How did you get into the job you are in now without the degree. If you had to list the jobs you have had in chronological order what would it look like?
Pharmacy Technician part time last 2 years of high school, and the 2 years I had attended the university.)
Sr Pharmacy Technician ... about 1 year
when my boss heard I dropped out he gave me full time and a senior position which came with a small annual bonus and a small hourly wage increase)
I got a job in the "Help Center" for the same company. (worked call center supporting retail locations... initially it was closer to 3000, current year, there's closer to 9000.)
I got an internal promotion to "rx support" after about 2 years. Essentially, I was not "second tier" but instead was one of the subject matter experts of the 1st tier. Doing training/coaching, doing more complicated troubleshooting procedures (non scripted), and writing documentation, and working more with 2nd level and 3rd level application team.
A couple of years later, I got a job in the 2nd tier for pharmacy support. Essentially supporting the unix servers in all the many retail locations. I worked there for about a year, writing a lot of ksh scripts, doing root cause analysis for various server and tuxedo problems, and supporting the help desk folks.
I got a job doing Batch Administration. This is when my title first changed to Systems Analyst. I was working on diagnosing and fixing problems with ESP batch jobs running on Unix servers. I worked in this position for a couple of years.
There was an opening for application developer and one of the developers who I'd worked with a great deal in the past told me about it and suggested that I apply. I applied, went through 2 interviews, and landed the job. I worked as a developer for a few years, essentially, I was the subject matter expert at pretty much all the tuxedo batch, and I also developed a little bit in Ab Initio after a 3 day class.
After a couple of years there, I was moved over to prod support, this time at the application level. Diagnosing root causes, solving problems that the 2L teams can't resolve, and helping developers with their designs or with code changes. I spend about 1/3 to 1/4 of the day answering questions and helping folks either on my team, or on the build teams. Then I spend about 1/3 to 1/4 of my time working on project work or in meetings related to projects ... Whatever time is left, I actually spend fixing/solving problems, or working on emergency little applications...
I am a little bit of a geek, and taught myself to use and maintain linux and openBSD at home. I also ran a postgresql database and taught myself sql and php back then. I took AP comp sci in High school and learned a lot about programming, took several programming classes in college too but they were pretty useless as they pretty much just covered syntax and none of the real fundamentals, but thankfully I learned a LOT in my AP high school class. I also studied quite a bit of math (in high school took AP calculus too ... as well as physics), in college, I continued with Calculus 2, and Calculus 3, then went to take Linear Algebra and also took a 300 level stat class...
So, while I did not gratuate with a degree, I had a decent Math and Programming foundation from which to build.... I just learn on my own MUCH faster and easier vs going to a classroom....
