Absolutely not. The closest thing I have to a degree is a few credits towards my Community College of the Air Force degree (an Associate's).
Being involved in the open source community and being a wealth of knowledge surrounding your field is more than enough.
My interview went smooth as possible as I simply talked about my past and present projects, throwing in terms like "SVN," "jQuery," and "semantics." I'm not saying sprinkle your keywords around but why wait for the interviewer to ask the question - tell him right off the bat and just let him check that item off.
For me: 6 years USAF experience in System Administration, wonderful letters of recommendation from my Commander and Vice Commander (a 3-star and a 1-star), leadership positions within open source communities in my field, and an apparent knowledge of not only my specialty (PHP) but the surrounding technologies (web servers, version control, database management, Python, Ruby, etc.) landed me a Senior Developer position with the largest contractor in US Defense.
My family and I live a much happier life, I am less stressed, don't have to worry about deployments and our take-home income is three times what it was two months ago.
How many people from the services do you know who have gone on to well paying non-Defense jobs? I get the impression that the enlisted route you describe is very often a lifelong commitment to the defense industry.
In case you didn't know, working for a large defense contractor is very different from most of the "real world."
Count me as one from the 'services' that has gone on to well paying non-defense job(s). But you are correct in that it doesn't happen often. At least not without getting a degree somewhere along the line.
Of course it's different than the real world - it's government. I'm sure we've all heard the phrase "it's good enough for government work." Sad, yet true.
Nonetheless, a lifelong commitment to the defense industry doesn't seem like a bad deal to me. Great pay, great hours, and no matter how bad the economy sinks - my job isn't going anywhere.
Being involved in the open source community and being a wealth of knowledge surrounding your field is more than enough.
My interview went smooth as possible as I simply talked about my past and present projects, throwing in terms like "SVN," "jQuery," and "semantics." I'm not saying sprinkle your keywords around but why wait for the interviewer to ask the question - tell him right off the bat and just let him check that item off.
For me: 6 years USAF experience in System Administration, wonderful letters of recommendation from my Commander and Vice Commander (a 3-star and a 1-star), leadership positions within open source communities in my field, and an apparent knowledge of not only my specialty (PHP) but the surrounding technologies (web servers, version control, database management, Python, Ruby, etc.) landed me a Senior Developer position with the largest contractor in US Defense.
My family and I live a much happier life, I am less stressed, don't have to worry about deployments and our take-home income is three times what it was two months ago.