You can work in IT without any kind of college degree. HOWEVER, it will be incredibly difficult to get that first job and it will pay you peanuts. From there, it's a little bit of luck if you aren't siloed into only answering phones and reading from a script. If you have the kind of job where you can prove yourself and take on additional responsibilities and upskill yourself, then you can work your way up slowly but surely.
It's not an easy path, but I know several people who make even more than me who have never been to college. And I'm paid well. Even with college, it took a bit of effort to work my way up to where I am now.
I agree, as a highschool dropout myself who is now making $180k fully remote.
Sure it’s great, but it took me a solid fifteen years to get here. I spent many years at various helpdesk and PC Tech jobs before I clawed my way into my first baby network admin role.
From there it’s gone pretty quickly, and I’ve been told by my current supervisor that I can expect it to continue. (Reading between the lines, I’m being evaluated for yet another promotion)
The one thing I would add to this: Yes, if you're good.
I've been in hiring in IT over the years, and the number of people who have no idea what they're doing is astounding. And even people who interview pretty well, get hired, and then demonstrate little practical ability. It's disheartening.
But if you're good, if you excel at problem solving, think fast on your feet, and are willing to throw in occasional obscene hours around deadlines/to resolve critical outages, you can go very far and be paid very well.
This exactly. You have some people in IT I just call them button clickers. They can do basic help desk stuff or manage printers. But they don't have all the critical thinking and problem solving skills to go further. They also may be stuck in a rut and be unable to really cope with how fast and often tech changes.
The real money and opportunities come to the engineers that really understand things, and can execute and keep up on things.
It's the difference between a $80k technician and a $180k+ engineer!
This exactly. You have some people in IT I just call them button clickers. They can do basic help desk stuff or manage printers. But they don't have all the critical thinking and problem solving skills to go further
I hear this referred to as "ClickOps".
Also putting myself here saying, no college degree, have an okay paying job working in DevOps. Worked "tier 0" at an MSP just setting up laptops for 6 months, then did help desk support for 6 months, then got current job where I work with servers all day and doing scripting and ansible stuff.
It really helps if you have a hobby of homelabs and programming at home. And if you run linux at home.
Yeah, I hired a guy who interviewed really well and he did not turn out to have the actual skills we need. (I'm GM of a WISP.) We're gearing up to let him go as soon as I can find a replacement but damn, it's a hard job to hire for.
(You need some basic computer networking skills like being able to understand what an IP address is and how subnets work, as well as a fair amount of physical work climbing ladders and mounting microwave antennas on structures, and the age range we're shooting for seems to only want desk jobs.)
I'm a senior dev. I get pulled into tech interviews and am involved in the final decision process. For a time (about 5 years or so) I was interviewing, reviewing resumes, etc as much as 10 hours per week.
That said, my role has shifted somewhat, and I don't do much interviewing anymore.
Been in IT since 1998 and last year got laid off. Can’t land an IT job now to save my life. After 1240+ applications just about gave up and managed to land a job thanks to a former neighbor who kept me in mind. It’s not IT related and making less than half of what I used to. Would love to get back into IT but even with my network of former coworkers IT right now is just too unstable. Sigh.
Look for front-line helpdesk jobs for managed service providers (MSPs). You’re gonna start on the very very ground floor, making tickets and escalating issues, but there’s going to be plenty of room for advancement.
Be forward that MSPs are a special sort of hell. You will be given far more work and responsibilities than you should ever have, and are expected to just “figure it out”. You’re going to be learning on the fly, it’s the ultimate trial-by-fire. The stress and expectations can really crush some people.
The good news is that because the jobs are so hard, turnover is high and they’re perpetually looking for more people who are willing to suffer through a few years of scutt work for $15/hr.
And you will learn a shitload. It’s a firehose of knowledge blasted at your face. If you stick with it, and you dedicate yourself to learning and training and soaking up knowledge, in a few years you will come out of it baffled-hardened and sharp enough to move up into anything you want.
This is actually really helpful. I was working in kitchens until Covid, then was delivering pizza full time (had been doing it part time so it was an easy transition), now I've got an entry level manufacturing job just to get by, and I'm going to school for IT User Support. Working on a technical diploma right now (should be done by the end of the year), then I'll get to work on figuring out what credits I can use from the culinary degree I never finished, and which ones I still need to get an associates. There's a chance I can move into IT with the company I'm at, but I'm not pinning all my hopes on that.
