Angry rant: I have been studying IT to get a useless degree

[starry]

6 minutes ago, throttlemeister said:

We need more smart women in IT and Tech

If only there were more people with that attitude in those fields, maybe I would have pursued more from my IT intern position back in the day instead of getting discouraged by nobody taking me seriously.

[Pixel5]

well that is how it typically works when there is a job that everyone goes into because of the good pay the job gets over saturated with people which drops the possible salaries while also making it harder to get a job.

 

The job market is not any different from any other market where supply and demand control the market, there have been years of high demand which cause a ton of people to go into that direction which does now mean we got more supply than we got demand.

[throttlemeister]

49 minutes ago, seapriestess said:

If only there were more people with that attitude in those fields, maybe I would have pursued more from my IT intern position back in the day instead of getting discouraged by nobody taking me seriously.

Without diversity, there is no innovation, no challenge of ideas, only dogma and self-affirmation. You do not want to work at place that do not embrace diversity. Regardless of their current standing, they are stale, they are not thought leaders and they aren't going anywhere but down. Look for something better, regardless of your gender but especially if you are female. Women offer unique skills and a different ways of thinking that are desperately needed in male dominated companies and fields. They need to be equal contributors and if they are, the entire team or company can be so much more than the sum of their parts. 

[starry]

Just now, throttlemeister said:

Without diversity, there is no innovation, no challenge of ideas, only dogma and self-affirmation. You do not want to work at place that do not embrace diversity. Regardless of their current standing, they are stale, they are not thought leaders and they aren't going anywhere but down. Look for something better, regardless of your gender but especially if you are female. Women offer unique skills and a different ways of thinking that are desperately needed in male dominated companies and fields. They need to be equal contributors and if they are, the entire team or company can be so much more than the sum of their parts. 

I have to agree, however I did not have the opportunity of finding such a company to work at, and I got very discouraged early on. This is why women stray away from those industries even though they are needed, because unfortunately so many people in them do not take us seriously, usually older managers who are a bit old fashioned, making it difficult to get anywhere, because those are usually the people who are in charge. I would love to go back and work in IT, but I think at this point my job as a contract illustrator has me as a much happier person than I would have been there. I hope fewer women have to go through what I have in the future.

 

Sometimes its also not in the ways the women are explicitly treated, but all the little subtleties. Clients and people Im trying to help asking my manager to send a different person next time, feeling that Im incompetent because of misconceptions they have in their subconscious, not that they realize what they are doing. My manager was an older man, very old fashioned guy, I dont think he specifically disliked me, I just think he was used to working with men and was confused as to why I was there, I seemed out of place to him. Even at a company where they try to be very open to women and whatnot, that kind of stuff can undo interest as well.

[throttlemeister]

@seapriestess psst... I am a manager and encroaching 50..

[starry]

11 minutes ago, throttlemeister said:

@seapriestess psst... I am a manager and encroaching 50..

Im glad to hear that youve had a good career.

I would like to see more people of your age follow your example.

[AngryBeaver]

7 hours ago, MyName13 said:

Would it make sense to switch to infosec from some other roles (that will preferably be useful for infosec)?I've heard that system administrators and network administrators are some of the roles that switch to the security industry.My main issue is that there is almost no infosec industry where I live, it's all software development (which probably isn't useful for advancing in information security).What about networking courses like CCNA and CCNP?First one is required for Cisco's security certification (I've never heard of the cyber ops you mentioned, it's being phased out this year according to their website).

 

By the way, are all these certifications done online?How do they prevent people from cheating?

A CCNA is not required for their security cert. It isn't being phased out.. it was just recently renamed and is a single test now instead of two.

 

They are actually done online now since corona. They will have to clear your desk completely... then you will be watched via Webcam for the entire test. Looking up or in a direction too much will put your test into contention. You are also unable to get up for any reason. 

[AngryBeaver]

6 hours ago, throttlemeister said:

You don't _need_ a degree to advance and climb the ladder in IT. But it sure does help. A lot. You just make your life uncessasary difficult by dropping out and not getting your degree. With a degree, certain promotions are all but guaranteed if you do a decent enough job, whereas without one you actually have to prove your worth and it takes more time. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it is time and effort you could have been investing in your next promotion if you did have that degree.

I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the company. I know once you hit anything in the fortune 500 your climb will be limited to something like a senior level. You will not be getting any principal, manager, director, or exexutive/chief level positions. 

 

That is because those positions go to the best of the best and are more often than not initially sorted and filtered by HR who only see degrees and certifications. That is also what makes finding some jobs much harder without a degree... you just can't get past the HR filter.

