As a hiring manager in the IT field I can say you're in a tough place.
Frankly schools or a lot of certs don't mean much to me, attitude and experience count. But you're faced with that catch-22 where you may not have the experience but can't get someone to hire you to get that experience. Tough place at times.
My company I poach bright help desk guys and grow them. Sometimes helps to start off below where you think you should be based on education and just get your foot in the door. If you're smart you'll rise to the top, haven't ever seen that fail. IT people are a dime a dozen, *GOOD* IT people are hard to find.
But I'll also say to those people here that say you'll not have more than a service job without a degree, that's BS. You just have to find what you love and be good at it. Sometimes happiness isn't all about the $ either.
True.
I have been a computer guy in silicon valley area and it's all about
if you are good or not, not always a degree but degrees never hurt.
But besides being good, you have to be consistent since many of the best burn out very quickly.
Also you have to be in the right place. I like being within an hour of San Jose but if you are talented but an hour east of Sacramento, then the odds of landing a job as an IT person or programmer is greatly reduced.
Lastly, there is luck. If you are good, and consistent, and in the right place, then hope your specialty in IT or computer science is hot. It's better to have some more commonly needed skills (Cisco, Microsoft) over being the best J++ person or the best expert in only Novell. I knew of people dedicated to just J++ or Novell and it wasn't pretty. However, the self-taught Windows guy always had work, even without degree or certifications and memorizing menus was better than programming in a language nobody wanted.
That being said, there are also hidden barriers which are very real, too. Unfortunately, if you are a woman it's still an uphill battle and key IT and CS positions still seemed to be staffed by men, even if the best people may be women. Nerds are the most sexist out there and may not even think of themselves on those terms. It's just girls never played D&D, hung out in comic book stores, nor did they pay attention to the lonely computer geek guy in the cafeteria at high school
And there's an unfortunate regional preference and the high tech field is fiercely proud to be Northern Californian and many a mediocre norcal person in high tech is hired over somebody better from another area. If you are from the east coast, China, or India, then you have to be beyond world class to get a job over a slightly good norcal "boy". I also have an HR degree and some law school and it burns me up but the small mindedness of this area, San Jose who only recently have become recognized as a city of any worth, is still playing favorites and will for decades to come. Do you remember the orchards before the high tech buildings? If not, you are dead to many an HR manager. Did you get into computers because it was a good field that pays or were you tinkering with high tech as a kid and never went outside? If it's the latter, you make it to stage two in the interview at Google, Apple, Microsoft silicon valley campus, Oracle, etc.
Also if you went into high tech because it's a good college major, you are dead to the hiring manager. Remember this field here was largely built by college dropouts Ellison, Fanning, Zuckerberg, Gates, Allen, Dell, Jobs, and (then) Wozniak. You are either born high tech and can never learn to be it from a piece of paper. Just be a geek, be male, and preferably be born here or start your high tech aspirations here before you grow pubic hair. If you are already 18 and an adult and decide on high tech, get out because it's too late like Ellison might say. We all saw movies depicting Steve Jobs and his tirades. That folks is mild for silicon valley. Everything here is done differently and Apple is only the tip of the iceberg. This region is an alternate universe and learn its ways, however stupid and counter-intuitive they are, and don't try and change them right this second.
I won't consider us on a level of a Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, New York until we drop the home boy favoritism. Too much before dot.com, we were just a computer city that was specialized in just one industry but now with money coming in from all over, it's time we buck up and get international.
