Should I even try? in My thoughts
- April 28, 2020, 10:31 a.m.
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- Public
OK soo lets give you some bullets about my life:
1. Military 13 years (mostly active duty)
2. Been IT for my whole adult life
3. Have no college degree and don’t really want one
4. Have had jobs ranging from 45k - 98k / year
ok so what I’m currently at is a 64k job with Amazon, but i’m not doing anything really IT, i’m running fiber lines, labeling them like some machine and then plugging in transceiver ends for fiber optics… it’s something i could teach to somebody who knows NOTHING about IT stuff, in the matter of 4 hours.
I see jobs in my area for cyber security that start at 90k and I just need to get a degree (about 2 years for me) and i’m good to go. but I honestly have no interest in going through school to get a job that I have gotten before without a degree. I also have trained IT’s below me and on my teams that have had degree’s and you can’t even tell, I have no way of telling in the IT world who has a degree and who doesn’t based on work performance and knowledge. I think our society has too much wrapped around degree’s and what they mean. For me it means that somebody went through a lot of trouble to learn something they could of learned with on the job experience and some certificates, and paid WAY too much for that. So why are degree’s valued so much when I haven’t noticed at all throughout my entire career of professional jobs (till now where it’s not professional at all, but something for income)
So what my question really is here:
1. Should I even try to get a degree and go for it? make more money and just move up in life a little bit (even though I currently make enough and have over 1k extra a month after all bills are paid). Plus with these higher paying jobs.. usually comes more responsibility and then I have to still worry about my work AFTER my job is done for the day, which.. nobody likes this.
- Just stay here and do this easy job, but feel like i’m losing all my IT knowledge and getting dumber.. But then again this job doesn’t have any responsibilities outside of work and no trouble tickets that dictate my job performance, I do the work and i’m done for the day (which is nice for me to just go home to kids and family and not worry about a thing, but moving up here is almost nonexistent due to location, and the pay doesn’t go much much either due to the fact that they maxed me out on my offer when i got her 6 months ago, saying that I was over qualified for this job title but would be a good addition for the Amazon team as a whole).
What do you all think?
colojojo ⋅ April 28, 2020
I agree in that you don’t need a degree for many trades in life. These days, we can learn so much from online learning, apprenticeships, learning from other skilled professionals, and yes having a more hands on learning experience out in the field. In some cases, you don’t need a degree. But in other fields, I think the coursework and degree is essential in knowing the why, and help us better understand our job... not only understand it, but teach it. For my job, I definitely needed a degree. I could do the work in the lab, the setting up, etc... but interpretation, I couldn’t do without going to college.
I think I’m some cases, like yours perhaps, that degree is basically your “certified” stamp. It is your certification. You do the work they ask if you for some standard system and if you pass, that’s your proof to the world that you are good enough by the standards of that field. You probably are already good enough, but employers don’t know for sure. You end up getting paid more for a degree because you’ve proven you’ve taken the right courses that follow your specialty.
I kind of see it like buying a used car. You can find a really nice used car from word of mouth. You know the owner took good care of it, but maybe he doesn’t have all service information or proof that he did so. It’s a bit of a gamble. Or there are certified used cars where someone of a certain profession has looked it over top to bottom and made sure that the car is good to go. We pay a little more for that certification, but it feels like a safer choice.
SelfPartnered colojojo ⋅ April 28, 2020
This makes sense :) thanks for your explanation on this! yah I always found being an IT is the in between type field where some people can really shine and pick up great jobs without a degree and then some jobs that require a degree for something that was less important or harder then the job i had before, without a degree. lol.. just inconsistent due to civilian jobs not having a standard hiring process or qualifications.