What is the best degree for IT?
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You're going to want to figure out what college teaches well that will help you the most in IT, because IT can't really be taught well in a college setting.
With that said, in my opinion, if you're interacting with people for your job, taking psychology classes can help you interact with them more effectively.
This is especially true for IT: if you do any help desk stuff, you're going to be dealing with frustrated, anxious people who don't understand why they can't do the thing they need/want to do. You'll be asking these people questions about what led to the problem that they don't understand. Learning how to empathize and relieve this anxiety in the moment helps convert defensive users into helpful users. Learning how to frame questions so you avoid guiding users toward a certain response helps you get accurate answers to technical questions. This is all stuff I learned from my psych major, and it has already helped me support users countless times. So think about taking some psych classes!
Sincerely,
A guy who went to college thinking he wanted to go into counseling, noped outta that career track, and ended up in IT incredibly grateful for his psychology degree.
My Most Valuable Psych Classes:
- Cognitive Judgement & Decision-making: Helped me realize what sorts of errors people can make that can lead to tech issues.
- Statistical Analysis: Learning the format for non-leading questions on surveys helped me learn how to ask questions without letting my assumption on what the underlying issue affect the response I get.
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@WingCreative so my question to you is how much of the IT world did you know going into school? were you slightly above the average user? or did you get out into the world land an IT job and then learn all the stuff or did you teach yourself while in school for psych?
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@Draco8573 said:
@coliver I undestand that but what do you think about someone who is going to school and working an IT job at the same time, so that they are learning on the job and in a classroom. Plus this person has about zero previous knowledge of IT stuff. The only thing that I did before i started CS was I built my pc, not hard to do so it is not like I know enough to drop out and get a job.
What I am trying to get at is that I know next to nothing about IT, but I am learning from two sources and I don't think that can really be as bad as Scott is making it sound. He makes it sound like I am throwing my money into a fire and not getting anything out of it. When I know at least 10 times more now than I did last year.Aren't you throwing your money into a fire though? Think about how much you will end up paying for this degree and weigh it against potential benefits (for IT there are next to none or none) You already mentioned that IT isn't your dream job... which means you will be burned out in a few years if you do end up getting an IT job. This isn't something that you just get into for the money, which all things considered isn't that great, it is something you get into because you love technology. If you do end up working IT for a few years you will see that a lot of the things your professors in college taught you about technology is so out of date that it is laughable... if it isn't out of date it is most likely wrong. How is learning wrong or out of date material valuable to your career?
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@coliver said:
@Draco8573 said:
"degrees will hurt" that sounds like a load of bull. If you love academia so much why are you against degrees? SO they don't teach what you can learn on the job but people are still learning. and I know a lot of people both working and going to school. I highly doubt that degrees hurt.
I can honestly say that yes, degrees do more harm them good... at least past a certain level. I spent 6 years of my time working toward a bachelors and masters degree in systems administration. The same skill set I "learned" in that time I could have gained by working for two years at any company. So not only was I not making money and being productive, the exact opposite was true. I ended up spending a silly amount of money to get a job I could have easily gotten with just a year or two of experience. That is active harm... my potential lifetime earnings are actively being affected by both my educational debt and the time wasted in college.
This is a great example. It's hard to know the specifics for an individual. But this means that....
- You should take the money spent on college and calculate that in a standard Index Fund Rate to see how much retirement that money would have equaled had you just invested it rather than spending it on school. For most people it is enough to have retired on that money alone.
- Add four years to your career, tack it on at the end. Figure out not how much money you would earn now, but how much you would earn at your career peak. Then take four years of that peak, plus a little more as you would be more senior then than you will now ever be in your career. Likely that's a lot of money there.
It's more dramatic than that, but that gives you a quick idea of how much money is lost in going to school.
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@WingCreative said:
You're going to want to figure out what college teaches well that will help you the most in IT, because IT can't really be taught well in a college setting.
This is huge, and nearly the wording from one of my unpublished articles (I swear I'm not just saying that.) Skipping the classes that they can't teach and focusing on what they do teach well is critical to getting any value at all from school.
If you take only IT classes, you might actually come out with negative learning!
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@Draco8573 said:
and as far as "degrees will hurt" that sounds like a load of bull. If you love academia so much why are you against degrees?
