
Ask HN: How to become a network admin. at 19? - da02
This article casually mentions it&#x27;s possible to be a teen network administrator at a large telecom company:  http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theboltonnews.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;894587.print&#x2F;<p>How is this possible? I thought a college degree was necessary. (The article mentions the job at firm Global Telecoms and Technology in Bury, Greater Manchester, England)
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haswell
It's often possible to find work in tech without a degree. It doesn't _always_
work out, but unlike many other industries, if you have the skills and can
prove it, there's a good chance you'll get hired.

I started my first job as a network admin/engineer at age 17. I'm no longer
doing anything network related, but this was a jumping-off point for the rest
of my career.

The best advice I can give you: tinker on your own. A lot. Look for small
companies that might be willing to give you a shot despite the lack of degree.
Once you've established yourself at one place, the rest will follow.

This path doesn't work for everyone, and it's not always easy, but I'm one of
many that have had great success despite the lack of that piece of paper.

Edit: Curious, why the downvotes?

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da02
Thanks for the answer. (I'm also surprised by the downvotes. Maybe people are
having a bad day at uni.?)

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techjuice
It is very possible, the best way to do this is to purchase the latest CCNA
and CCNP material from Cisco, a Cisco CCNA/CCNP lab kit from Amazon and apply
for a Junior Network Administrator job at your nearest regular business or
government contractor. I would recommend going for routing and switching as
this will give you a good base foundation of networking in general. If you buy
a lab kit insure that the routers and switching equipment you get have K9
which allows strong AES/3DES encryption (SSH for example).

[https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-
keywo...](https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-
keywords=cisco+lab+kit)

As you move through the certification process you will move more towards being
at the professional level (understanding BGP, GRE tunnels, advanced routing,
etc. at the internet level) instead of just switching and routing for a
datacenter or building.

The most important thing is to get hands on experience and actually understand
how routing and switching works in detail. Nothing is more sad and
embarrassing or worse than seeing someone with only book smarts and no
practical knowledge due to no hands on real world experience. The longer you
work at networking day to day on a job and at home using your home lab kit the
better you will become.

I started off learning networking at 15, and it has given me a wonderful
foundation for everything else, especially understanding TCP/IP UDP and many
of the various protocols in depth when doing software development, systems
engineering, and various in-depth security work. Plus if you like it and want
to do it for a career there is a ton of high paying jobs waiting for you as
you gain more experience.

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da02
Thanks. This also applies to a lot of other fields :)

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a-saleh
Some of my peers have done this, I did this to a lesser degree as well.

For network admins specifically, I remember that my school provided optional
course and accreditation for CCNA. If zou were leaving high school with
equivalent of high-school diploma as well as CCNA, junior positions even in
large firms were reasonably attainable.

Some of the larger firms have "college diploma in related field or at least 2
years of work-experience".

But usually you can get to those 2-years by working for friend-of-friends,
i.e. I was maintaining server that run our churches web-site for a while.

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joeclark77
I would think the biggest problem is convincing them that you're reliable
enough to show up at work on time every day, respond to questions and problems
professionally, etc.

Technical skills can be learned and demonstrated, but being 19 years old
carries some doubts along with it. Maybe you would need to prove yourself by
putting in some time at the IT help desk just to show that you are mature
enough to handle responsibility.

