Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
For software development at least, they can help prove you know a concept, but they aren't going to do everything for you. So if it's on your resume it may help an HR/hiring manager see that you're willing to put your money where your mouth is to prove it, but they're still going to look for experience and other stuff too.
So, I guess what I'm saying, it'll help - but it won't do anything like replace a college degree either. They're good, but don't believe their marketing hype either.
If someone wanted to get into IT but was unable to get a degree for whatever reason, how would they do it?
I've been in IT for a few decades now with no degree. Just got a raise, I'm officially pulling in 12K a month pre-tax.
Here's how I did it:
Work a series of crappy non-tech jobs where I became "the computer guy" because nobody else knew anything.
Tear a calf muscle and have to get a desk job.
Get a phone monkey job answering tech questions. That job had an opportunity to start training other people.
Took the training skills and got a job teaching at a for profit tech school. They wanted me to teach their A+, Microsoft and Linux classes so paid for my certs.
School folded after 9/11, so I took the certs and became a system administrator. Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix phone systems.
After about a decade of that, had a bad experience, burned out, went back to a phone monkey gig for a tiny start up company.
Got IPO shares. Paid for my kids college.
Got bought by a GIANT tech company. Not FAANG level, but a few steps below that.
Now...
My KID... went to college, got his Computer Science Degree. Interned at Intel, had his first paying job at Intel, jumped ship to Oracle, and is now out engineering those AI systems that have everyone creeped out.
After getting a 4 year degree, he went from making the same money I did more or less immediately to making 3x what I do in less than 5 years.
Get an entry level helldesk job and learn all you can from your peers. After you become comfortable start asking the senior engineers for harder tasks.
There are plenty of skills that are in demand but have no certs. Scripting with Bash and python for Linux systems or PowerShell for windows are some examples.
Automation like Terraform or Ansible are also good to learn but have no official certs.
Help desk is the answer. The key is to work towards understanding the industry you're doing support in. A ton of companies love support members because they end up knowing the product, the use cases, and the clients better than most other folks in the company.
This is the way. If you can't find a way into a company you know you want to work for, start in Support. Shine, and move up and out.
I just did this - my undergrad is in an unrelated field and I was looking to pivot. Personally I got an A+ cert and targeted my applications to support positions that required it. It's not a magic button but it was better than nothing since my background was not tech related at all.
I've worked with people who had a GED and were tech support leads (and great at their jobs). If you are lacking in formal education, you'll need to prove yourself other ways. It won't be as easy but it's possible.
If you applied at my company as junior IT, but you had some certs and "experience" doing IT (even if you lied), you'd get in.
If you had no certs, way harder.
But honestly, the CompTIA and AWS intro level certs aren't that difficult. You literally can watch YouTube videos for a month to master it. The annoying part is paying $200-400 to take it.
If you are using Linux for a year as your personal computer, you know more than you think.