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I have applied for some that offer "or equivalent experience", but seriously the position that I really wanted wouldn't even consider my resume because my degree was not in Computer Science.
Now that I think about it, I should have pointed out in the first post. I have a degree, but it was geared toward Law. I found that I really didn't care about Law as much as my mother wanted me to so I just started working in IT and have never looked back.
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if nothing stopping you from going. Just go and good luck. And ready to learn and do useless module for the sake of degree  .
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There's always simple solution.
Add to your CV:
i>"I sue people who discriminate against me because my degree is not in computing"
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I also in the same situation as you. I saw a lot of 3k above job need degree as minimal. I think I already reach the bottleneck for technical diploma. A lot junior level that is degree only requirement which pays lot more even for junior position. although they alway say degree cert is not important but truth not everyone is lucky to meet a company that is cert blind. Even if employees do employ you, pay and benefit are still different between degree and you. As like automatic feel cert below degree much get low pay. Even though you have done the same amount of work. it better to get degree as HR or recruiter still filter you based on cert for your position and benefit. Most important is to able to apply more job so as not filter out by the paper. And it helps you in the long run as it will benefit you. from my experience. 
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This is what I worry about. I think that they don't care that my experience and knowledge would let me teach the classes they want me to take. And, unless things have changed since I was last in school, The things they teach in school are last year tech at best.
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Tell you a joke. A job agent asking me how much I want for the next job. I told him 2.6k. he told me diploma can not get this much and ask me how much I got have for job i hold. I told him i have 2.4k as diploma and with one year experience. He ending the call after that. Another job agent from IT specialize agency call me and give me better pay than U stated above without me apply. See the different!! Cert is just to get pass the gatekeeper
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That's a tough one, because I've met plenty of quality IT people in a similar situation. You need to figure out if it is operational and economically feasible for you. For example, if you have children that you are raising, maybe you don't have time to do the studies. Maybe you're only planning to work 10 more years; so it might not be worth the time or money to do invest in it. If you have no college credits, it wouldn't be a piece of cake as you'd be forced to take all those social sciences, math, history, humanities, ect..., but if you are are junior standing, then you should probably finish it.
If your current employer has tuition reimbursement, I'd utilize it. You can deduct college tuition from your taxes; so the monetary cost could be low.
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I'm looking into the feasibility of taking classes and using my old credits, of course they are over 20 years old now. And like you said, I'm really only looking to put in about 10 or 15 years before I hang up the hat and enjoy the rest of my life while I'm still spry enough to do it.
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That is difficult to answer. If you feel you can go back to school, I think I would recommend that.
I was part of a hiring campaign in our company earlier this year. I participated in +10 interviews and passed my recommendations on to my manager. I did not have the deciding vote on whether or not to hire, but I had a good say in the matter.
I personally do not weigh a person on the level of education as a primary factor - I have worked with people that only had a two year degree, but were just as brilliant as the ones with Master and PhD degrees. However, by the time a candidate's resume gets to my inbox for evaluation, it has gone through an HR person and at least one manager above me.
So, I might vote for hiring you without a degree (no, don't send me your resume, it doesn't work like that  ), but you have to pass through a number of filters first. And I am afraid your salary will be lower without a degree, but I don't actually have any numbers on that.
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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Depends on the region. After consulting for a while, I've notices that the HR departments in some parts of the country and certain companies, regardless of where they are at, balk at non-degreed engineers, even if they have 28 years experience! Note that most hiring managers don't care, but their HR departments sure do. This is all amplified when you have an engineering recession.
Further, I know of a few companies which will grab up people with masters degrees regardless of actual experience or capability.
I partly regret not getting my masters when I thought about it back in 93, but even now the idea bores me to death. Back then it was even more theory and UNIX.
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Firstly.
A number of company adverts are heavily sanitised by HR departments before they go out and a company will add those sort of requirements as a default. However when it comes to weeding out the CVs, it is not generally done but HR and those musts are rarely true musts and other factors like experience / skill sets / attitude etc will count for more (depending on the Manager). So I would ignore that requirement and apply anyway.
