IT Career Without College?

So I'm 27 years old looking to get into another field, unfortunately I never went to college for Computer Science etc. Do I have a chance of getting an IT position without a bachelors? The field I am focusing on getting into is digital forensics. So I'm not sure where to go, not sure whether or not to abandon the idea or keep trying.

Any advice would help.

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aderon

JSN wrote: »

Wow, your snide and pompous comments have truly guided me in the right direction. Last time I ask for advice. To answer your question, no I did not post any thread about a "career break." Your post came off as condescending and downright rude. I have doubt anything you have since posted was meant to be helpful. Perhaps you should work on that inflated ego you have, and I'll make sure to improve my "second grade reading skills."

Think she was responding to that HairGangs guy. His posts have been deleted, but he was trolling. If you look at some of iris' posts you can see she screenshotted one of his replies.

JSN

If that is the case, I apologize Iris.

TLeTourneau wrote: »

I guess I would ask you define old. I started my undergrad at 41, it was a fair bit of work but worth it. I am starting my masters in a few days at 47.

I suppose you are right, better late that never. To address what field I am coming from, I worked in the defense contracting industry as a Security Specialist. I worked in the same office as the information security team, which peaked my interest in the field. Fortunately too I was granted a clearance while working, so I may try to use that to narrow down the job market. I was hoping Security+ would help me land some sort of role within the field, but for what I was told it is a required certification for anyone working on DoD systems.

SweenMachine

JSN wrote: »

Wow, your snide and pompous comments have truly guided me in the right direction. Last time I ask for advice. To answer your question, no I did not post any thread about a "career break." Your post came off as condescending and downright rude. I have doubt anything you have since posted was meant to be helpful. Perhaps you should work on that inflated ego you have, and I'll make sure to improve my "second grade reading skills."

Not to pile on here, but Iristheangel has been providing advice as long as I have been on this forum, and she has never been rude nor has an ego. She has maybe the best reputation rating on this forum. You missed the fun trolling that was going on earlier in this thread.

For what it is worth, I started college at 37 and I don't regret it at all. I would mention that I did build my career before going to school, but I enjoy college and definitely don't feel 'too old'

-scott

Iristheangel

JSN wrote: »

Wow, your snide and pompous comments have truly guided me in the right direction. Last time I ask for advice. To answer your question, no I did not post any thread about a "career break." Your post came off as condescending and downright rude. I have doubt anything you have since posted was meant to be helpful. Perhaps you should work on that inflated ego you have, and I'll make sure to improve my "second grade reading skills."

I have no idea who you are but hi! (((Virtual Hugs)))

Definitely not directed at you. There was some other guy here who was terrible. I don't know you nor was i making any comments your way.

Iristheangel

SweenMachine wrote: »

Not to pile on here, but Iristheangel has been providing advice as long as I have been on this forum, and she has never been rude nor has an ego. She has maybe the best reputation rating on this forum. You missed the fun trolling that was going on earlier in this thread.

That is very kind of you. I wish I could say I don't get a tad cynical at times but I definitely feel it creeping in.

I think this was just a OP misreading something he thought was directed at him and since the person I was replying to had all his comments deleted and was banned, it appeared out of context.

xengoreth

Early in my IT career, I found my lack of degree made it more somewhat more difficult to advance. When I reached mid-career, in fact, I blamed my lack of advancement on this. However, what I figured out is that it wasn't my (lack of) degree that was holding me back-- it was that I didn't have any marketable skills or certifications. To my horror, I discovered that the first ten years of my IT career were a complete disaster since I had stayed in these desktop-centric roles. While I was at the top of the food-chain in that world as a desktop engineer, preparing the desktop OS image and packaging applications for deployment for a large organization (200,000+ endpoints), it had pigeonholed me into a very poorly respected and understood role that hindered my growth. I was bad at marketing myself when it came to resumes and the mere mention of the word "desktop" automatically decreases your potential salary by about 50% in my estimation.

At that point I focused on developing my existing scripting and programming skills, learning virtualization, learning networking, developing better Linux administration skills, and do everything I could to prove to a potential employer that I was capable of doing things more complex than fielding desktops (which is only something I did for about 2 years of my career). I knocked out quite a few certs (although most were done in pursuit of a degree with WGU).

