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Hello all and thank you in advance. I am a 34 year old with really beginner if that tech knowledge. I have a masters degree in a healthcare profession and a couple years in sales. I have talked from some of my tech friends about looking into sales engineer career, but did not know if there were any careers out there additional to this without requiring me to go back and getting a formal 4 year degree. I am passionate about most things tech but am really looking for help finding out how to start or what it takes to become a sales engineer or other tech careers whether it be learning python, java, etc. I am older and have put my time into the workforce, but know I always wanted to be in tech and don’t want to waste my time taking the wrong steps to achieve this. I am asking in hopes to learn from others already in similar fields on how to help in regards to online boot camps, basic skills(python/java?) etc and maybe which may be best as well as any other steps or things I should do to guide me. Thank you all so much in advance for your time. Godspeed.

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Welcome to the community!

You have a master’s degree already. I don’t know anyone in tech that would care if you had an additional 4 year degree in a technical field. Any real “requirement” for a four year degree is to filter out people that have no skills and follow through. Not that a 4 year degree is a guarantee, but it’s a “minimum standard”.

In tech, people care about what you can do. That includes both technical knowledge, and being able to work with people. How well can you problem solve? How good is your Google-fu? I honestly think that Google-fu is a critical real world skill.

To me, coding and sales engineer are pretty far apart in terms of skills and temperament. I think that you need to get an idea of what excites you. Get some experience and skills.

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Just make sure you have the CompTIA A+, Net+, and security+. You get those three certifications to cover the basics of tech. After that, you can look at boot camps or other certs to specialise in the precise field you want to work in.
If you do that and have good research capabilities (google-fu, as said previously), you’ll be miles ahead of the average person working in tech-related fields.
It really all depends on what you want to do, but I always recommend those three certs. Even if you wanted to be a developer, I would recommend them lol.
Good luck on your journey my friend!

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IT is one of very, very few white-collar career paths that you can enter through apprenticeship and without a degree.

Certifications are more meaningful than degrees. You can get those certifications through self-study and then take an exam, or sometimes through courses offered at local community colleges. Besides those already mentioned, MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) and other Microsoft certifications are useful for their products.

The fact that you have a degree is actually a benefit in your favor, even though it’s not in the IT field. Folks with degrees often have a “leg up” in hiring, and can fast-track promotions into leadership positions. It doesn’t really matter what field the degree is in; it tells more about you as a person than your in-field skillset. The in-field skills become less and less important as you move away from engineering duties; the ability to delegate and manage others and to interact with counterparts in different departments, companies, and industries becomes more important.

An eagerness to learn is something nearly every quality employer is looking for.

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As above, welcome to the community.

I’m not sure what a sales engineers job would be or what they do, so I have nothing to add from that context. Do they need programming skills?

What I can give you is my feedback of my experience - I have NO formal qualifications, no degree, no CompTIA, no Security+, no Network+, nada, nothing, zero.

What I do have is passion, willing, determination and I was more than happy to start at the bottom and work my way up, experience and willing go a long way, a qualification or degree shows focus and ability to understand and read instructions, it opens doors, but it will be of no use if you have no focus or determination to do the work.

If you have a willingness to learn and self-teach, get some older PCs/Laptops and lab it, setup your own system, code your own programs, fix broken things - whatever it is that would fit in to your prospective job skillset - when you get to an interview, you can use these real-world examples in replies to show willing and thinking outside the box.

If you like technology but end up in a job doing things you don’t like, you wont be happy or perform well, make sure you have an area you want to be in and love what you do.

Good luck

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Wow thank you all so much for your time spent replying. It seems like a great community and each piece of all responses were extremely helpful. I guess being outside the world of tech it is a bit intimidating because it is like learning a new language. Where would be some good places to start looking for these specific types of skills to learn? Are the free courses very poor quality compared to paid courses? If I could piggyback off of what I was saying, does anyone have any advice on websites or places to look for different career options both to find a job I would like and also to find a job when I learn the skills. I appreciate all of the support, knowledge and time spent helping me. You are all great!

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It certainly is. It’s worth sticking around even when you get your dream job - you can always seek advice or help others.

Depends on what specifics you mean, there are many training sites out there, we need to know some things you want to learn - you can always try Cybrary.it though, many courses are free, some are paid, labs are inclusive.

Was the advise you got here for free poor, is the free leftover food you are given from family members that wasn’t eaten any less quality than the stuff you’d pay for - the answer is sometimes, the same applies to some free courses, some are basic and done badly - it depends on the trainer, not all are bad. There is no generic yes or no answer, as always ‘it depends’. A good SME (Subject matter expert) will do wonders on both paid and free training sites.**

If you can provide some further specifics about what you are looking for, we can likely point you at training, geared to that.

** the Spiceworks community is such an example, many SMEs here offer their advice and guidance based on experience and may give more accurate replies to fix an issue vs someone watching a paid training course.