Because they hurt real people. They destroy careers. I like academia for its own sake, not because it helped my career or could help my career.
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@Draco8573 said:
I highly doubt that degrees hurt.
Well both the industrial math says that they hurt, quite a bit. And just logically discussing it is very clear why they would hurt. So the real question is... why do you doubt it when professionals, corporate career counselors from your chosen field, the math even from the colleges themselves and just general logic suggest that they are very likely to hurt?
Instead of just doubting... what aspect of a degree do you feel makes it likely to overcome the cost that in incurs (primarily in time?)
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Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
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@Draco8573 said:
SO they don't teach what you can learn on the job but people are still learning. and I know a lot of people both working and going to school.
Who said learning on the job? You won't learn enough on the job to be any good. You have to learn how to teach yourself! That's something that jobs require but don't teach and the antithesis of the university systems.
You want to know why I don't like to hire college grads? They are helpless. They almost always lack the basic self motivation and self education skills that those that skip college have to have to have made it at all. The university system is a hand holding and coddling system. They tell you what classes to take. They tell you want to learn. And the worst ones even use tests to "see" what you know instead of having you produce results! It's terrible. It's nothing like how you need to be able to learn to handle the field and it is not training you do be good at it.
It's lazy compared to how people need to learn. IT is not a field like art history where you study the past for four years and talk about that same knowledge for forever. You have to know how to learn, on your own without someone to guide you and to tell you what you need to know. You have to be motivated and go out every day and learn new stuff.
Universities not only fail to teach you how to be a successful IT pro, they actively train you to be a bad one!
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@coliver said:
Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
And, and this is big, the university system was never designed to get people jobs. That's not its purpose. The things that make academia good (for some of us) is also what makes it bad for you if your career is the goal.
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@Draco8573 said:
The only people who have a degree and are unsucessfull are the little idiots whose parents pay for everything and they have never lifted a finger to do anything in their life.
One could say the same thing for anyone who skipped college and didn't excel, right? If someone puts in the effort without going to college they should not just do as well as college students but have a few years jump on them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
And, and this is big, the university system was never designed to get people jobs. That's not its purpose. The things that make academia good (for some of us) is also what makes it bad for you if your career is the goal.
No arguments here. I had a few college professors (at the grad level) tell me the only career options for grad students is in academia.... so I better publish something before I leave school.
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@Draco8573 said:
and once again we have established that yes there is a bit of emotion in the descision but I am four years in I can't just drop out now, that would be a LOT of money wasted.
That's why I warned you to read about the sunk cost fallacy! Because this is exactly the emotional reaction to watch out for. The amount of money you have sunk into school already is completely irrelevant. Completely.
I hate to say it.... but what are schools teaching these days? Good decision making like this, not IT tech skills, is the one spot that colleges, in theory, could be good. But I seem to find the worst aspects of bad decision making often come from the college grads - the schools are too often failing where they should be strongest
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@coliver said:
No arguments here. I had a few college professors (at the grad level) tell me the only career options for grad students is in academia.... so I better publish something before I leave school.
Which I did
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@coliver @scottalanmiller the school I go to used to be known as Southern Polytechnic State University but it is now Kennesaw State University. The name has changed and the tuition has gone up but that is it. It is pretty well known in Georgia at least for being able to teach its student useful hands on stuff that actually helps when they graduate.
and like I have said it is actually helping me to learn some things, I enjoy the field but I am a moron. And earlier I mentioned that I was going to start playing around and seeing if I can make a beowulf cluster. and you shot it down because it was old and isn't widely used anymore. But that would still be me teaching myself to do something. I understand I will need to learn newer things but it can't hurt to start with something like that and work my way up.
And learning on the job is teaching myself. My boss doesn't hold my hand. He gives me stuff to do. Nothing over the top but if there is something I don't know what to do he throws it my way and wwants me to figure it out. -
@Draco8573 said:
@coliver @scottalanmiller the school I go to used to be known as Southern Polytechnic State University but it is now Kennesaw State University. The name has changed and the tuition has gone up but that is it. It is pretty well known in Georgia at least for being able to teach its student useful hands on stuff that actually helps when they graduate.
and like I have said it is actually helping me to learn some things, I enjoy the field but I am a moron. And earlier I mentioned that I was going to start playing around and seeing if I can make a beowulf cluster. and you shot it down because it was old and isn't widely used anymore. But that would still be me teaching myself to do something. I understand I will need to learn newer things but it can't hurt to start with something like that and work my way up.
