I'm finishing up my Bachelor's in Computer Science. Information/skills wise College is a joke. You can get a much better education online. The courses I sent make my college professors look like amateurs. Add to that the massive amount of heartache/headache of having to take general courses that have nothing to do with your field, it's a much more productive part of one's time to learn online. I will be/have been learning those courses myself otherwise I won't be remotely competent in the field.
It is trickier getting into the market without a degree. The sacred tradition of getting that (skills-wise) worthless piece of parchment refuses to die. The degree is the gatekeeper, it will get you the interview, but you won't pass the interview without the skills which college in all of its four years and 1000s of dollars can't seem to provide somehow. You have to get that on your own. It's trickier but I do not think impossible by any means. You would have to build your skills really well and then find a way to showcase that to employers. Again, not impossible. Think of it this way. If you were to take a certain career path seriously, you could treat the next four years as if you are going to college. In other words, study with the same level of intensity. It would be near impossible to not get skilled and land a job by then. Even if you went on a crazy job searching rampage with nothing to show for it for a year, you would still land something eventually inshaAllah.
For my certain set of circumstances, I need that piece of paper. I don't know your circumstances Bro, but if you're into IT and can put the hard effort, you can make a plan and do very well inshaAllah. My best advice to give is that when considering any career path whatsoever, make istikharah and you will do well for sure bithnillah.
I got some programming languages under my belt and I'm seriously considering IT security. It's quite a broad field, but very interesting. I checked out some of the Penetration Testing courses and the information is crazy. Basically, firewalls and anti-viruses in many instances are more like scarecrows. You have to configure them just right for them to be effective and even then there are issues. There's also SOC's analyst which is more the defensive side (blue team) of security.
I forgot to mention that if one wanted to break into that field then there are pretty much two entry-level paths from what I can see: Systems Administrator and Networking. With Systems Admin, you basically learn the ins and outs of the computer system itself. So Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. For Networking it is more about all the ways that computers connect to each other. One would have to have experience in one of those two fields for about two years before moving on to bigger and better things. You might be able to start off with a IT support call center job or something and work your way from there. wa Allah 'Alim
Anyway, may Allah Grant you and I success in this life and especially in the Hereafter. Ameen.