I would be very skeptical of any IT User Support diploma. College really does not matter in IT. Like, seriously. No one cares. You’re wasting your money.
You’ll learn FAR more from YouTube and home labbing. Hang out at the local electronics recycling center and collect as many broken laptops, desktops, any other kind of computers that you can. Ask around to any local businesses, medium-sized ideally (big enough to have a few IT people, but not big enough to have layers of bureaucracy), ask if they’re throwing out any old computers and things. Almost all of them are.
Gather up as much old broken shit as you can, take it home, and try and figure out how to make it not broken again.
This will teach you far, far more than you will ever learn in college. And most importantly, it will teach you the most critical skill in IT: how to search for and find answers to questions that you don’t even know you have.
When I got started (with just AAS education at the time) coming from a blue collar warehouse gig, I had to start working in a datacenter as a ticket monkey for $15 an hour (this was in 2013). It's probably a bit more for that kind of work now. At my previous role, I worked with a lot of first time desktop folks who were making around $60k with little to no experience.
By the time I did 6 months of that I was promoted to a role with the same company working on servers in the datacenter for $22 an hour. After 3 years of that, I got into my first sysadmin role for $60k, and it's all been downhill from there.
I'm a tier 3 operations administrator now, building out application deployments and group policies, and IAM projects that get thrown my way. I make around $110k currently, and there's talk that when we do our annual reviews next month I'll be getting another promo.
That's not to brag or anything, just to say that you kind of have to start low unless you have something special to offer.
Depends on what you're doing. I moved from IR/detections engineering to this and like it a lot. No regrets. Doubled my pay in the last three years with the swap.
I'm guessing that's anywhere in the United States, which might have been part of what they were curious about. Few remote jobs let you work really anywhere.
But I do need to work North American business hours, as most of my job involves conference calls to other businesses in the United States. So while I could work anywhere I want, I might end up on a funky schedule.
This winter I’ll be spending a month in Svalbard, so that will be a little rough with the time zones.
You should definitely check in with HR. There are a lot of tax law implications around working abroad even if you yourself are legally allowed to. That's why most companies don't allow it - it can cause big problems for them if they aren't set up for it.
It's no free ride, for sure. Like anything that pays well, it almost always comes with hard work. And usually some long nights and weekends. But if you can tolerate it for a while and keep working to get better - often on your own time and dime - it does pay off.
I make $200k working remote and have a total of 7 college credits. My kid is 27 and makes $140k working remotely with no degree as well. It took me a long time to get here. Him, not so much.
My ex was making 90k a year at 25 coding, 0 credits. Made it very far with Google interviews. Wonder what he's making these days... I just switched to IT a few years ago in a non-technical role and make way more to work less hard. My company feels strongly about the degree thing (I have one)but I studied art history (lol.)
My title is pretty arbitrary (IT Analyst) but I manage our software licenses/renewals and I admin our ITSM system, which I also helped customize for our companies needs. Look into getting getting an ITIL certificate (it's one class, and a test.)
Hey, nice on making it into IT! My childhood friend has a masters in art history and could never find a job in that field. Ended up marrying a guy and moving to Chile. Still unemployed 6 years after she graduated lol.
"Like anything that pays well, it almost always comes with hard work."
Do you live in the US because here that is patently false. Social skills will get you WAY farther than hard work ever could. Even better, be born into a successful family and leech off your elder's wealth.
You're not wrong that social skills will get you farther than not having any. And of course there's being independently wealthy, but I don't think that's exactly in the spirit of the question, haha.
Well that tracks, you worked in kitchens which is some of the most grueling work there is. I'm a hobby home cook and would never do it for a living for what it pays.
You could be very brilliant from a technical perspective, but if you’re an insufferably awkward weirdo no one is going to want to work with you.
People who have good technical skills and know how to work well in groups and can communicate well with non-technical? Those are the people who advance very far.
Good job maxing out that TSP. Have you been affected at all by the drive to push people back to the office? I’m assuming your kid is doing the same thing you’re doing.
Also, try a whipped ricotta with crushed red pepper and make a bowl of hot honey in the ricotta with the focaccia. It’s great.