And learning on the job is teaching myself. My boss doesn't hold my hand. He gives me stuff to do. Nothing over the top but if there is something I don't know what to do he throws it my way and wwants me to figure it out.Oh I'm sorry someone shot you down for the beawulf cluster. That's was a project I did when I was in undergrad. It was a fun project but even then it was an old technology (my professor recommended I try it). There are lots of things to get you started around here, look into @scottalanmiller's list of things to get started in Linux those will be much more relevant when it comes to searching for a job.
One of the biggest things I can't recommend enough... Look into getting some older servers or used equipment and setting up a home lab. It doesn't have to run 24/7 but getting hands on with enterprise gear and operating systems is generally a huge benefit.
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@Draco8573 said:
I know a bunch of trivial knowledge and am more of a jack of all trades than anything I can do a little bit of everything but there is nothing that I excel at. I want a job and security. But I still want to get better with IT. I am doing that on the job and I am learning way more in school than what I knew, plus if I switch to IT there are a couple classes that look like they may be cool. Even though you say it can hurt it is still helping me figure this stuff out. To be honest IT is not my dream job. I am decent enough at it and I find it interesting. So I am not looking to be an IT manager or anything, I just want something that I can enjoy and live comfortably
IT is probably a bad field for you then. This is a field that seriously punishes people who don't love it because there are more than enough people that are passionate about it that you will always have to contend with them. There is no shortage of people who are in love with the field. They will be the ones getting the good jobs and the stability. Picking a career that you are passionate about is critical not just to IT, but to being happy in life.
Being in impassionate IT pro means, at best, a very rough life. And very likely being completely left behind in less than a decade into your career. You are looking at a seven year road to get a BS degree that will cost you a fortune, just to get into a career that is unlikely to offer you any longevity.
When we say college is bad for us in IT, we are hard core IT pros. For me, college would have been a three year investment (I go through quickly) leading on a 45 year career - and for me the investment would have been a waste.
If college, not career, is your goal (which it sounds like that is really where you are if you dig deep) then avoid anything remotely associated with IT for your degree and get something much more generic as you will need to rely on that when you are switching out of IT down the road.
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Someone who hasn't done at the VERY least an internship, I wouldn't look twice at.
Every applicant is asked about past job experience. I have hired young kids who have never worked in IT but who have had all kinds of jobs from picking berries to working at a fast food restaurant. You have to show initiative.
Even those with years of IT experience, they Must talk about their home lab and what they do on their own. I also want to see online contributions either in a community, personal blog or just writing in general about IT. I want to hear about the worst IT disaster they have dealt with, or the craziest. I want to hear about their troubleshooting steps.
If someone has an IT degree I question why and what they actually got out of it. I really am confused as to why someone would go for an IT degree. If they have no job experience at all in any area, my interest stops there. I have people on my team with college degrees neither of their degrees are in IT.
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@Draco8573 said:
@coliver I undestand that but what do you think about someone who is going to school and working an IT job at the same time, so that they are learning on the job and in a classroom. Plus this person has about zero previous knowledge of IT stuff.
Keep in mind that while working is important (learning how people work, putting food on the table, etc.) that when we talk about learning outside of university it is not on the job learning that we are talking about. I did the bulk of my learning while managing a hotel over a period of two years. I worked my butt off studying IT on my own. I read voraciously, I build an epic home lab, I build anything and everything that you could imagine. I got certs but they were useless.
At the end of two years I had spent almost no money, built a good work history, paid all my bills, built up no debt and was hired right into being a corporate director with over a hundred reports.
But the most important thing, I had learned everything soup to nuts, from the best people in the industry (through books), built up a critical library and taught myself not just the tech, but how to teach myself which is the skill that I would need always.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Even those with years of IT experience, they Must talk about their home lab and what they do on their own.
Same here. When I'm interviewing people, talking about their past jobs is small talk. What I want to know is what are their projects at home. Where is their passion. What are they learning when it is not required.
