
Ask HN: What other good careers exist for those without a college education? - EduardoBautista
So I never graduated from college but have been working on web apps (Ruby on Rails and Ember are what I mostly work on) since I was 19 (I am 25 now).<p>I always wondered what I would do if for some reason the market for software developers would go down.  I worry I would not able to find an interesting job, let alone a lucrative one.<p>Is tech the best path out there for interesting and&#x2F;or well paid work without a college education?
======
ThomPete
As someone with access to free education but without a college degree, without
rich parents and still having done pretty well for myself, let me tell you my
way of thinking about this.

There is a difference between getting an education and being educated. If you
focus on educating yourself without worrying about what your title you have
the chance of learning about subject matter transcendence i.e. you will become
skilled at some mixture of subjects without being "the best" at any one of
them.

This subject matter transcendence I believe is one of the keys to staying
relevant and aware of what is going on around you as it gives you an intuitive
understanding of how various areas could be connected.

As typical example is the designer/developer. A person who both know how to
design and how to code. That person might not be the best at the individual
disciplines but the combination is in itself providing them with an edge on
80% of the people BOTH in the design field AND in the development field.

Don't worry about confining yourself into becoming an expert in one field who
then will need to compete with other experts.

Instead become an expert in your own chosen subject matter no matter how
fractured and you will be able to if nothing else, start your own company
solving a problem your unique understanding of the world might lead you to.

In other words. Don't worry just keep educating yourself that's the best you
can do.

------
barry-cotter
You have six years professional experience in programming. You can probably
get onto the Oxford M.Sc. in Software Engineering but the deadline is soon. If
you miss it the next one is in March.

[https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-
softwar...](https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-software-
engineering?wssl=1)

Applicants are _normally_ expected to be predicted or have achieved a first-
class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours (or
equivalent international qualifications), as a minimum, in a related subject,
such as computer science, informatics or engineering.

For applicants with a degree from the USA, the minimum GPA sought is 3.5 out
of 4.0.

Applications are invited from anyone with sufficient experience or proven
ability in software, security, or data engineering. A typical applicant will
have at least two years' experience in a professional environment, and an
undergraduate degree in a related subject. However, _more extensive experience
may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications_ , and a strong,
immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional
experience.

Emphasis not in original

~~~
jmkni
In work now so can only skim, but how long does it take to complete part time?
I'm guessing you need to be on campus?

~~~
barry-cotter
You need to be on campus for one week per module, then you have six weeks to
complete your assignment, you need to complete ten modules to get the Master’s
as well as attending a week long course on how to do a 15-20K word thesis
based on project work.

------
exolymph
Your real issue here is the irrational worry, not the lack of alternative
career paths. I'd look into techniques for coping with anxiety if this
seriously bothers you.

~~~
hoaw
It isn't that irrational. I know many people who didn't have very good career
prospects before getting a career in software development or system
administration. And while most people are making decent money the tech
industry is bad at providing other values. In a downturn a lot of us would end
up competing for the same jobs. If you are lucky you are just stuck in a job
you can't get out of.

So I would say that diversifying and investing in the future is a good idea.

~~~
exolymph
Expecting a radical downturn in the market for software engineers is
irrational. Software is continuing to eat the world.

------
finaliteration
I know some people who sell cars and don’t have a college degree but pull in
close to six figures. They enjoy it but they also work for higher end
dealerships and get to take fun cars (like a brand new WRX STI...) for a spin
sometimes.

Cooking or baking is another option. Some great chefs out there never
graduated from college or culinary school.

Running a business also doesn’t require a college degree. My wife owns a café
and never graduated from college.

~~~
baron816
> Cooking or baking is another option.

Celebrity chefs can make a lot of money, but I’m pretty sure just about
everyone else is just barely scraping by.

~~~
ztjio
Just like lawyers.

~~~
willbw
Lawyers earn a median amount of $120,000 a year -
[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm#tab-5](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm#tab-5)

Chefs and head cooks earn a median amount of around $50,000 a year
[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-
serving/chefs-a...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-
serving/chefs-and-head-cooks.htm#tab-5)

So I'm not so sure about your point.