Today I am 19 years into my career and I work in a role that I love on a small team where we handle entire enterprise for a small environment. My role is varied but I spend the majority of my time administering our Cisco gear as well as acting as our SME for Linux and virtualization. I also do some AD domain administration. I make $100K+/year (not that this should be seen as any measure of success), but more importantly, I am happy and usually don't have to work much beyond 40 or 45 hours a week.

The point is, eventually I'll finish my degree but I doubt it will change anything for me at this stage-- it will only be for my own satisfaction.

I think the best thing anyone could do for themselves is do what Iris, for example, has done and pursue advanced certifications in their area of interest and use it as a structured way of learning everything there is to know about that subject. Read and lab until your eyes and fingers bleed and develop specialized and marketable skills in your area(s) of interest as this will do more for your career than any degree. Despite what anyone says, I think Iris is the real deal and I have utmost respect for her ability to sit down and learn the **** out something, so I'm going to call her out as an example of how to do well.

I believe the goal of also acquiring a degree early in one's career may have a little more value than later. If you also pursue the degree, try to make sure pursuing degree doesn't stand between you and your learning objectives, which has always been what has stopped me from completing my degree.

powerfool

Anecdotes are great for making your experience relatable to others, but they don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Sure, there are going to be outliers that do extremely well without X, Y, or Z (degrees, certs, or otherwise). However, these are exceptions to the rule. Many have provided some quality posts stating that it opens more doors, this is indeed the key.

Another thing to consider: economic changes. I started during the downward slide of the Dot-Com bubble becoming the Dot-Com bust. I was able to get a job, get a little experience, and when the startup that I worked for collapsed, I just went to the next one. This happened for the first 2 years of my career without any college or certifications. Then... things went south. I eventually found work, but I decided I wasn't going to just "let" this happen to me again. I went for the MCSE first because it was more quickly attainable than a BS, but then picked up full speed for it following that time. Half way through my BS, my career picked up insanely. It has been on a positive trajectory since then. I have had lulls here in there in my professional development, but the key is to not stop. Things change so rapidly now that you must continually learn new things.

The statistics (based on the broader scope of the employed) suggest that you should get a degree because you are much more likely to have better success with one versus without one. Also, having a masters degree is even better.

I say, use all possible avenues to improve your prospects. Get relevant certifications, get a degree if you don't have one... if you do, go for a graduate certificate or masters degree.

The key to these things is to not let it hinder experience and don't go into debt. Those that forego working for education are doing themselves a disservice, especially in IT. You can go to school in the evenings, online, whatever, these days. Also, seek out affordable options or get an employer to foot the bill.

There are two major things that can hold you back financially, even if you make good money: 1) student loan debt, and 2) cars. They may be necessary for most... but try to temper those things and you will be better served (trying to put these things into practice myself, after learning the lessons the hard way).

jcundiff

TLeTourneau wrote: »

I guess I would ask you define old. I started my undergrad at 41, it was a fair bit of work but worth it. I am starting my masters in a few days at 47.

I went back to work on mine last year at 45... you are never too old to go back.

DatabaseHead

powerfool wrote: »

Anecdotes are great for making your experience relatable to others, but they don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Sure, there are going to be outliers that do extremely well without X, Y, or Z (degrees, certs, or otherwise). However, these are exceptions to the rule. Many have provided some quality posts stating that it opens more doors, this is indeed the key.

Another thing to consider: economic changes. I started during the downward slide of the Dot-Com bubble becoming the Dot-Com bust. I was able to get a job, get a little experience, and when the startup that I worked for collapsed, I just went to the next one. This happened for the first 2 years of my career without any college or certifications. Then... things went south. I eventually found work, but I decided I wasn't going to just "let" this happen to me again. I went for the MCSE first because it was more quickly attainable than a BS, but then picked up full speed for it following that time. Half way through my BS, my career picked up insanely. It has been on a positive trajectory since then. I have had lulls here in there in my professional development, but the key is to not stop. Things change so rapidly now that you must continually learn new things.

The statistics (based on the broader scope of the employed) suggest that you should get a degree because you are much more likely to have better success with one versus without one. Also, having a masters degree is even better.

I say, use all possible avenues to improve your prospects. Get relevant certifications, get a degree if you don't have one... if you do, go for a graduate certificate or masters degree.

The key to these things is to not let it hinder experience and don't go into debt. Those that forego working for education are doing themselves a disservice, especially in IT. You can go to school in the evenings, online, whatever, these days. Also, seek out affordable options or get an employer to foot the bill.