Secondly.
If there is some special learning you are trying to achieve, then by all means.
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If you have being doing it that long, you shouldn't find it that hard to get. I am not an IT professional and it is not something I do everyday.
I went back and did a computing degree in 2007 and found it relatively painless, although, it ate a lot of my home time due to my offshore work schedule. The hardest part was getting my head round some of the AI stuff, and also remembering the different languages being used throughout, when constantly switching back and forth between Java, C#, VB.net, JavaScript and several others, particularly whatever it was they used for the functional programming, I often found I used the wrong code.
I hated writing code by hand on paper, during the exams!
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It is very common around here to ask for a degree in job description, but with a long and proven experience it never really matter...however lately CVs are 'read' by software and if no B.A. in it it will be dropped by the software, so there is a dilemma...
The best way I found is somehow get contact with the HR directly and let my CV seen by humans...
(Just saying, that learning for the parer will probably kill you )
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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School isn't worth it.
It takes lots of time, effort and money.
It sucks the energy out of you.
It doesn't actually teach you stuff you need.
The stuff it does teach you could've Googled when you needed it.
School is a slow way to learn.
I've met IT graduates who literally couldn't declare a variable in C#.
School always lags behind with reality. You'll probably be doing some old version of Java (don't do anything else either, because the teacher won't understand it).
You'd better find a new job if they value four years of schooling over 22 years of experience.
I may be a bit biased as I always hated school.
I liked programming really very much until I decided, like you, to go back to school.
Only now, after having done little schooling for about a year, am I finding my enthusiasm and curiosity is coming back.
If I ever start to hate myself and rather be brain-dead I'll go back to school again.
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I also hate school too but employee requires degree as they control what pay to give and chances for promotion and not everyone is lucky. I have to beat HR and recruiters as they only recognizes degree 
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Seems like your beginner luck has ended then 
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agree, time to go back to school to get degree and be a junior developer/software engineer for degree batch after degree. FYI degree and non degree benefit is different even if is same position of junior.
modified 17-Aug-16 19:08pm.
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The more stuff you have in your arsenal the more chances you have in life. Sometimes we are given a signal about how things may be in the future. There's a chance that the signal can be ignored and all will be fine. It is always better to respond if you are able. If a degree rules you out of consideration for many jobs now then speculate on how things may develop down the road. There are many people today who are unemployed because they did not heed these indicators and fell behind when the competition become very tough.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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I have over 25 years of experience in designing embedded systems, and yet I found I couldn't break into the medical industry without a degree. It was best explained by an HR manager like this:
If I designed a small sub-system of a product, and designed it perfectly, documented the firmware, got it past V&V no problem, but another part of the system failed leading to either serious injury or death, I could be called to give a deposition. One of the first questions I would be asked would be where I earned my degree. If I had no degree, they would blame the failure on the "uneducated" so called "engineer". So at the ripe old age of 56 I went back to school, got my associates, got several contract jobs in medical and now working on my bachelors. It's painful sometimes, but so far worth it.
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demotis wrote: So here is the deal. I have 22 years of experience in IT, with the last 15 in software development. I'm up to date on many of the latest technologies and constantly learning new things (thank you Code Project for your help with that). I have recently started looking for a new job after having worked at a place for 7 years doing C# .Net programming with a hint of PHP/HTML.
With that amount of experience, I would say you're far better qualified than any new graduate, no matter how good their degree.
I dropped out of university over 30 years ago, and although the first couple of jobs were hard to get, and quite low level, once I had a few years experience most of the companies I applied to were very keen to take me on. I can't recall any of them questioning my lack of a degree when compared to even a few years of relevant experience.
It's quite likely the companies you're looking at simply put that clause in to discourage young, inexperienced, applicants. I'd recommend applying, and making sure your CV / resume emphasises your depth of experience.
eta : any employer who insists on a degree (as seems to be the case, reading more of the thread) and will pay an inexperienced graduate more than a seasoned engineer / developer isn't the sort of company I'd consider working for...
