Post-Highschool Tech Career Crisis

[BrandonTech.05]

I'd love you guys' advice on how I should move forward...

For the past year my brother has struggled to find a job in IT even though he has experience and an A+ cert. 

I am looking at a community college to possibly get an associates in IT but I am a bit worried it'll be for nothing. My current thinking is that a degree under my belt will look good for any job even if it's unrelated so go for it anyway?

I currently have a background currently in basic facility maintenance. Should I look in that industry instead and keep tech as a hobby? It's looking less and less like tech jobs are an option.

Just lots of choices and I would love some input from y'all...

[wasab]

What roles are you looking at? IT and tech is very broad. It could mean tech sales to a CTO. 

[BrandonTech.05]

5 hours ago, wasab said:

What roles are you looking at? IT and tech is very broad. It could mean tech sales to a CTO. 

I'm looking at a tech support job where I work currently but the chances are slim that they'll want me. I think tech support is the direction that I want

[wasab]

9 hours ago, BrandonTech.05 said:

I'm looking at a tech support job where I work currently but the chances are slim that they'll want me. I think tech support is the direction that I want

they usually work in call centers, and much of this is outsourced to India, the Philippines, etc. You don't need a degree to do any of these. Go to school ONLY if you are looking to do something beyond troubleshooting keyboard and mouse problems. The tech job market is also a dumpster fire currently. lots of laid offs and etc from the pandemic overhiring.

 

that is not to say it will stay that way but here are the things.... there are two desirable characteristics to a job

1) low barrier to entry

2) high income

these two are inversely proportional to one another. you can have one or the other but not both. 

 

case point of 1: YouTube. low barrier to entry so 95% of the YouTubers do not make any money off the platforms. channels like linus tech tips are by far the top 1% of the top 1% in this industry's income brackets

 

case point of 2: airline pilot. requires a college degree, flight school, AND 2500+ hours of flying experience, plus so many licenses. flight school and degree alone cost 100k+ in tuition so very few new and qualified young pilots are entering job markets causing the experienced pilots to be like unicorns. these people get snatched up by major airlines left and right earning half a million+ USD worth of compensation packages per year. 

 

so it is either one or the other, not both. you go pick one. Do you want to get paid well or do you want to get a job easily? 

[BrandonTech.05]

11 hours ago, wasab said:

they usually work in call centers, and much of this is outsourced to India, the Philippines, etc. You don't need a degree to do any of these. Go to school ONLY if you are looking to do something beyond troubleshooting keyboard and mouse problems. The tech job market is also a dumpster fire currently. lots of laid offs and etc from the pandemic overhiring.

 

that is not to say it will stay that way but here are the things.... there are two desirable characteristics to a job

1) low barrier to entry

2) high income

these two are inversely proportional to one another. you can have one or the other but not both. 

 

case point of 1: YouTube. low barrier to entry so 95% of the YouTubers do not make any money off the platforms. channels like linus tech tips are by far the top 1% of the top 1% in this industry's income brackets

 

case point of 2: airline pilot. requires a college degree, flight school, AND 2500+ hours of flying experience, plus so many licenses. flight school and degree alone cost 100k+ in tuition so very few new and qualified young pilots are entering job markets causing the experienced pilots to be like unicorns. these people get snatched up by major airlines left and right earning half a million+ USD worth of compensation packages per year. 

 

so it is either one or the other, not both. you go pick one. Do you want to get paid well or do you want to get a job easily? 

I forgot to add that once I get through schooling I could move on to working on all our networking and security cameras. A big part of the degree is in networking. It's possible I can just get a networking cert too but I figured a degree would look better for future jobs.

[ToboRobot]

3 minutes ago, BrandonTech.05 said:

I forgot to add that once I get through schooling I could move on to working on all our networking and security cameras. A big part of the degree is in networking. It's possible I can just get a networking cert too but I figured a degree would look better for future jobs.

Cable/ISP installation might be a good entry level role that can't be outsourced.

[wasab]

16 hours ago, BrandonTech.05 said:

I forgot to add that once I get through schooling I could move on to working on all our networking and security cameras.

this is a bit niche. we call such people alarm and security technicians and again, this is not something you need college or cert for but you do need to know more than just installing cameras. 

 

16 hours ago, BrandonTech.05 said:

A big part of the degree is in networking. 

I can think of two occupations worth going to college for. Network Engineer or network administrator. Out of the two, network engineer have far higher salaries and earning potentials(not to mention job opportunities, really, in a lot of organizations, administrators have largely become supplanted by DevOps/infrastructure engineers) but I imagine they also require higher knowledge and have higher skill/exp requirements.

 

It is very desirable that you get a bachelor-level degree in computer science or computer engineering regardless of which one of the two you want to pick. Community college is a very good idea but only if you use it as a budget-friendly option to transfer to a regionally accredited 4 year institution with an ABET-certified engineering program. An associate degree alone is not worth much. Look into in-state public schools that have partnerships with your community college so all your credits transfer into the 4 year degree you are looking at. I graduated from college debt-free by taking advantage of in-state tuition from a public university. My relatives went to some out-of-state private schools. I feel extremely happy with my life being debt-free while my relatives are burdened with heavy debt and constantly stressed. 

 

tech sector is highly cyclical. by the time you graduate, it may very have well improved compared to what is currently. i think school is and can be a good idea as long as you have a solid career goal in mind and know the path and have the determination to get there. Just note that community colleges generally have an abysmal 60% drop out rate. you need to be disciplined and motivated to ensure you don't become one of the majority and graduate on time.

 

don't bother with certificates. i see no value in them. my coworkers see no value in them. my managers see no value in them. the recuiters I talked to in the past see no value in them. i have yet to see a job postings that mention them. what I do see in nearly all job postings tho is a mention that bachelor in some xyz is preferred if not outright required plus licenses which unlike certificates are actually REQUIRED BY LAW, although I doubt you need to worry about this in the IT and tech space. Even for companies that drop the college degree requirements, largely for publicity reasons, they have changed nothing in their hiring practices. they still hire exclusively people with degrees, especially for entry-level roles. it is what it is. 

[undergroundbeef]

If you have a background in facilities, something in a datacenter might be worth looking for. It's tech, but more on the hardware/facilities side. This will let you get in the door at a place with room to grow/pivot with some of the skills you already have. A guy who worked in our data center is now a software architect, for example. I won't say that's the norm, but getting your foot in the door at a place that is big enough to grow and pivot is huge. I even saw a really friendly security guard network his way into a much better job with the business side of things.

 

My first job was probably a bit of a unicorn, especially today... I worked in a datacenter, but also did OS and application work. When people talk about "full stack"... I worked on the full stack. Swapped physical servers out of the racks, worked with network engineers on switch changes, did OS patching and break/fix, did application upgrades and maintenance... everything. I don't think I really approached it at the time, but it was a fantastic experience to give me context of everything, from the bare metal up to the application layer. I was able to leverage that into becoming a software engineer. If you're a good worker, getting your foot in the door, in whatever way you can, is huge. Don't overly fixate on how you do that, keep your options open.

 

As for certificates, I've never seen a single person who focuses on certificates actually be good at their job. I usually assume a person sucks if they have a long list of certs in their email signature. Congrats... you can take a test... but can you actually do anything? Usually not. A guy I work with got a cert for some tech we're working on now. He was the first one in the company to get it. He is constantly asking me and others, who didn't get the certs, how to do everything. We are figuring it out as we go and he went through a hundred hours of training and can't do anything.