~~~
ztjio
The point is that there is a pretty big disparity between the big paying law
jobs and the normal jobs on a frequency basis, the median earning value
doesn't demonstrate this reality.

I did the research on this when I thought I wanted to go into law myself.

~~~
ves
Wait that’s why you use the median

~~~
weinzierl
Lawyer salaries follow a bimodal distribution[1], that's why the median isn't
very helpful. Besides showing the distribution (what the article does) the
more interesting figures would be the two modes.

What might be relevant for the discussion here is that lawyer salaries have
been unimodal 25 years ago but have changed over the course of time. It has
been argued here on HN [2][3] and elsewhere [4] that developer salaries are
bound to suffer the same fate.

[1] [https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-
distribution-c...](https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-
curve/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337434)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588202)

[4] [https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/](https://danluu.com/bimodal-
compensation/)

------
ThePhysicist
Are you based in the US? Can’t say much about that then but if you’d be in
Germany I would advise you to pick a craft like heating technician
(Heizungsbauer), electrician or plumber: Due to the demographic change and the
government efforts pushing more and more people to study instead of doing an
apprenticeship there are fewer and fewer qualified people around that are able
to fix our heating, plumbing or wiring. In Germany (and many other countries)
these areas are also regulated so if you made it through your apprenticeship
you are somewhat protected from too much competition, which is a nice
advantage to e.g. being a programmer where everyone with a computer and some
coding skills can compete with you. Also, heating systems and electric
appliances are not going away anytime soon and they regularly break, so you
have pretty much guaranteed business.

I’ve heard from many friends that have extreme difficulty finding someone to
e.g. redo their roof or tile their floor as most professionals can just afford
to wait for large, extremely lucrative jobs instead due to the high demand
overhang. Single gigs can be in the ballpark of 50 to 100 thousand €, with
hourly rates in excess of 100 € not being uncommon. Easily beats the going
rate for developers here (which is around 80 € / hour).

------
Rebelgecko
Depending on where you are, a tugboat captain can clear $500k/year, and you'll
have a 6 figure pension when you retire. Other hands on jobs that have lots of
overtime potential (e.g. police or fire department, oil, welding, etc) can
also pay really well depending on your level.

~~~
thedevindevops
How much is a tugboat?

~~~
a2tech
A lot. But most tug captains work for someone that owns the boat and over time
might buy into the boat ownership or buy their own. You can still make a big
salary while running someone else’s boat though.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
I had a friend who got into working on boats like this. She worked her ass
off, but made really good money for someone just starting out.

------
Ologn
> I always wondered what I would do if for some reason the market for software
> developers would go down. I worry I would not able to find an interesting
> job, let alone a lucrative one.

You are right to worry (
[https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?q=bscs](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?q=bscs)
). It will be more of a problem when you're in your late 40's, maybe married
with kids, and laid off in a tight economy, without a degree. I mean, if you
ever see it in job ads, or have it mentioned in interviews, then it is a
thing.

Consider signing up for a local college with a decent CS program (public or
private) and taking one course a semester at night or on weekends. Then the
default becomes you graduate eventually. Also, the fact that you are going and
making progress helps as well. It also helps your programming - reflecting on
mutual exclusion and critical sections for a semester will not hurt you any in
your job.

------
mdpopescu
Everything computer-related is best right now. (Web design, UX, "social media
person".) However, if for some reason you want to change that, I have found
that writing and composing music are also well suited for the same type of
mind. (You need imagination, constrained by rules. We're good with rules and,
as far as I can tell, we're not bad at creativity either.)

~~~
mynameishere
_writing and composing music_

I'm not even sure how to approach criticizing this, because I'm sure you mean
well, but if someone aims to make a living in these two things, they better
get ready for a lifelong dose of failure.

~~~
mdpopescu
You're (somewhat) right. I was mainly addressing the "find an interesting job"
part, not the "lucrative" one.

There are ways to become successful as a writer, but you need to be either
very lucky, or cheat. See [1] for an example of the latter.

[1]
[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056BMK6K](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056BMK6K)

------
thiago_fm
You can work on a bakery, waiter, cleaner, sales and a lot of other jobs. Even
if you are an introvert, there will be a job for you.

