On the flip side, I’m a former sysadmin and I only stick around for 5 years because I had the educational credentials to move onto another field (and then another field). I’m glad I did the IT thing in my 20’s, and still like to tinker with homelab stuff 20 years later, but in the end it was a stepping stone towards something else (that does require formal schooling). The degree is a tool that can be used to control on a few more things in your life, in the hopes that you can go where you want to end up.
On my team of sysadmins, the best ones never had any formal education haha.The guys that are wizard tier Unix admins only have high school
On the flip side, I’m a former sysadmin and I only stick around for 5 years because I had the educational credentials to move onto another field (and then another field). I’m glad I did the IT thing in my 20’s, and still like to tinker with homelab stuff 20 years later, but in the end it was a stepping stone towards something else (that does require formal schooling). The degree is a tool that can be used to control on a few more things in your life, in the hopes that you can go where you want to end up.