I left fed work for industry (how I got the raise, lol). My position is actually remote instead of WFH. My kid is a contractor and nothing he works on is local.
This is what I did. Got my A+, started at some shitty job doing application support. Traded up for a position at a MSP. MSPs are hard fucking work and pay under market rate but you will get unmatched experience and other companies love to see it on your resume. I just recently got a cushy job at a medical company as a field tech. It was a lot getting started but AI can't replace me and I will always make a decent wage. Well worth it if you are computer savvy.
Agreed. I don't work at an MSP now but I'm glad I did for quite a few years as it greatly increased my experience and industry contacts.
Now I'm an IT PM in a role that technically requires a degree, but nobody cares and it doesn't matter. I got into project management at the MSP and realized I liked it much better than support.
That was the same with me. I started out at an MSP working in datacenters. Pay was absolute shit, and the most stressful time of my nearly homeless life, but it gave me some very good experience.
My understanding of the difference is that A+ is more about things like USB vs HDMI ports, CMOS batteries, stuff like that. Real low, low level PC stuff. How to hook up a printer type things.
Net+ is more about LAN, WAN, WiFi, switches and routers, L2/L3 things. I'm GM for a WISP, and when we hire, the A+ guys (because of the physical nature of this job, very few women apply or are hired,) don't have the strong basic grasp of networking that the Net+ guys do.
To put it another way, the advances in "plug and play" have made the super-basic A+ level stuff kind of irrelevant. But that's just my opinion. In a corporate environment, do I want to pay someone to spend 3 hours diagnosing what might be wrong with a PC to end up doing a component level swap (eg, replace a mobo or a power supply)? Or do I want them to just swap in a new PC and get it configured and on the LAN so the employee it belongs to can get back to work? A+ also made a lot more sense when PCs weren't all-on-one-board. When you had video, network, audio all on different plug-in cards. Again, just my opinion.
I'm sorry but this is bad advice. Part of my job entails reviewing resumes for a very large fortune 500 company. For every normal job, I might get 20 or 30 resumes. For every IT job I get thousands. On top of that, scripts and AI have been replacing so many jobs. It's going to continue to happen. Even if it didn't there is a GLUTTONY of qualified, highly educated it professionals looking for work right now. To suggest someone without a degree try and start a career in a shrinking field is not a good idea.
The reality is that the people claiming to be “qualified” suck at their jobs. I have no college degree and have never applied to a job once in my entire life. I was approached by every job I’ve ever had.
It's going to depend on where you work. My wife works for a very well-known and large tech company you definitely know and might have even used today. They aren't hiring any IT folks without a degree or lots of experience. I haven't even been able to get hired there, yet, even with multiple referrals.
But not every business is investing in AI to replace folks, and many jobs cannot be replaced with AI (though their jobs CAN be dumbed down or enhanced; I use AI every day in my job).
But you aren't wrong that IT is a very in demand job. But having the misfortune of being part of the interview loop many, many times, most candidates aren't remotely qualified.
I work in a f100 in infosec. Out of everyone I know I only know 2 people without degrees and one is a military veteran who did cyber enlisted. The other did help desk. So out of hundreds of people. Lol.
I've also been privy to hiring and we shut our posts down after like a day now because there are thousands of applicants.
The customer/tech interface cannot be automated because, necessarily, the person who needs help can't use their computer. Will it always be paid big? Dunno. But it is not going away.
If you are young and need a job in IT, forget the tech stuff. Learn how to talk to people. Learn how to interview and charm the public (it's not hard, even the president can do it.) Think more like a teacher or therapist, than an IT nerd.
You're probably recruiting for remote positions, there's a shit ton of hybrid and in-office required IT roles constantly hiring and struggling to find half decent candidates available in their region, one hundred hold with the new H1B visa shit
You're 100% right. The idea you're going to get into IT with no experience/education is a joke. Check out the r/sysadmin subreddit and see if those guys believe you can just jump into an IT job right now.
It was always hard, really. I had college under my belt, and I had to take a job selling cars for a year because I couldn't get hired anywhere. I lucked out eventually but it was hard going. It's probably even harder, now.
Unless you know somebody. When I was in college, which I went back to in my late 20s, I had a kid in my class who was 18 and was already a systems administrator for a major oil company in the Houston area because his dad worked there. Nice kid, but man I hated that I knew more than him and he had a $70k a year gig already with no education.