But I don't believe tech is going away. You better work on getting this
anxiety away, you were probably thinking "oh shit, things are going down
because there are too much clowns getting funding and giving web dev projects
that makes no money for them and go bankrupt". I did that frequently, maybe
you also did, I'm just trying to view things from your perspective.

The other side of the story is that for every 100 clowns, there is 1 that
succeeds and controls a whole industry. Programming will be well paid for a
while. Most of the people can't/won't even learn how to program or be willing
to do it to earn a living, no matter how good it pays.

Consider actually learning other platform, such as systems engineering/mobile
etc. That will definitely help you out with that.

Even if you would help people writing VBA functions in Excel you could make
money. There are a lot of old people making 6-7 figures that can't open a PDF.
Remember that. The economic and the system as today, isn't going away. There
will always be banks, politicians and entrepreneurs creating jobs and keeping
people busy.

As long as you are willing to work, you will do just fine.

~~~
michaelt

      But I don't believe tech is going away.
    

Tech doesn't need to 'go away' for the likes of us to have a bad time. All we
need is a repeat of the 2000 dot-com bubble bursting.

In that case, companies with solid products at good prices still went
bankrupt, as the customers-of-their-customers had trouble and demand for their
products dried up; and as investors were spooked out of the entire sector. The
damage wasn't limited to the likes of pets.com!

~~~
thiago_fm
I don't know anybody who became UNEMPLOYABLE at that time.

Sure, you might need to work under some bad conditions or take a pay cut, but
that is just life. For who has great experience shit shovelling their whole
life, this is nothing. For those who doesn't and can't take a crisis, they
wouldn't be able to take it in any field of work.

I think there will be always well-paid work for people who are analytical,
maybe you need to start over on another field, but it isn't that bad. Idk
really, anything could happen, but as soon as I look around, I'm usually the
most employable person ever, can speak a few languages, can do a lot of stuff,
IT, development, I welcome new opportunities and things, can deal with money
well and has my whole life studied finance.

I think for a lot of people on our field it is like this. I actually would
appreciate if we would have a crisis, because that would be definitely the
time I would be able to take part in those businesses that grow on those times
and end up being huge. At the present there is a lot of shitty companies with
huge valuations and providing nothing, crisis are good because they really
shake the status quo and those who think outside of the box get out of it much
better than if everything was perfect.

Think positive.

------
weinzierl

      Sewer Diver	       		130000 EUR
      Federal Minister		124046 EUR
      Flight Controller		 78000 EUR
      Offshore Mechanic		 58500 EUR
      Elevator Technican		 52000 EUR
      Driving Instructor 		 47500 EUR
      Garbageman   		         42000 EUR
    
    

These are annual gross salaries in Germany. None of the jobs requires college
education. To put it into perspective, web dev averages around 55000 EUR here.

------
arunmp
Consulting is a lucrative career path that relies less on college pedigrees
and more on networking/reputation.

~~~
a2tech
Consulting is a weird place. Just recently I had a customer decide they wanted
to hire me full time (I’ve been consulting with one of their internal
divisions for awhile, and the company wanted to make me available to everyone)
and they balked when they saw I didn’t have a degree. But then I turned the
interview into a pitch for using my consulting services for everyone instead
of hiring me and the worry about my degree went out the window. Somehow it
seemed ok to have a contractor without a degree but not an employee.

------
mcv
Without a degree, doing what you're provably good at is your best option. A
degree is basically an substitute for proof that you're good at something. (A
degree doesn't actually prove you're good at it; at best it means you're more
likely to be good at it, since you've been exposed to education about it.)

So if you're good at software, then do that. There's little chance for the
demand for software developers to go down; it's one of the safest career paths
there is. There is of course a chance that the software market will change and
that demand for Ruby or Ember will drop. But if you can learn those, you can
also learn to develop in Python and Vue or something.

Keep learning, keep diversifying.

Of course it's possible you have other talents. Maybe you're a good comic
artist, cook, salesman, manager or something else entirely. Work on those
skills when you can, and build up a portfolio so you can prove to people that
you're good at these things too. There are plenty of fields where talent is
far more important than a degree. A degree is merely a way to develop that
talent and prove you've done that.

------
zachlatta
People want to hire intelligent, hardworking people.

If you don't have a college degree, you just need to find other ways to show
potential employers you're intelligent and hardworking, regardless of
industry.

To think about this from any other perspective is to unnecessarily pigeonhole
yourself.