There are two major things that can hold you back financially, even if you make good money: 1) student loan debt, and 2) cars. They may be necessary for most... but try to temper those things and you will be better served (trying to put these things into practice myself, after learning the lessons the hard way).

Is college worth it? Goldman Sachs says not so much | News for College Students | USA TODAY College

These Two Charts Prove A College Education Just Isn't Worth The Money Anymore - Business Insider

Found these articles to be interesting.

ThePawofRizzo

jcundiff wrote: »

I went back to work on mine last year at 45... you are never too old to go back.

Indeed, one is never too old to start school, especially when considering an IT career. I started working on another Bachelor’s last year at the age of 47. I already have a BA in English, and a couple AAS degrees in CS. ( Note that I have actually used my communication skills quite a bit in IT, so the BA knowledge is not wasted at all; there is always documentation that needs to be done, especially “how to” instructions for users.)

I also agree that a degree is not necessarily required to get into IT, although without experience I’d encourage getting some certifications. And there is the chance you’d have to consider a pay cut to initially break into the field, but as a career, if an individual is motivated, has an aptitude for technology, etc. there are many, many opportunities.

As for not having a degree, on my server team of five I believe only two of us have Bachelor degrees. And many of them have let their certs lapse. Any of my team members are sharp and talented, but I think most agree that having a degree and/or certs would have helped them in their career, if only to enhance their resume for the times they’ve had to move to a different job. In my case, I was told in the hiring process that the company preferred considering those with degrees first, so it can give one an edge.

Of course, as others have said here experience, personality, job history and more will help as well. I got my first break into IT because when seeking a desktop support job I had to take an exam around customer service skills. Apparently, I did outstanding – mostly because that had been a large part of my previous job role – and the hiring manager told me “We can teach you the technical side, but the customer service side I have found is difficult for some to ever learn.” I had my AAS degrees at the time, but was pretty green, but it was my communication skills that got my foot in the door.

powerfool

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Is college worth it? Goldman Sachs says not so much | News for College Students | USA TODAY College

These Two Charts Prove A College Education Just Isn't Worth The Money Anymore - Business Insider

Found these articles to be interesting.

So, they seem to have two main points:

1) The cost of education is increasing at a rate that is quickly outstripping the benefits

2) More folks with college degrees are unemployed

I think that they provide interesting insight but don't offer any justification for their position. I agree that the cost of education has gone up rather significantly... for those that don't put any effort into reducing the financial burden. The costs have skyrocketed. However, as I have said many times, one shouldn't just pick an expensive school and pay full price. There are plenty of affordable options. And that is the point, don't go into debt for it and, if possible, don't forego working to go to school.

I think that this plays into the second point... if you have a bunch of kids go into school with an entitled feeling that they should be able to go and have zero responsibilities outside of passing some classes... you are going to turn out graduates that don't provide much value to employers. On top of that, with the amount of work that is being outsourced and automated, I think their point is entirely invalid. Folks need to be more educated than ever to remain competitive and provide value.

I just did an exercise with my daughter's BF. We outlined an AS for him and what it would take for him to self-study, pay for exams (CLEP, certifications, etc.), and then go to school. He could walk out with an AS in 3 semesters at a less than full-time pace having paid only $1800 if he goes to a community college and tests out of everything that he can. The is pretty darned affordable. The, he could get an entry-level job with tuition reimbursement and get some scholarships and pay for completion of his BS as a reputable local school... or he could look at online schools. And, that $1800, if done right, could easily have 20% knocked off through the use of 529 plans or federal education tax credits.

This is just the musing of folks trying to tell people what they want to hear. Kids want to hear that they don't need to go to school. And you know what, if they care that little about their career, then they don't need to go to school, because hemming and hawing so much over whether or not you should do something that will ultimately benefit you immeasurably means that employers probably won't have time for you. They want problem solvers and people that have incentives to get ahead.

I have BS in Information Systems, and MS in Cybersecurity Policy... I also have almost enough credits for a BA in a foreign language. I study all of the time. This doesn't mean that everyone should follow my path. But, I put a ton of effort into learning, and it pays off for me, significantly.

Improving yourself inherently provides value.

The issue seems to be invalid as most things do today with all of the political polarization. Should we be doing X or Y, which are polar opposites? How about... the question is the wrong question to ask. Evaluate many paths to accomplishing the end goal and be flexible enough to adapt and switch between those paths based on the circumstances with which you are presented.