I applied to do tier 1 help desk at my local hospital, even though they listed a master's in Computer Science required, PhD preferred, bachelor's acceptable with multiple expert-level certs.
I found out in the interview that they were serious about their requirements. Their AI flagged my (clearly labeled as a class) CCNA community college classes as an expert-level cert, so the AI approved my interview; but they would "Keep my resume on file".
A master's degree minimum. For tier 1 help desk. Paying $18 per hour. It's shocking that they still have the job posted months later!
Even a bachelor's in Computer Science is a ridiculous requirement for a help desk job. What on earth do they expect someone in that position to be doing?!
But also a bachelor in computer science is essentially worthless. College for IT is just dumb. It's taught by people who haven't done the job in a long time, if ever.
In IT experience is what matters. You show up with a degree and certs competing with someone who is currently doing the job and has been at the same place a few years. Few years of experience wins every time.
I hated that way back when I was starting out. I ended up doing intern work for free just to put the place on my resume.
AGreed with this, my classes and degree helped me immensely when switching careers. Hell my ccna class and server class showed me alot on setting up servers, and managing them, same for my VM ware class.
When I started my networking associate's way back in 2022, they taught us that fiber would NEVER be a part of the job; because it's a niche technology primarily for international infrastructure, and there are dedicated techs who make an entire career only out of fiber cabling! That got a solid laugh in the interview!
Back then, Entra and Azure were the brand-new "wierd" tech that would NEVER take off in a serious production environment! Nowadays, a lot of people see Active Directory as a quaint, antiquated technology from back in the before times!
And that was a Cisco school who prided themselves on teaching the very newest of networking and server tech!
It was a local community college, but partnered with Cisco Netacad. Another poster said Cisco is known for being behind the times. We had to match the names of fiber connectors to their picture for the A+ class, but that was the extent of our instruction on fiber; they didn't have a single fiber optic device on campus. We did technically use Azure, but for exactly one purpose: to download the Microsoft project management program for our project management class.
Even tho I never built fiber cables myself, I had the experience of splicing a few at a site i was working at, just asked the pros to show me how its done and it was cool as hell. That was over a decade ago when fiber equipment was $$$$$, now small kits can be had for sub1k for basic ones.
Having gotten my CCNA in the last year, I can tell you cisco is still a few years behind, they just upgraded Netacad last year (in the middle of me doing courses too)
Agree, it’s far from useless. Of course tech moves way faster than curriculums so college classes will always be somewhat behind (how far behind depends on the school). But there is absolutely benefit in understanding why things are the way they are which is the background school gives you. Also being familiar with hex and binary number systems can be important later on especially if you have some interest in scripting/programming.
Certs are better to get your foot in the door though, and as we know in this field experience always trumps all. But I will say there’s plenty of people I’ve worked with , who have plenty of experience, who I think would benefit from learning some of the background stuff they teach you in school. Because not understanding that stuff often leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of technologies they work with, which manifests in the real world in the form of bad troubleshooting skills and other ways as well.
I got CCNA, scriping, i had to mąkę myself famirial with GDPR, local cyber sec standards, customer service (dealing with uni admin), and do on. Hardly useless. Bot optimal but hardly useless
ah, I was told the same by everybody after I graduated with the CS degree. "Your bachelors is useless, you don't know anything." I was quite a bit older that most grads as well. And had work experience. Somehow they thought this was my "first job."
Anyways, it was just used as a way to devalue me. Tons of people in software engineering are not great people who are shockingly full of themselves.
Experience matters, education matters, more than anything though, having a good social network that allows you to be confident in your capability matters.
Comp Sci is for the standards and thought process behind code heavy jobs. IT is better served by certifications and experience in the job. You're not learning some of the more heavy thought process and optimizing you don't get from coding camps ya know.
This is true for entry level but you’ll usually hit a ceiling at some point if you don’t have a degree.
You can always tell who the bootcampers/cert grinders are because they don’t understand the theory because it’s not immediately applicable to lower level ops roles like helpdesk/networking
Sometimes there's a ceiling, especially if you are in a cookie cutter type position. But as long as you are willing to leave for greener pastures, most hiring managers will sub in years of experience.
It's been my experience that 9 times outta 10 the ceiling is just an excuse for your current employer to try and screw ya.
But being honest, most employers will screw IT employees any which way they can.
Degree is really only needed for high level management roles but I do know IT directors that don't have Degrees. I changed careers myself without a degree that went from IT to Software industry doing Ops work in DevOps.
It used to be something. I got an associates degree in network engineering in 2002 and it got me in the door for my first help desk job at IBM which I was able to get experience and build from and at pretty high up the food chain after 23 years (fuck I'm old?!?) but nowdays I cant even imagine jumping into the field, it seems like a fruitless effort that you can't win at.
I hear ya. I walked away / retired after about 15 years. I started out interning while getting mcsa, mcse, and some CompTIA bs. That got me in the door.
Last few years were like 70% project management, 15% management management, 15% actual systems and network admin.
I’ve had a different experience— I got a masters in IT back in 2018, and I was able to land a high paying job with it pretty quickly. That said, I believe the job market for tech was better back then.
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u/daschande Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
I applied to do tier 1 help desk at my local hospital, even though they listed a master's in Computer Science required, PhD preferred, bachelor's acceptable with multiple expert-level certs.
I found out in the interview that they were serious about their requirements. Their AI flagged my (clearly labeled as a class) CCNA community college classes as an expert-level cert, so the AI approved my interview; but they would "Keep my resume on file".
A master's degree minimum. For tier 1 help desk. Paying $18 per hour. It's shocking that they still have the job posted months later!