~~~
fabatka
Exactly this.

I don't have a degree, but I still got the first job I ever applied to (as a
full-time BI dev, not internship). I was lucky that they had an entrance
"exam" that I could use to prove my capability.

The entrance "exam" looked like this: they asked me what programming languages
I knew. I answered Python, C, awk. They said ok, then here are 3 simple tasks,
do these in either Clojure or Elixir, get back to us when you are ready. I
submitted my answers in 72 hours, talked my way through them on the interview
and basically that was it.

The whole point of this was (I guess) to measure how quickly can I learn new
things (functional languages need a different mindset than imperative
languages).

Now I'm focusing on doing side projects that I can put on my webpage and
resume, right next to the work experience.

------
austhrow743
Sales

Because your output is more measurable than in most other roles, credentials
matter far less.

------
the_70x
IT, you can learn it by yourself, you can contribute to open source and get
recognized and on the end run get the experience and recognition as an IT
professional

------
ivanhoe
If you're good you can do well with a lot of career paths, e.g. master
woodworker, or expert welder or a good accountant. Of course, you'd have to
learn a lot of new things first and that takes years, so it's probably not
such a good idea to switch profession without a good reason, and it's even
more unlikely that you'll really have to switch it ever...

~~~
Cthulhu_
Master? Expert? That are some high goals - not everyone can be the best. Not
everyone should be.

~~~
ivanhoe
Well, in this context it doesn't mean "the best", it's more of a honorable
title for highly skilled craftsman - something achievable with a lot of
practice and hard work and love for that job. And while you're totally right,
and it's totally fine to be a part of mediocrity (like most of us are), people
usually don't quit their well-paid jobs and change carriers completely in hope
to be crappy at something else...

------
vinayms
Your problem seems that you are relying on someone else to employ you. Why not
create products by yourself and become a potential employer? Unless the
society itself crashes due to large scale wars or natural catastrophes, people
will always want and use useful software, and that includes time wasting
entertainment ones. There are so many things that need to be done, so as long
as what you create is not yet another tool that does the same old thing that
twenty others already do with no differentiating aspect to it, its worth
pursuing this path.

Software engineering is the most equalizing field in modern society. I mean,
anyone with interest and reasonable intelligence can get good at it; they just
need a used laptop and a decent internet connection. Add a good amount of CS
understanding, and general creativity, one stands to make it big in this
field. Compare that with trying to build the next generation automobile by
self studying mechanical engineering, or creating a drug to cure your least
favorite disease by learning bio chemistry through a MOOC.