Everyone posts here free.

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I am impressed by how accepting and helpful you all are being to someone coming on here knowing little to nothing so thank you. I guess that is my first step. I say I love tech, but I guess I find it like a different language therefore making it difficult for me to choose or even figure out which area to go into. Cybersecurity sounds awesome, ethical hacker, data analyst, sales engineer, IT specialist or a developer are the first that come to my mind. I will try to follow the steps above to get started so thanks a ton! ROD-IT I love what you said about the free advice and training and think that trying to find/ use the 1st steps stated above from you all will help guide me to an area that speaks more to me. Again it is all such a foreign language to me so beginning is confusing, but everything said has been very helpful. TIME TO LEARN!

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Never too late to start. A few years back we took on a “newbie” who was in his late 40’s. His CV came across our desk, he’d done the 3 Comptia Certs mentioned earlier.

Degree’s don’t really matter once you have work experience (not IT work experience, just proof you can hold down a job and work as part of a team). My degree is 30+ years out of date and virtually zero relevance to IT today!.

If you show you’re willing to put the effort to get those comptia certs on your own initiative, that will open doors for you i’m sure.

PS 34 years old is just a youngling :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the bout of confidence! Working on basic python and the 3 he stated to get some skills!

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I was largely self-taught when I entered full-time tech 5 years ago, after a career in chemistry. I still have none of the big certs. I did have a buddy who got me my current role, and I"ve tried on nearly all of the hats in our MSP, which helped me find what areas I liked or had an aptitude for and what areas I got tired of after a while.

So the advice I would recommend is to start going to meet-ups and get to know people in different areas of tech–both to make connections and to learn about their jobs. If there is a local tech conference, go. Soak it in.

Start your own in-house lab as someone suggested, so you can start playing with what you are learning and see if you really have an interest and aptitude for it. Both are required. If you have a choice between playing in your lab/watching YouTube vids on various aspects of IT and some other recreational activity, and you find yourself choosing the latter more often over time, that is a sign you have a hobbyist level interest at best in what you are trying.

Try getting a part time job in tech, even entry level, say at Best Buy, either Geek Squad or on the sales floor. Since you mentioned sales engineer, and you have experience in sales, this would be a good transition. What you are lacking is the ‘engineer’ part of sales engineer. This will help you get started in beginning to understand what technical proficiency is needed to be a sales engineer. The closest analogy would be selling cars at a dealership as a first step on your way to selling high-end/custom construction equipment to large corporations. Honestly, with your background, I think before you can hope to be an effective sales engineer, you should be on the support side for a while, so you have familiarity with HOW things work or don’t, the types of issues that can arise, what tech and brands are most effective in what areas and why, a broad scope of the field (hardware, software, systems, networking, security, etc) to see where your interests are, and what the customer base expects, so you can more effectively speak to those things as a sales engineer. One of the things that make life hardest for support and for development teams are sales folks that don’t really understand either the capabilities or limitations of the product and teams and overpromise or mis-promise. The sales guy gets the commission but others are left to clean up the mess. The more you can understand both client needs and the back-end realities, the more effective sales engineer you will be.

That said there are sort of 2 classes of sales engineer–one focused more on the sales and one focused more on the tech. Hopefully the former is more involved in commodity/consumer sales, and the latter on the inside sales/custom/high-end/specialty. When they are switched, it can often be frustrating for both the sales rep and the customer, so part of your investigation is which level of sales engineer do you want to be, and in which tech vertical. (hardware, software, security, systems, network, etc)

IMHO, only after you have an decent idea of what area of tech is the best fit for you would I spend a lot of effort and money on certs/boot camps. Then once you have that and the certs for that area, if you want, go on and get certs in neighboring areas, because positions often migrate over time and you may find having broader experience than just ‘your area’ to be helpful in resolving issues that overlap areas of expertise.

Hope that helps lay out the parameter-space enough for you to begin mapping it.
Cheers!

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Thank you and I find it all very helpful. I actually just started some videos teaching the CompTIA A+ and am finding it all super interesting and exciting(nerd I guess)! I like the ideas of getting in on tech fields and Ben part time. Currently I am jobless l, taking care of my 2 year old son and trying to learn skills every second I have time. I guess Best Buy and trying to figure out out to get my name out there to people to put me in a job I can learn and have some more hands on experience too or where they are willing to teach. I was told sales engineer by a friend which is why so threw it out there but I guess looking for an entry level type tech job would be the right place to start. Any more ideas of companies or positions that would be open to accepting and train a newbie would be appreciated! Once again, you are all great. It’s nice to be learning something I actually enjoy!

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Like others have mentioned, you can get into IT based on what you can do. In my experience, the organizations I have worked for require some level of measurable competence in whatever IT track you are applying for. You have mentioned many different types of IT jobs. You should research what does it mean to work in those positions.

What skills are necessary?

What knowledge is necessary?

What certifications are recommended.