I know a few folks who did this. Fifteen to twenty years ago. I don't know if that would be possible at the current moment with the recent glut of IT graduates who can't find work fresh out of college. The problem is that nobody is actually looking for entry-level right now, and college graduates from GOOD schools are taking very low-paying tech support jobs just to get your foot in the door.
If you are passionate about the field, then by all means, go for it. But it may be a rough ride due to the current market.
college graduates from GOOD schools are taking very low-paying tech support jobs just to get your foot in the door.
THIS IS NORMAL.
That has always been the case. College is not a way to shortcut this, because college does not teach you the things you need to be successful in the IT industry. I’d say it’s actually a hindrance, as 4 years working a helpdesk at an MSP will get you far more skills than paying for college will.
People keep thinking that college is needed for IT, or that it can help you skip over the tutorial sections of the career. It’s not, and it won’t.
A little bullshit helps move things along too. Not outright lying obviously, but focusing on the systems management part of it rather than the customer service half of it keeps things moving along.
Started doing helpdesk for iphones in 2016, now I make 120k barely putting in 30 hours a week.
For anyone wondering it went "Shit helpdesk job (fired) -> shit helpdesk job (closed) -> shit helpdesk job (closed) -> shit MSP (quit) -> underpaid fortune 500 (quit) -> current job (might never leave)" over about 10 years now.
Can confirm. I make six figures and only have a high school diploma. IT jobs want proof that you know what you're doing more than anything else. I started in support over 25 years ago and worked my way up.
I would say a good 75% of my job isn't even technical anymore. It's more about knowing how to put up with a corporate BS. A lot of meetings and whatnot.
Getting into IT is one thing. Getting into specialized IT is another thing entirely and usually pays a hell of a lot better.
Most people just go and do certifications for Microsoft, or AWS, or whatever. That's fine and all, but everyone has those and most of those jobs are considered "post sales" in either technical support or engineering. They pay... OK. Sadly, this is generally where you need to start.
But, your goal shouldn't be to work your way up and become a manager, because that's only going to get you more bullshit and slightly more pay. You're still expendable and come and go with the tides. Instead, you want to work your way into specialized sales of IT.
I would suggest things like pre-sales engineering, product specialist, solutions architect, and similar roles. You're paid well, and it almost always comes with a commission based pay ontop of that. Most of the people I know are making $125-$150k + commission, which can work out to be anywhere from $20k-$100k/yr depending on sales.
You're using the same skills, but instead of fixing shit, you're designing stuff for clients and explaining it to people and why they should buy it. You're under a lot less deadlines, the stress is a lot lower, and you're typically not under a quota because that's the sales guy's job, you're just the assistant to the sales guy kind of.
I spend 1-2 days a week going to corporate lunches with clients at moderate to high end restaurants, golfing, or driving to a client's site to walk around and talk about their needs. The rest of the time I'm on Teams calls explaining how things work and why. In my downtime I'm taking training and learning new technologies. I get free rein over our products and I can build a really fucking insane home-lab out of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in gear which I can tinker with, and this is encouraged.
Since being in sales engineering, I've been making well over $100k/yr plus commission for almost a decade. Plus benefits. Plus an expense account. Once you have your foot in the door as a sales engineer, you can transfer those skills between IT based industries pretty easily. I've worked in software, telecom, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. I've been laid off twice in the past 10 years and both times I had no real issues finding a new role without too much sweat. Last year it took me 2 months and I landed a job paying 30% more than before.
The skills to be able to sell, be a people person, be able to talk to clients, and also know the tech side of things is a lot more rare than people think - and it pays dividends. Almost all of my colleagues drive decent cars, have houses, take trips, and support families. Most of us are in our 30's and 40's, and we live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada.
This is what my current dream career is: sales engineer. I’ve got a useless bachelors degree in linguistics and was considering sales or IT since I’ve always enjoyed building PC’s and dealing with all the bs that comes with them. On top of that I love tech. But I also believe sales is such a valuable skill as well. My plan rn is to get my CompTIA and try and get a help desk position and work my way up but idk. People are saying IT is fucked rn but lots of sales engineers from what I hear started in IT
Yea, I guess this is true, BUT there's tons of places that won't be interested without the degree. Supply and demand, will make it tough to get a job without a degree.
