Well to sum it up, I am 28 and recently worked as a Senior Help Desk Analyst for my last company for 4 years. Then I was layed off and now I am 90000 in debt, with no job, no college degree, and I spent the last 5 years of my life self learning all this IT stuff and cannot get a help desk job without a Bachelors Degree.
Well to make things clear, the 90000 I am in debt is not stuff I went out and bought foolishly. Actually I never bought anything, I have a crappy old car, and moved back in with my parents because I have nothing left over. Most of the bills are medical bills I had to use to pay for surgery that the insurance did not cover and I cannot file for bankruptcy cause I do not qualify for another 9 months or so, at the least cause of my situation now.
But the main point that is killing me and I am banging my head all over the place. I am so confused. I spent most of my last years studying all aspects of IT, from networking to vmware to server 2008. I do not consider myself great in any of those fields, just the standard jack of all trades, master of 0. To add to that part is the frustrating part of every company I reply to, says “Bachelors degree in blah blah blah required”. Even for 10/hour help desk jobs (I was making 55000/year at my last job so its a huge cut) and I cannot even get it!
I have really been reconsidering my career. Ohh to point another thing out, I cannot go to school. My parents have tried to sign a student loan for me and cannot get any farther than me. With my financial situation, I do not even have time to go to school… and couldnt even if I wanted to since I cannot get any loan… FAFSA, grants, private and public loans, you name it, they laugh me out the door.
So I am back to the issue of me “self learning” the material, which will make it hard to get a job, but I figure since I am starting over in a sense, I might switch IT Fields. I have always done help desk/field support type jobs in the past and toward the last few months I was employed, I dreaded every day. I just do not find it interesting and want to do something different. My dad and brother each are opening up their own e-commerce business and asked me to do a website for them.
Well that got me thinking into the Web Development/Programming field. I would need to learn html/css, ASP.NET and/or Coldfusion, and a bunch of other web languages and programs like adobe and flash etc… Now this is going to take me a while, since I do not know how hard it is to learn programming languages. I just know I might be spinning my wheels, spending thousands of hours studying this, and end up in the same boat with not being able to find any job, without that damn degree. It pisses me off the more I hear about “bachelors degree required” and I do not even get the chance to show off what I know.
Long story short, is the web programming job outlook going to be more difficult in the future and if I build up a profile of websites (the more complicated the better) do you think I will be able to work around this bachelors degree BS? And is it really possible to learn like 20 languages? I see alot of jobs out there that say “must be proficient in ASP.NET, C#.NET, VB.NET, Java, and like 20 other programming languages. Wouldnt you get them all mixed up? I guess I am just confused and scared really because I just want to move on with my life and not have to worry about anything. And I also do not want to waste my life any more than I have to.