a few non-degreed IT pros making 6 figures.

I'm not saying that a university education has no value. I'd say instead that it's not the most practical or cost effective means to get an education in IT.

Robertf969

In all honesty if you can afford it just finish that degree. If you can handle both do both but its hard. I am finishing up my bachelors right now while working full time, unfortunately I attend an online school because of this. Yes I said unfortunately, many on these forums will dog me being that WGU is so popular here. In IT you would think that an online degree would be just as respected as brick and motor but iv'e seen first hand that its not. I have had more than one recruiter ask me if my degree was earned online, and subsequently lose interest in me. I'm not saying you cant be successful going to an online school like WGU and working, many on these forums have done just that and are very successful, I am just saying there is more ROI IMO from a Brick and Mortar school and if you are young without a lot of responsibilities than stick it out.

junilinux

What an important choice of your life. Just thinking about what you will have after you get the degree and in the reverse, what's not. In my point of view, school and work are some "stuffs" that support to each others. What you will get after you have degree, I mean the time, the knowledge you could gain when sitting at school chair is nothing but valuable at some point of time when you will have been working after.

In my story, at the time of university, I had not thought much about the value of the Bachelor degree because of, of course, the recruiter want and requires more than 1 year experience, as always, for quickly job adaptation from a just-graduated guy. How? But after going for work, I am going to be noticed that the knowledge I had gained when at school always needed not only in my work but in my life as well.
So, the problem is not the degree, the problem is time. With 1 year, you can get your degree but also the experiences from your home lab. That's called the "weapon inventory" prepared for you to "fight for" in working environment

Nafe92014

Just thought I'd update you guys, I got the summer position at the hospital. So i'll be working til the end of August then going back to school.

lsud00d

renacido wrote: »

Glass ceiling for those without a degree? Depends on where you are and who you work for. Sure, a lack of a Bachelor's degree may make it harder for you to become a Director of IT at a large company. Masters degrees are rarely asked for let alone "required". But I know quite a few non-degreed IT pros making 6 figures.

I'm not saying that a university education has no value. I'd say instead that it's not the most practical or cost effective means to get an education in IT.

Just a couple things to touch on...glass ceiling typically refers to women or minorities and the "ceiling" is in place due to gender or minority-based obstacles.

Second, I didn't say those people don't exist, I said they are not representative of the majority. When giving people advice it should be responsible instead of anecdotal. Sure, we all know of people who have made it without a degree, but there are many, many more who will not. So, when faced with the option of finishing school or not finishing school...finishing school should almost always be the answer.

@Nafe92014, congratulations! Soak up as much as you can. Also as @renacido suggested, build yourself a homelab and keep learning new technologies!