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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.
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.
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.