Software engineering is the new humanities, albeit a lucrative one, in that
you need just a bit of push in the beginning after which it is all up to you
to explore and get good at.

~~~
dabockster
> Why not create products by yourself and become a potential employer?

Usually the added hassle of the business logistics (paperwork, additional
business taxes on top of your payroll, etc) and everyone under the sun trying
to lowball you. Not everyone has the intuition and patience necessary to
handle all this extra work. There's also the added time commitments.

------
Im_Unlucky
Air Traffic Controller. Saw it mentioned in a similar thread and sounds like
decent pay for the trade off of high stress and crappy hours. Still it's
defiantly something worth looking into if you are willing to make compromises.

------
JAlexoid
Every single one and no one.

Your education increases the chance of you getting into a particular field,
but doesn't guarantee it. If you are capable of exploiting opportunities -
there is no field that you can't get into.

------
iamben
Aside from the very obvious jobs that require a qualification (doctor, lawyer,
etc) you can do pretty much whatever you want. After my first job my degree
was more or less pointless. As for the first job, or any other, stop worrying
about what's on a piece of paper and start figuring out what you're interested
in and what will make people interested in that. Then just get out there and
meet people. Conferences, meet ups, whatever. These are the people who will
employ you, work with you, work for you, and introduce you to people who will
all of those. Of all my friends that earn very, very well, there's little
difference between those with lots of qualifications and those without - and
far more so in tech. Good luck!

------
Brajeshwar
Lambda School comes to mind. Try them, they seem to be working out for lots of
people.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
had to look that one up. seems like a refreshing concept:

 _> Lambda School trains people online to be software engineers at no up-front
cost. Instead of paying tuition, students can agree to pay a percentage of
their income after they're employed, and only if they're making more than $50k
per year. If you don't find a job, or don't reach that level of income, you'll
never pay a cent._

it has been discussed here before too:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=lambda%20school&sort=byPopular...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=lambda%20school&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
sylvainkalache
Make sure that you have soft skills, the ability to learn by yourself and
problem solve.

Coding is obviously super relevant now, and I personally believe for still a
while, to remain employed. Yet, if you look at WEF prediction[0], it is soft
skills – with obviously technical knowledge (that you already have) – that
will matter in the long run.

So what does it means for you? The future of work is not about learning one
tool (programming language for instance) and be done for a career. We can
actually extend this to a type of job. The key is to be able re-train and re-
tool. College education, and in general, lecture/instructor-based education,
is generally training us the wrong way: we feed students with knowledge that
is the answer for the exam in 2 weeks. In real life, we make money or are paid
by solving problems (exams) but it's up to us to find the answer (the
lecture). So it's completely backward.

Progressive Education[1], a movement that was created at the end of the 18th
century is super relevant for our time. It's advocating for students to learn
something by doing, to focus on problem-solving and critical thinking, soft
skills and become a life-long learner. I am so in love with this methodology
that I created a software engineering school using it, and it's working
amazingly![2]

Since you seem to be self-taught, you probably already have this ability to
self-learn, that's HUGE! My advice to you would be: try to learn something
completely new, on your own. See how it goes. It might be painful, if so that
is normal, keep going. I see that with our students who, especially when they
start, are frustrated by the fact that we, as a school, are pushing them to
find the knowledge by themselves instead of giving the answer by just raising
their hand. The key here is not only to learn a new craft, but also and very
importantly, to develop the ability to self-learn.

Develop your soft skills: collaboration, coaching, empathy, writing,
negotiation, public speaking. Those are key to grow in seniority in the
software track, but really, it is for any career.

Finally, I believe that tech isn't going anywhere, it's widely used by retail,
finance, transportation, media, healthcare... Considering that you cannot
remain employed as a software developer, no matter which position you end up
working in, having tech knowledge will make a huge difference or be just
essential.

[0][https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/the-3-skill-sets-
work...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/the-3-skill-sets-workers-need-
to-develop-between-now-and-2030/)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_education)

[2][https://www.holbertonschool.com/](https://www.holbertonschool.com/)

------
fidla
Cleaning toilets?

------
BadCompany57
The illusion of the requirement for a College Education to get a high paying
job in any field is starting to diminish. Now Yes, it will be a bit harder to
get a job when your competition has 6 Masters degrees and 2 PHDs. All a degree
tells a potential employer is that you are supposed to know the degree field.
It isn't ordinary for employers to give you a test to determine your
knowledge, that's why everything on the Resume is vital and a degree usually
stands out above the rest. With that out of the way, Especially when it comes
to IT, most companies look for experience. Light up your resume with the
experience in Ruby (or any other knowledge you have) and pound on it, sell it
to the employter that you know what you're doing even more so than Joe Smith
with his 90+ Degrees. I highly doubt that the demand for IT will go down in
any field. If that is the case; You can always learn Welding (which will
require a very short technical school,about 3-6 months for the price of a few
paychecks dependending on where you live) Construction is also a decently
simple field to get into and its usually union with very.. very high paying
opportunities along with the self satisfaction of building structures to be
used for years. But I recommend staying IT, Many other companies have a
plentiful amount of openings in IT though it may not be Software Developers,
Your experience so far will help you honestly find any door in Information
Technology regardless of a degree.

~~~
daveguy
1) almost no one has multiple Masters and even fewer multiple PhDs.

2) A degree tells a potential employer you have knowledge in a field and the
persistence to stick with a project/goal for 4-6 years. The latter possibly
being more important than the former.

3) Focus on persistence and experience in particular technology or projects is
definitely a good boost.

