Any Current Non-Degree Holders Here with Aspirations to Management/Supervisory role?

Just curious if anyone here is like me. I got 13 years in IT, some college, a couple of certs, though those were not what got me employment. I feel like I'm ready for the next step, and that's partially why I'm doing the WGU path (the main reason is I want to finish what I started 15 years ago). By the time I'm done, I'll have a degree plus 16-17 years experience under my belt. Would a Masters help, or should my experience be enough?

What do you guys think? Should I just stay where I am in life? Or should I try to challenge myself to go to the next level of my career? Anyone else feel the same way I do? What do you think?

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Comments

erpadmin

Aspirations.....damn I really need to spell check sometimes....lol.

Bl8ckr0uter

My limited IT experience (a little more than 3 years) has told me that a degree is greatly looked upon. What are you doing and what do you want to do? With 16 years of exp, are you looking towards management? Knowing that would greatly help your decision making.

erpadmin

knwminus wrote: »

My limited IT experience (a little more than 3 years) has told me that a degree is greatly looked upon. What are you doing and what do you want to do? With 16 years of exp, are you looking towards management? Knowing that would greatly help your decision making.

Fair enough.

First 3 years was doing jack-of-all-trades work for a public library. Maintained an NT 4.0/Windows 2000 domain, did break-fix PC repair, worked on Cisco routers. Second 2 years was pure Desktop Support in the private sector. That was strictly a money move. Then got 9/11ed and was chillin' on unemployement for about 8 months. Then got a job in a municipality as a System Admin doing primarily PeopleSoft support and secondary Domain administration for 3 years. Then currently I do system admin/database admin work for a state college doing strictly PeopleSoft. I do have domain admin rights, but those responsibilities are done by the net admin team and they're a bit terroritorial. That's irrelevant though as I have proven that I know as much as they do and I don't step on their toes nor they mine. My technical experience ranges from DOS 5.0 all the way to Windows XP (Vista is pretty much like Windows ME...never played with it, and Windows 7 I feel I will probably deal with by end of next year though I'm in no hurry). Server experience from Windows 3.5/4.0 all the way to Windows 2008 (R1 and R2, though Oracle will only certify R1, so we stay there). I also have some Citrix in there. My Cisco experience is done, and I'm ok with that.

I do feel that I am now ready to delegate as opposed to doing. I just want to get into the Project Management end of things but still be "hands on."

I am sure I'm not the only one who feels this way and just wanted to see if there is something else I should be doing aside from WGU.

Bl8ckr0uter

You could start working towards Project management certs like PMP and service oriented certs like ITIL to round out you "management skillset".

dynamik

erpadmin wrote: »

Aspirations.....damn I really need to spell check sometimes....lol.

Just edit your post. NO ONE WOULD HAVE KNOWN!

I don't know if you're deceptive enough to do well in management...

While they're not required everywhere, masters seem to be preferred for management positions.

cablegod

At some companies, no completed "formal education" is a show-stopper for management roles. From what I've seen, this tends to be true for most larger companies. I grew into my role over years, without a college education, but I just recently completed a BS:IT from WGU just to "fill" that gap, should I ever need it. Smaller companies normally don't care if you even graduated high-school. If you have the skills they need, that's all they want.