I’m trying to decide whether it would be worth spending an additional 2 years upgrading my associates to a bachelor’s in CS or not.
I don’t see much of a demand for the RHCSA in my area (Toronto, Canada) but I see that basically every job posting has a degree requirement.
I’d be 25 by the time I finish school with the degree but I honestly just want to start applying for jobs I don’t want to waste time.
I have the A+, CCNA and LFCS. I get my associates next week.
I’m aware that I’ll probably get a bunch of responses of people saying “I don’t have a degree or certifications!” but I’m genuinely confused as to how you’re in IT without either of those things unless you knew someone or got in very early so some elaboration would be nice.
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The only certification I have is from the Kansas City Barbeque Society, allowing me to act as a judge in BBQ competitions.
Things are probably different nowadays, but at least 15-25 years ago you could just apply for IT jobs and if someone lied about their skills it would hopefully show during the technical interviews. I don’t know if that counts as getting in very early.
BBQ certs…never knew that was an option and now have something to truly live for!
My certs have all expired, but when I started I didnt have any at all.
The thing that worked for me was to apply to small businesses(Look into local MSPs). Places that have ~20 employees have much less rigor about certs and will more likely test that you’re amicable enough to mesh with the rest of the team. From there you can build experience and often get thr company to pay for your certs.
None, anymore.
Eventually you end up with a resume/knowledge that sells itself.
I’m not talking about government jobs that require certain certs, though.
I got dropped out from university. I got a Microsoft Azure Fundamental cert since then, now I’m a mixed Windows/Linux sysadmin at an SMB. YMMV, I’m in Europe btw.
What’s the pay like for system admins in Europe on an average? Asking for mid-level (5-7 years of experience)
Depends a bit where you live, but my guess is on average € 45-50k, with whatever local benefits there are. Which translates to between 3 and 4k a month, depending on whether a 14th month is included. But this can be a lot higher or lower depending on the location.
German here, no certs aswell
I got in to IT by just writing on my CV what I know I can do and what I learned in my free time.
Some company interviewed me, I could convince them that I really know a lot of stuff and that got me in.
Ever since then all I had where the companies I worked at and that was sufficient
In my anecdata (TO), all the sysadmins I know have a CS degree. I don’t know many. Personally I haven’t professionally been a sysadmin per se but I’ve done cloud infrastructure design, development and maintenance at scale.
No certifications, no degrees, just good, old fashioned 15 years of experience.
Just a lot of experience.
I have a WordPress site that I’ve been writing deep-dive linux articles on for about 10 years. Its more useful than any certification.
Portfolios showing experience are always more valuable than any sheet of paper.
Tbf, your blog is also just digital paper. :P
So funny that almost nobody got certs working in IT, same for me basically, I have a BA in Business Administration and thats it. ^^;
I have a Sec+ but that’s just a job requirement; the only parts of the test that I’ve actually used were public/private key cryptography, and even then I was just dumbing it down to explain to end users. Otherwise it’s all just experience.
Degree requirements are mostly there to satisfy HR (and can probably be waived in most cases), IT is realistically a trade profession.
No relevant degrees, just lots of demonstrable experience and projects.
PhD in Quantum Optics
Still waiting for the day my education pays off.
No higher education, no certifications, just 10 years of experience on different IT job positions, raging from junior web dev to big DevOps projects.
In my experience (I’m in EU/PL) what matters most are actual technical skills and ability to demonstrate them on interview. I changed my job like 5 times and each time I aim for slightly more advanced work and slightly better revenue.
I’m certifiably insane, have a doctorate in frustration, and many studies published of “Oh, fuck, what is this? I don’t have time for this now, I have shit to get done”.
Good luck.
