Do you need a degree to work in IT? Serious question

Sure. When I was in high school, I tried my hardest to make connections and certifications. I got 3D printing and laser cutting certifications, and through my teacher I landed an internship with a Github employee. From there, I started working random jobs to show I had a diverse skill set. However you need to be careful with that because it can look like you're unable to keep a stable job. So when I went to college I worked at 4 different places: 1 greenhouse, 2 restaurants, and an investment banking firm (paid internship with IT).

If you want to learn how to write your resume in LaTeX, go to YouTube and look up "luke smith latex resume" and watch it (there's two parts but the first is the most important). Rather than just copy what he does, learn what each and every thing does, and tweak it to your liking. Always include your schooling, technical skills, and certifications.

More on certifications: try to get anything CompTia that's Linux-related. My school offered a program to get certs for free but I got the aforementioned ones instead. Good to put on a resume but did nothing for me skill-wise.

For 'IT' as in Help desk, sysadmin, network, cloud, etc. Degree is very poor value for your time and money, certifications are the best.

For development, engineering, any sort of management, a degree is extremely helpful but still not strictly required.

Depends really. You can't deny degrees are still a thing. Someone gets away by laying.
Also
>imagine not liking to wait another 3+ years before you become a wagie and a productive member of society(TM).

If you're young, no. If you're above 25 or so, it depends on the job, expect low paying jobs unless you have a degree or you're good at it.
Some companies are forced to only contract people with degrees even if they're idiots, or they simply don't because it saves them paperwork later.

I got a job as a developer and I have no degree, but my pay is way less than the ones with it. So, I'll just save money and start my own business.

no, you do if you want to make money though

It took me 18-22 making 32k before I took my first 100k role and all I had was a GED. Much better now and we are so oversaturated with infants with degrees if you are not a kid with a shithead entitled attitude we would happily hire you with no degree. Just pretend to be woke please I hate letting people go because they think they can be honest

If I get my certs and start working full-time, would it be worth the long career prospect to do school part time to just get a associates/2-year degree?
Lots of job postings want the degree and certs and experience, etc.

I'm a hiring manager and recruiters copy and paste that shit. I've never even actually checked one time if my candidates have degrees or not. I'm supposed to have a 4 year Comp Sci degree and I have a GED.

/thread