Days spent at sea are not deducted from one's alloted span - Phoenician proverb
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molesworth wrote: ... any employer who insists on a degree (as seems to be the case, reading more of the thread) and will pay an inexperienced graduate more than a seasoned engineer / developer isn't the sort of company I'd consider working for...
I have decided to go ahead and get a degree in CS with a emphasis on Programming. Actually, I'm going to get just enough to be a Computer Science, but I'm going to concentrate on Theory so I'm not bored to death making "Hello World" programs and having to explain the difference between an object and Class.
With that said.... You are 100% right. A 4 year degree with 3 years experience? In a best case that's only 7 years experience. I got double that, and mine is real world, on the job experience. But, apparently we are in the minority.
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Consider a Master's Degree. I got mine from Missouri State.Computer Information Systems Graduate Program - Computer Information Systems - Missouri State University[^].
The program was a mix of on campus and online. It took 2 years with 4 weeks on campus plus lots of nights and weekends. But at the end (and I have kids and worked full time) I had a Masters in Computer Information Systems. That degree opened up several doors for me when getting employed. Tuition wasn't too bad, so I paid out of pocket
Good luck!
Hogan
Hogan
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Having been on the other side of the conference table here's what I've seen. In the embedded programming world, and granted it's a bit different from normal programming, there are so many resumes a degree is used as a first order filter (electronics, part of that embedded difference) in selecting who to interview. A BA is better than nothing but for a tech job it really has to be a BS degree, unless it's a tech writer or customer training position.
Equivalent experience is just a dodge to avoid legal hassles for dicrimination. HR puts it in there but it rarely has any relevance to the hiring process. Does a degree actually make a difference otherwise? Only for an entry level position. A senior position is all about experience, because we know technical knowledge has a short half-life.
In interviews I started with a couple tech questions, just to eliminate the resume inflators. After that I was more interested in the non-technical skills, things like communication skills (writing, speaking up to express opinions) and some understanding of the economics of commercial software, the importance of project management and the aility to think beyond the assignment for next week.
And that's where the degree does make a difference. Going to a university or college is more than job training, it's exposure to a variety of disciplines. A code bootcamp can teach someone to write code, but it doesn't teach the ability to extrapolate from the immediate into the abstract. Software is more than writing code (yeah, blasphemy!!), it's economics, politics, sociology, and even psychology when you have to climb into someone's head to reverse engineer undocumented legacy code.
Does the 15 years experience count? Sure, but you have to get out of the pack before anyone looks at it. If the degree comes after the experience, no one really cares, because you won't be applying for Grunt Programmer I job classifications.
So if you do go back to school, take some theory classes, Numerical Analysis, Queueing Theory, Finite State Automata, but don't neglect Economics and English, especially writing. At a senior level you have to communicate your ideas in an effective manner to both management and your junior team members.
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This actually makes a lot of sense. in the short amount of time this post has been out I have resolved myself to enroll for one of the online degrees. I've sent in my info and have requested my transcript from when I was in school back in the early 90's. I hope that at they can count some of my credits.
It is a great idea to take theory classes. I was thinking that I would need to take "Intro to Programming" and start from the bottom, but it is perfectly logical that I could take some theory classes to get a BS and then back it up with my real world experience.
Thanks for the insight.
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I definitely fall into the don't need an education camp, based on my 38 years experience in the field. However I was fortunate enough to earn a degree early on, and along the way fell into the defense industry. In that industry hiring companies must have relevant degrees so that they can slot you into a defense contract. Many contracts for skilled labor don't include categories for non-degreed personnel. You have to fit into one of the contract slots so that the company can get paid. They make their money off of the difference in the contract category payment per hour and your salary. So depending on the industry you're applying for its something to consider as you make your decision. Just offering a different perspective than what I've seen here so far.
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