Hi everyone! I need some help. I’m in my mid-thirties, and I had a growing career that, since covid, has gotten so flaky I can’t properly provide for my family anymore. I have always been interested in tech, and would like to start a career but I’m not sure how to.
Can anyone in the field give me some advice? I don’t have much college experience, only did 1 year 17/18 years ago. Looks like I need some sort of college degree, which I’m fine with.
I also saw some online “bootcamp” things… are they good? I would like to do something where I was helping companies be protected from hackers and work from home as much as possible. White hat hacker type of thing… if that’s real!
Thank you everyone!
I’ve got some college but no official degree as well. I did a bootcamp for a CCNA with 0 experience in 2012. It was like learning a foreign language. I had to buy the official cert guide and studied hard for a year, I eventually got the CCNA cert in 2014. After that I kept getting additional Cisco certs, CCNA - security, CCNA - cyberops, and now am working on the CCNP. Once I got my CCNA I was able to get into a help desk position, and have moved up to analyst, and engineer. With each job jump have increased salary 30-50%. Honestly in tech I’d recommend moving around every 1-3 years to get that pay bump.
If you have a good manager, they will recognize that a college degree in IT and security specifically is not really necessary.
Some certs to look at for entry level network security, Cisco cyberops associate or CompTIA security+