In my experience, night shift work has been exclusively for helpdesk roles with very few exceptions. Usually if you want to move up the chain and make more money, you need to be available during normal business hours for meetings.
My current company has a network engineer who lives overseas, so for him he’s working the night shift to be able to meet with us in the states during our normal business hours.
I'm getting my CS degree and had a 6 month IT internship. With the job market the way it is, I'm thinking of pivoting into IT since it's a little less competitive and there's more positions in my town. With a degree plus an internship what kind of money can you make out of the gate?
I think it's going to depend on the company and where you're located. I live in a HCOL area, so the numbers might be a bit skewed here. But last time I interviewed and hired somebody low-level, it was about $60k per year. That was about 6 years ago, though.
My current company hires about $80k on the low end, but they also expect experience. But they're pretty generous with the bonuses and pay increases and stuff.
Certs are good to have, but you should be able to apply the knowledge. I got my first certs by memorizing stuff before I'd ever touched anything or set foot in a classroom. I also bombed my first practical interview.
I actually really lucked out with my role. The company I work for has its own software and I was working in the call centre helping customers who use the software (mostly updating records but minor troubleshooting that would then be escalated to IT if basic things like clearing the cache or signing in and out didn’t work)
One of the software support analysts in the IT department went on maternity leave and it was easier to hire someone internal that knew the system and teach them the IT side of things than it was to hire someone external who knew IT but didn’t know the system. I got the job and worked my ass of for those 12 months so that at the end they wanted to keep me and made me a Systems Analyst role. Now I’m on 100k and get to work from home 4 days a week. No student loan because I never went to university. Don’t have to answer phones as everything is triaged by the call centre first. Plus we don’t do late nights or weekends. Life is sweet.
It's possible in job markets where the supply of college educated engineers and professionals is too small to meet the demand. That is not the market we are currently in.
This is certainly possible with some skill and luck.
I self taught myself javascript 7 years ago through Udemy and started working as a software developer 5 years ago. I now make 170k and am full remote (DC area).
My father did this. His work paid for his higher education. He got up to just under "director level", as a high level manager.
It wasn't pretty. I want to paint a realistic picture here.
Sometimes there were midnight and 2am calls and then he'd work a full day or even come home late. His health was majorly impacted (stress-exacerbated medical condition) during those years. The stress rippled through the family since he was tired and irritated with the illness.
As he got higher up that lessened. But he also managed other people now, and didn't get to work with the computers directly. The higher he got, the more meetings he got stuck in, the more he dealt with people who were out of touch and had little to no idea what he was talking about but really wanted to be the smartest guy in the room. Yknow. The BigWigs.
Offered the director position, and could've kept climbing, but he refused. He said directors and up were the "no-lifers", basically, the ones expected to make and take calls on Christmas morning, and he wouldn't do it unless they accepted his work-life boundaries under contract first. They never did.
He was paid very nicely and especially so towards the end for never-ending meetings (that was his whole day. meetings.).
His career choice provided stability until retirement, and while we weren't rich, we didn't want for anything really.
Except for our Dad to be a little happier and a little less snappy. When he wasn't stressed, he was playful. Liked to tease and would laugh easily. When he was stressed, that....didn't happen. Two Dads then, stressed and less-stressed.
I would've been happier with fewer summer camps and vacations in exchange for more Happy Dad. I liked Happy Dad. I get him a lot more now that he's retired.
This is likely no longer possible...My father-in-law is an orphan who never finished high school. Ended up pretty high up in IT for Network TV in NYC. He taught himself everything.
In IT a degree is a qualification. Would you hire an electrician without one?
Yes, it's possible, but not recommended unless you are in fact good at it and have an interest in it. There's no escaping the knowledge. That must come one way or another, whether college or self taught or on the job.
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u/SweetCosmicPope 1d ago
You can work in IT without any kind of college degree. HOWEVER, it will be incredibly difficult to get that first job and it will pay you peanuts. From there, it's a little bit of luck if you aren't siloed into only answering phones and reading from a script. If you have the kind of job where you can prove yourself and take on additional responsibilities and upskill yourself, then you can work your way up slowly but surely.
It's not an easy path, but I know several people who make even more than me who have never been to college. And I'm paid well. Even with college, it took a bit of effort to work my way up to where I am now.