What does "a day in the life of " looks like.

You can research all this online, but you can also ask people that do that job. There are a lot of folks here that will help.

I am a network engineer. Let me know what you would like to know about that job.

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Seriously get into embalming or funeral management or something. Way more consistent work, better hours and better pay. Cool part is you can always work from home, no need to travel.

All seriousness. No need for a degree. College degrees in IT are pretty unhelpful and outdated frankly. Getting any degree shows that you are willing to work hard and that certainly helps sell the career flop.

I will add that your knowledge of healthcare, HIPPA, and compliance with same is a huge leg up on your IT competitors (healthcare industry isn’t going anywhere anytime soon). Get a certification in Networking (Cisco) if you want to be a Network Person. Get a SecurityPlus, NIST, CISA or CISSP cert if you want to get into security. Get a an OS cert if you want to get into sys administration.

You mention coding, so if software development is your track that one is going to require some apprenticeship starting out as a very Junior Dev first. Good news is if you bust your chops well enough, and are good at it, you will gain rank quick. Developers rarely do this, but it helps if you get some basic database knowledge, either SQL, or MySQL, Postgre or the like. I’m sure there are certs around each. Almost nothing programmed that requires long term support does so without a good database backend.

Welcome to the nightmare.

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Everything that has been stated has been extremely helpful. For a little bit of background, my knowledge level is higher than most without a tech career, but I feel like I would be a fish out of water with a helpdesk position at this time, unless companies are willing to take a chance and teach me. I have gone through the COMP TIA Aplus videos and took notes throughout and some I have good understanding of, but the majority of it is foreign to me. I have built a few PCs, troubleshoot things fairly, but I feel like I am so behind on terminology and just the basics PC functions, windows functions etc. I am willing to put in the time and am really enjoying the content, but I guess my biggest question would be, are there any specific skills or courses one would recommend for I guess the basics and essentials to help me understand the material and prepare me more for the Aplus? I like the idea of working in IT, but eventually transitioning to cybersecurity or even just spending some time in IT to see what it is that are the aspects I enjoy the most. I hope this makes sense and I guess my main objectives would be as stated below.

  1. Is taking the A plus a good starting block?

  2. It starting at a helpdesk from no experience really the best way to get into the tech industry?

  3. What other basic courses or skills should I focus on learning and how to learn them with the Aplus or before to help me understanding the basics?

Appreciate everyone on here and the support has been great!

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I’m currently a systems engineer. I started out just helping friends and family with computer stuff at about 15, as well as learning how to code in C++ (though I’m a Python and Powershell man myself now, I still use C++ from time to time). The first thing I got when I decided to get serious was an A+. Now, I have 11+ certifications and a bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity, and I will have my masters once I finish my final thesis this year. A+ is a great place to start. Community colleges often offer classes that come with a certification voucher if you want to get more hands-on while you learn. You seem to be interested in coding as well, and for that, I could not recommend Codecademy enough!
Further, if you are interested in Cybersecurity, I love TryHackMe. Their community is excellent, and they give you clear paths to develop your skills. I actually recommended a helpdesk guy check that out a few years ago, and he just got a promotion to junior systems engineer where I work.
Helpdesk is a great place to start. If you have passion and drive for what you do, you will get noticed and move up quickly. I started as a printer tech about ten years ago and, after a year, was promoted to a sys admin and so on and so forth. I just got certifications to grow my own knowledge and show that I was serious and wanted to grow. The degrees are unnecessary, and I only started getting them a few years ago to prove I could and to make my parents proud.
The thing about getting into this stuff is that it’s massive, and a big part of it is finding what you love about it and focusing on that. I like a lot of it myself, automation, security (specifically hacking), tinkering, creating, programming. I work at a place that lets me focus on what I love, and I’m lucky for that.

Sorry that I’m rambling lol
So, to summarise. A+ is a great foundation that is easy to build apon, and you can easily get a helpdesk job or other technician job with just that. The point of the cert is to demonstrate that you understand the material so you can get a job without prior experience. CompTIA itself builds on that with the network+ and security+ (again I highly recommend these. I refer to them as the Golden Triad).
Besides that just keep using online resources. TryHackMe and Codecademy both have paid versions but you can learn tons from them for free. I have also used cybrary.it but do not rely on it for up-to-date information.

Anyways! Hope this helps and it’s good to hear you are enjoying this platform. Not gonna lie, I assume most people here just want to be helpful. This isn’t stack overflow after all :wink:

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Thanks for giving me best answer! :blush:

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It was extremely helpful and made me realize I was overthinking it all and really needed to look into things first before picking just “tech” in general as I now that that it is much too broad. I have had a rough year with mental health and have been out of work trying to find something I can see myself doing and truthfully what everyone said and tryhackme as your recommendation has opened my eyes, made me excited to learn cybersecurity and hopeful for my future. I’m obsessed with that site haha. Thank you all I appreciate it more than any of you know!

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