[throttlemeister]

Just now, AngryBeaver said:

I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the company. I know once you hit anything in the fortune 500 your climb will be limited to something like a senior level. You will not be getting any principal, manager, director, or exexutive/chief level positions. 

 

That is because those positions go to the best of the best and are more often than not initially sorted and filtered by HR who only see degrees and certifications. That is also what makes finding some jobs much harder without a degree... you just can't get past the HR filter.

You are right that it is highly unlikely you will get there by job hopping. Your only chance is to get there by working your ass off and getting promoted to that level and then maybe switch sideways to the same level at a different company. This is why it takes so much longer and you may not get to the level you could have as you run out of time for retirement.

[MyName13]

3 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

A CCNA is not required for their security cert. It isn't being phased out.. it was just recently renamed and is a single test now instead of two.

 

They are actually done online now since corona. They will have to clear your desk completely... then you will be watched via Webcam for the entire test. Looking up or in a direction too much will put your test into contention. You are also unable to get up for any reason. 

It seems they have 2 certificates.One is Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate (replacement for cyber ops), second is CCNA Security which requires some other certificates (like CCNA R&S).

How were these tests taken before corona?Did people have to find certified schools in their area?What about lab exercises?Are those online too?

 

3 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the company. I know once you hit anything in the fortune 500 your climb will be limited to something like a senior level. You will not be getting any principal, manager, director, or exexutive/chief level positions. 

 

That is because those positions go to the best of the best and are more often than not initially sorted and filtered by HR who only see degrees and certifications. That is also what makes finding some jobs much harder without a degree... you just can't get past the HR filter.

When a degree is taken into account, isn't the college you got that degree from also important?

[AngryBeaver]

1 hour ago, MyName13 said:

It seems they have 2 certificates.One is Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate (replacement for cyber ops), second is CCNA Security which requires some other certificates (like CCNA R&S).

How were these tests taken before corona?Did people have to find certified schools in their area?What about lab exercises?Are those online too?

 

When a degree is taken into account, isn't the college you got that degree from also important?

Anymore it comes down to if it is accredited and if it was one of the schools known as being "for profit."

[dizmo]

21 hours ago, seapriestess said:

I actually had a very strong idea of what I wanted to do, and I was passionate about it and ready to work for it. Mechatronics engineering is my dream that never came true. The reason I changed my degree is because I got into the program, and found out that it was completely full of incompetence and in shambles. I really really struggled to get anything useful out a professor who lived a across the country, the college I went to just borrowed a program from another institution and made it an online course, the degree completion requirements were very unclear and very convoluted, it was just a bad situation, everyone I knew who was taking it eventually left the program as well.

 

The whole reason I chose that college was because they had a mechatronics program that they overly hyped up far too much, it seemed really good, they even showed us some of the projects we would be doing. As a dumb 19 year old with no concept that college is a business and that they will market it whatever way gets your tuition money, I very quickly applied.

 

Being 3 years in, I tried to pull together a degree in something else, but nothing they had fit my passions.

Towards the final 6-9 months, I watched some of my friends graduate. They all felt very dissatisfied with having finished college, and they said their degree did very little for them when applying for jobs. Some of them are still unemployed, or living with their parents with nowhere else to go. Seeing then struggle so much, even with a degree under their belt was the last straw for me, and I dropped out.

 

I am currently in a better position than any of them, I dont have as much student loan debt, and I am making an artist's income (somehow more than any of theirs).

 

That is why I changed degree 4 times and dropped out. It was not because I didn't know what I wanted, but because they had a crappy oversold program, and I desperately tried to salvage it into something that would be useful to me and couldn't.

 

To be fair, college is where I learned a lot of good work habits and how to work with people, and listen to them, a skill that I use very frequently for what I do now. I just really really really wish that college marketing could chill out, and be more honest about what their program can for their students, because teenagers trying to select a college without a lot of the perspective that adults have can make horrible decision that will effect the rest of their lives, and I wouldn't necessarily blame them for that.

Honestly, while that is indeed unfortunate....it's really something you should have researched prior to investing that kind of money into.

Before I took my degree I looked into probably 5 or 6 different schools, compared their programs, and chose the one I wanted.

Lesson learned, I suppose. An expensive lesson, but a lesson none-the-less.

 

Basically, yes, you had a bad experience with post secondary, but that does not mean that it's bad and certainly not useless.

 

So many people have degrees that if you don't have one, you will be behind. Their failures are likely more drive than anything.