Ask Ryan and Hannah: Vocational Creativity™ for Finding the Perfect Tech Career Path (DF#176)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Going after the tech certifications willy nilly, just without realizing whether or not you need it or not, and you're just going for it. It is the same thing as going to get your degree when you don't know why you're there to get your degree. Aloha folks, and welcome back to degree free. We have a mailbag where you can get your question answered as well at ask.degreefree.co. You can leave us your question there and get your question answered. Today, we are gonna go over a really good one. This one is from Crystal, and let's get into the question.

Crystal [00:00:34]:
Hi. My name is Crystal, and I have a 17 year old son who's gonna be a senior this year, and he's incredibly interested in computer technology, IT tech. We're just not really sure what to do about that. I work in the medical field, so I have no experience in any of that. Dad's in finance, so we both have degrees that we paid dearly for and would love to have another idea about options for him as far as, like, a computer trade. He does have the opportunity to have a completely paid for associate's degree in, like, computer engineering through a local community college scholarship program. That particular college is actually awarded the number one college tied for 1st this past year in the nation. So it is a very good community college.

Crystal [00:01:16]:
So the program is legit, and it is offered for free to him as long as he doesn't mess up with grades or truancy or anything. So just looking for some advice if there's any career paths that we haven't thought of or goals, trade schools specific that would be better for him.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:32]:
Crystal, thank you so much for the question. Now I think the best way to do this is to break this up into 2 questions. The first question is what are the tech careers out there or what are the computer trades careers out there? We're going to take that by itself. And this is a vocational creativity exercise. And for those that don't know, it's exactly as it sounds being creative about different vocations that are out there. Because one of the problems here is that if you don't know these jobs, you don't have enough vocational creativity. This is both crystal and her husband and the 17 year old son as well. And we are going to help come up with some job ideas here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:11]:
The second is we're gonna talk about the community college aspect of it. We're gonna get to an answer or at least what we think is a good idea with a very limited knowledge that we have. But before we get there, I did wanna back all the way up to the station because we kind of went a little bit down the tracks. And for those long time listeners, we're going to spend a little bit of time here pulling the train back and putting this thing in reverse to take us all the way back to the station. Because once you're deciding industry and the different types of work and the different career paths that industry has, we have really narrowed down a whole bunch and we've gotten rid of a whole bunch of opportunities for our young adults. This is going to be repeat for a lot of these listeners, but I know that we have a lot of new listeners and it is very helpful. At least I know for me, it's always helpful to be reminded of these things, especially when going through something as important and as huge as what is your child going to do for the rest of their life? I would love it, Hannah, if you can kind of take that away.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:04]:
Crystal, thank you so much for this question. And it's a really good question. It's very common for us to get parents who have 2 degrees. They took papered pads, and now they're trying to navigate a more open minded and comprehensive approach, which is trying to figure out what paths are going to work for their child so that they don't accidentally trap them into student loan debt for no reason or waste their time. I really have seen a big change in the mentality of a lot of parents about trying to more find holistically what is going to work for their child. One thing that I will say though, is that the question itself is too far down the tracks, and I'm about to explain why. So my advice, Crystal, is going to be roll this all the way back to 0.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:47]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:17]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you and back to the show.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:21]:
So you're into computer trades. You're into tech, but what I would really suggest is that you back all the way up to the station. The train has left the station. We need to back it up, put it in reverse. Whenever we start with a specific job or industry or type of work, the result that you get when you base someone's entire life path and especially the education that they are going to embark on based on type of work or trade, things do not usually go well. When you base all of your choices about your education and about the skills you will learn on a specific job or industry when you are that young, typically what will happen is you will be forced to mold your life around the type of work that you will have to get as a result of the choice that you made. It is different when you think about what type of life you want first, and then go from there to determine what jobs and work fit that. And then what educational products are going to work to get you to the skills you need to get those jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:18]:
It's a completely opposite 180 approach from how we do things now in our country. And that is quite literally the degree free way of how to help your 16 20 year old build a life that they want. There's a very simple exercise to do that while not easy is extremely worthwhile. Sit down with your son and have him figure out what type of work environment he would like to be in. And by that, I mean, is he going from site to site, traveling to different jobs? Is he going into an office? Is he working from home? Is he working remotely, which doesn't necessarily mean from home, but he could travel those types of things and then schedule. If He could work when he wants to work. When would he work? Morning shifts, evening shifts, 4 days a week, that type of thing. Now, income is another big one.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:00]:
Ryan and I often will say it's the biggest one because everything else is downstream from that. Usually like the work environment you're in and then the location that you're in and the schedule you can have later. But income is a huge one. And then location, which is where you live and do your day to day work. And the real thing that you need to do with him is sit down and have him place these things in order of priority to him. So have him figure out and think about how much money he needs to make to live the way that he wants to live. Have him figure out where he wants to live and do work. Does he want to move to another town? Do you guys have friends or family somewhere? Or did you move from somewhere and he wants to go back? Is there just some place he's always dreamed of moving? Or does he want to stay in your hometown? If your hometown is expensive, his expenses will also be fairly large.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:38]:
And so he'll have to earn a certain amount of income if he wants to stay and build a life where you all live. What sort of work environment does he want to be in day in, day out? And then if he can work when he wants to and be able to have a lot of his life to himself because his schedule works for him, when would that be? And have him prioritize those things in order of how important they are to him. Once you have that four stack, you can figure out which jobs fit his priorities. Because now that you know, we're optimizing for jobs that make $65,000 a year, that make $80,000 a year, or we're opting for jobs that are in Hesperia, California, or optimizing for jobs that are in Boise, Idaho, or we're optimizing for jobs in Vermont. Well, his biggest priority is actually having a 4 day work week because he wants to start a business on the side. Now we're looking for jobs that allow for 4 day work week. Now we've covered the basic things. You are looking for jobs that fit his priorities, not looking for jobs and then trying to fit his priorities and squeeze them into whatever jobs.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:31]:
So for me, the biggest thing here, and we do it in the degree free way, is what Hannah's saying is priorities and priorities do matter. But the easiest way to do it is to just do it into 2 buckets and it's needs versus wants. The needs are absolute things that must be necessary for him to pursue that type of work. And what we say is the less needs, the better. If it's $50,000 a year, there are a lot of jobs out there that pay $50,000 a year. But then if you add another one on there, another essential must have for work, another need that says, okay, well, I only want a 4 day work week. Well, now we have to find a job that does 4 day work week or at least a career path that has a 4 day work week and the potential for a $50,000 a year. And then now let's add one more.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:17]:
Now it's I need to do a $50,000 a year job, 4 day work week and a job where I don't talk to anybody. And now when looking at our career paths and looking at what the jobs out there, and those are 3 large hoops that the job must go through and that whatever career path that is must jump through before you're able to consider it. Priorities are good, but the easiest way to do it is the way that we have it laid out in the degree free way, which is why we laid it out that way. It's needs and wants. And then once you have all the needs done, let's just say it's $50,000 a year just to make it easy. Now you can put an infinite amount of things in the wants column, everything under the sun, really. That's totally fine. And those ones you can prioritize if you want.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:55]:
In the book, we don't prioritize it because we've seen that there is a lot of back and forth and it takes a lot to prioritize your wants. But if he feels that he needs to prioritize what his biggest want is, especially if it's as broad as $50,000 a year. So if the need is as broad as $50,000 a year, the wants and prioritizing those wants are going to be very to help filter out a bunch of other different jobs. So what I mean by that is $50,000 a year. You can almost do any career path in this country to get to that number. The wants are going to be really, really helpful to help filter it out. Maybe the number one want is work environment. I want to be outside.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:34]:
Well, that eliminates a lot of inside jobs. So it eliminates all inside jobs. And then you add another one underneath that that says, I want to work with animals perfect outside in animals. Now we've eliminated a whole bunch of other jobs that isn't working with animals where the prioritization really comes in is when you're looking at your wants list. The needs are absolutely binary. It either is or is not whatever that need is, Whether it's a schedule, income, location, work environment, industry. And we say at the industry, we are in the danger zone when we get into industry and we put a need there because we end up, honestly, with questions like this, which they wanna work in computer tech. That is the need.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:19]:
Well, now we are completely locked in to all of the income work environment schedule, the location of that industry, whatever that industry is. Really the best thing that we can do is back all the way up and look at their entire needs. Get those. We don't have to prioritize those at all because they must fit. All of those things must be binary. And then we prioritize the ones. If it helps us narrow it down even more, let's say there's 6 wants. And we say in the book, 1 to 3 needs is plenty.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:48]:
We really shouldn't have more than 1 to 3 needs, especially at such a young age. It makes it really difficult to find work opportunities and to find jobs that fit those things. But if they do have 6 needs on there, then you don't really need to prioritize the wants because it's going to be really hard to find a job that has all 6 of those needs and fits all 6 of those needs. But if you find that you have 30, 50, 60 job opportunities, career path that fit all of those 6 needs, then prioritizing the wants is helpful.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:19]:
Yeah. The problem with saying a computer trade is that it really limits him by the smallest filter first before everything else. So if you think about it like a funnel, like you were saying, when you have computer trade at the top, and then even further upstream from that, you now have specifically this college and this degree, you disregard everything else underneath it. Your needs and wants don't come into play at all. It's just, this thing is here and I'm choosing this type of work really young. And it's not that it's the wrong work necessarily, but if you choose that way, there's a couple of problems with it. So maybe there aren't tech jobs in your area. Maybe there aren't remote companies.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:55]:
If he wants to work remotely, maybe being with people is important to him early on in his career. And maybe there aren't in person opportunities where you live, maybe staying in your hometown as a priority to him. And that would keep him from doing these things like taking this specific course would mean he can't stay in your hometown because there's no work. And he wants to work in an office with other people. That's one of his needs. So free degrees are better than debt degrees, but that doesn't necessarily mean that community college is the right next step for him, even if it's free. Now we're about to get into how to research different tech careers, but you have to know how much he wants to make, what sort of work environment he wants to be in, what sort of schedule he prefers, and then where he wants to live. Because the type of jobs that you are going to look for will be dependent on those things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:39]:
Now once you satisfy those needs and those wants, you're in exploration mode. You are not in, let's pick a computer trade at this specific college and send him to this specific program because you're not sure yet that that's the right move. It might be, but you have to think through it first. Should he go to community college? I don't know because you need to make sure that if he gets that community college degree, it has a direct application to a job that will fit his needs. That way his life is not going to be forced to form around and squeeze into whatever little box this degree gets him. What it's going to do instead is make sure that the degree is a check on a list that he actually needs to get in order to get a job that fits his needs.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:17]:
Because we're already here at the community college question. I wanted to just go ahead and answer it fully. The community college question is a difficult one because it's free as long as he keeps his grades up and everything like that. But is it really free? So free in money. Sure. Free in time and effort. Definitely not. If it's free while he's still in high school and he can do it concurrently while he's in high school and it fits whatever makes sense for him, I would even say, even if it doesn't fit exactly congruently to all of his goals and he's going to be in high school anyway, as long as you're not going to go and buy a college degree afterwards, because he tried to get that associate's degree because he tried to get that training in there, then I don't see the problem in doing it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:05]:
Just know that those types of classes are a gateway drug to buying more and getting you to go through with the purchase of actually getting that associate's degree or actually getting that certificate. If he's curious about those things, increasing the breadth while still in high school, especially while still in that cocoon, in that he's gotta do it anyway. He might as well take classes that he is interested in and that he wants to do, and it's free. And it's at the community college. That makes a lot of sense. I'm totally in there. I'm just very wary of doing that because your propensity to continue to buying afterwards, regardless of whether or not he needs it for his future career path is super, super high because he's already put in the time and effort to do it. But since he's already in high school, putting in the time and effort and must put in that time and effort, then he might as well put it towards something that makes sense for him, or at least that he wants to learn that he's interested in.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:56]:
And now where I would say would take a lot more thinking and a lot more going through these steps that we talked about is if we're talking about going to community college after he graduates high school, if he goes after he graduates high school, regardless of it's free, it's not free because he has to spend time and energy going to those classes things when maybe he doesn't have to be there in the first place. Maybe there's a more efficient method to getting him to his goals. That is really where the heavy lifting begins because you're going to say this program is free in money. So So I don't see why we wouldn't have him go here, but what he's paying for is his time and energy where he's in community college in this program where he's probably not working in his field that he wants to go into. And on the flip side, it would be, we forego the quote free thing and he pays with his time and effort into an actual job that gets him the skills that he needs to get his next job and into the skills that he needs to get his next job after that. So on and so forth build the foundational skills for the things that he actually wants to do for the life that he wants to build. Then that makes a lot of sense because he gets actually gets paid to do those things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:03]:
Another option here is something that is paid. So a paid specific types of schooling or bootcamp that is higher quality because it suits the skills that he actually needs. Cause a free one to 2 year community college program is a giant waste of time. Even if it's highly rated, if it's not the right thing that he needs to actually get work that fits his life goals.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:21]:
That is a long winded way of saying it really just depends, but just be wary just because it's free. Doesn't mean it's free. And just because it's free, doesn't mean that he should go. Still think about it. It's still 2 years or it's still 1 year or it's still 6 months or it's still 2 weeks. However, long this program is of some of the freest, most important time of their life to go and take bigger risks, to learn the skills and lay the foundation for the rest of their lives. And so just think for a second about that. So that answer our second question, which turned into our first question, which is the community college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:55]:
And then now let's talk about the vocational creativity question.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:58]:
So this is where if you go through this process and you find that the computer hardware tech field is for him, it does fit his needs. Now, what you can do is go do the hard part. This is going to take hours just to level set. We know that because this is what we do in the launch program. It takes a very long time and you're going to have to research. And the way that you can think about this is always imagine that you can go further up and further in and around different jobs. So we're gonna call those job families just so you can picture this. Make sure that you're not just leaning on the BLS or college resources.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:34]:
College resources or community college resources often have really limited options as far as careers go because they have to constrain what they offer to things that are available for federal funding. And so they are plugged into the BLS, which is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of that, a lot of new and emerging technology, it takes one, a long time to get down to the college curriculum level. And then 2, oftentimes they might not even have that as an option because they just haven't developed it or it's not formally in the BLS. For especially a lot of hardware and engineering and computer engineering jobs or new and emerging fields. That is extremely common because one community college might not have the type of tech that they need to teach young adults those things, especially if it's hardware. And then not only that, but oftentimes it's just a fairly complicated new types of technology. And so they don't even have it listed as a job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:25]:
So if you were to look into in demand technology and in demand computer hardware tech trade jobs, you won't even find the jobs that come up because they haven't even made it into the BLS yet. And because they haven't made it into the BLS, they also haven't made it down to the community college level either.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:39]:
The way that I wanted to handle answering this question for me, when I thought about this is thinking about computer tech. I'm thinking that that means working with hardware, being a network tech, being a network administrator, IT support, that type of thing. But because Crystal, you said that both you and your husband work in the medical field and work in finance, you might not know all the jobs that are out here. I went ahead and I thought about some hardware and then some software, because maybe we're just thinking about, instead of like computer tech, in my mind, because maybe we're just thinking about instead of like computer tech in my mind that goes to hardware. But if you weren't thinking that we can cover some software side as well. For computer tech hardware side, like I said, there's network technicians and administrators, and this is just vocational creativity for everybody thinking about the different types of jobs that are out there. Once again, I have no idea if this is gonna work for your 17 year old son. I have no idea if these are gonna fit any of his needs, if this is gonna be anything of what he wants.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:35]:
But if you want some ideas of where to start looking once you figure out the needs and once you figure out the wants, here are some names of jobs and typically what they do. This can be a good starting point for you. So network technician administrator usually working with physical network infrastructure, setting up routers, servers, those types of things. One of the things before I get to the second one in the hardware side, for the most part, IT support is kind of a hardware software mixture. But if you're especially working with hardware, most of the jobs are on location. They can be remote for majority of it, but there is a physical location somewhere that you are attached to and that physical location. Like I have met these people, it might be literally on the other side of the world. When you get to a certain level, obviously you have to be very, very high up in the company, but you might have in charge of certain areas that are literally like in Europe and you live in the United States.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:31]:
So it's remote most of the time, or at least you're at another hardware facility somewhere else, but you're still responsible for the ones in Europe. And if something hits the fan, you gotta go. If you're looking for, like, fully remote work, hardware is not the best place to get into it. Although, eventually, when you get up there, a lot of times, higher and higher you go, they're a lot more lenient with where you can live. You just have to travel a lot more. One of the things that I did want to say about this, sorry, I didn't have this on my list or anything like that. I was just thinking about the top of my head. I was having dinner with a few guys that were in this space and specifically they set up very specialized data centers and they're all hardware guys procurement.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:08]:
They all work in big companies. One of the things that was interesting to me, and I was talking to them, they found out about what I did. They were interested, I suppose. And I asked them, what are they doing as far as for the entry level roles? Where are they spending a lot of their recruitment effort? Where do you think they're spending a lot of their recruitment effort? High schools. That's exactly right. It was immediate. There was 3 tiers of people. It was the lowest guy and then the middle guy and then the highest guy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:35]:
And then I was talking to the highest guy. I was talking to him about the recruitment effort and where he sees things, and he's worked for companies that we would all know. And he said the best place that we're finding our entry level talent for these hardware technician roles is in high schools.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:52]:
And they're training them up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:53]:
And when they're good, the path to keep going, it totally breaks down for them. There are no walls. If you want to keep going, you can just come in, get your shot, do a good job, show that you're willing to learn. I wasn't surprised by that, but I did ask, I said, so why not colleges? And he said, well, colleges,

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:13]:
they want more money and they want to do less work.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:15]:
Right? Exactly. Somebody said, well, they're trying to pay you less.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:18]:
That's the market value of the wage. It was the same before these kids went into college and when they went out, it's really, they just want to pay them what they're paying them right now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:24]:
We're talking about 18 year old versus a 22 year old. And this 22 year old has all these expectations because they put in all this quote, hard work. Those are super massive air quotes there. They did all this hard work, right. That didn't matter because it wasn't experienced in the job that they were trying to do. It wasn't experienced in the field that they're trying to get into and they expect the world, but they can't give the world because they can't give anything because they don't have any experience.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:46]:
They worked at the grocery store and they're like, oh, wow, I have a cool new job learning something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:50]:
Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:51]:
They're excited to be there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:52]:
And then when they show promise, they really pour everything into them and they just move up. So what this director was saying was that the best people to continually move up are a lot of the degree free people.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:04]:
I was actually going to bring up the data centers because a while back, AWS had a massive push here and they removed a ton of degree requirements from their jobs. And one of the large areas where they did that was the the data centers because they have training programs. So they'll train you to do that. That's one of those things that you wouldn't know. That's not going to be in a community college. They're not going to have that. They don't even really know that's there. They may know about it, but that's just not there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:26]:
Like, that's a good example of something too big for them to replicate to train. They just can't. A company can, because they actually have the infrastructure to train. But not only that, another area that maybe you wouldn't think of as computer tech, but is another extremely big growing industry is the security and automation. They're usually attached to locksmiths or local security and alarm and fire alarm companies sometimes. And this could be for commercial and residential, and they do the PLC, which is the programmable logic controllers, which do home automations. Think of the things in, gated communities, where if you have an apartment complex, if you have a friend that has an apartment complex, you have to key into, and you have little fobs or whatever. That's a good example of a programmable logic controller that will tag is one of those things, but you can use it for lots of different things like opening and closing doors and temperature control.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:08]:
And then that leads into internet of things, which is another computer hardware, but also software programming job. But again, they're not teaching that in schools, but that's all your wifi connected stuff. That's thermostat, that's security, that's water heaters. Now, sometimes your fridge, your Roomba, all these different smart devices that are in your house. Now that's another area where you're going to miss that at community college, but massive industry, extreme demand. And a lot of times those hire and train on the job, entry level techs, same thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:35]:
It's growing in the residential space for sure. But there's also a growing and big market in the commercial space as well.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:44]:
Companies in manufacturing and delivery supply chain. There's just so much there. And this is where thinking about just going, oh, there's this good program at this local community college for computer trade tech is gonna maybe eliminate options that would have been a better fit for the things that he wants and the life goals he has, or possibly also even more just interesting to him.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:02]:
So this is a exercise that I created. It's called vocational creativity. It's in the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. You don't have to buy the book to do it. You can, if you want to degreefree.coforward/book, but you can just sit down with a piece of paper and with your son, Crystal, think about all of the computer tech jobs that he can name. And if he can't name any of them, or if he doesn't know where to start, you can start with a product or service. And then what are the jobs that make that product or service possible? For a computer tech thing? Let's talk about hardware for a second. Something that you can do that's really easy or really simple rather is the wifi router.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:38]:
So what are the jobs that are necessary to make that thing come to life? And you just go through, okay, well, there's the purchaser for the CAD software to make this thing. There's the manufacturers and the people on the line that are in the manufacturing plant actually making these things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:55]:
Prototype fabricators, CNC machinists, CNC programmers, and their supply chain and logistics. And then there's the fiber optic installation folks too at the cable company.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:06]:
Exactly. It is endless. You all know, finding a bunch of the same types of jobs. It will go on and on and on and on.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:12]:
It's a muscle though to stretch, especially when they're so young. Because if you can teach your kids this at this age, they will always be able to find work that fit their needs. Imagine your child never feeling like they're trapped in their job. If you teach them how to think about work like this, they will never feel that feeling. They will always go, oh, well, let me just think about the factors I need. I'm going to rearrange them in order of priority to me. And then I'm going to go think about jobs I could get. And then when they get more experience and they have more skills, now they can rearrange their skills too, and just say, oh, what am I missing? And then they can add one skill and then they go and then they're off.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:44]:
It can change their entire life when they master this concept.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:47]:
That is an exercise, vocational creativity, definitely suggest it, but to get on with more vocational creativity of different hardware things, there's simple things like computer repair technicians. That is definitely a job and might not be exactly what he's looking for, but it could also be a stepping stone to just getting his feet wet within the tech industry. And I know personally, he actually came on the podcast, Gene Torres, that didn't listen to his episode. If you think about sales engineers, want to hear his journey of how he went from a computer repair technician to a sales engineer today, you can listen to his episode. I'd link to it at degreefree.c04/podcast. Those are a good stepping stone as well. Now looking at software focused careers, there's obviously software developers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:30]:
And there's so many flavors of software developers. It's crazy. Every time I think we know all of them, then somebody says, oh, I'm a such and such dev. And I'm like, what is that?

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:39]:
Yeah. And so it's too much to get into this podcast, but basically there's front end devs, there's back end devs, and then there are a bunch of different programming languages that he could learn if he wanted to go the software developer route. So obviously there's the software developer route, and then there's depends on what type of software he wants to build. Does he want to build consumer facing software? Something where you or I would use like a fitness app. Is he trying to do something like that? Or does he want to build databases or is he

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:11]:
cloud engineering?

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:12]:
Exactly. Is he trying to build something that other software is built on top of what does he want to be an AI? And does he want to be in front facing AI consumer facing AI or business facing AI

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:23]:
exhausting

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:24]:
and endless, but let's just leave it there. That software developer is definitely a job and it's definitely a role and especially it's a role that's degree free. All of these roles are degree free.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:33]:
How do we know all tech roles are degree free because the people who build these companies are degree free themselves. For those of you going, oh, that can't be, there's no way that's true. The easiest gauge for this is to just look at who built the company, Sam Altman, OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg, Metta, all of the people at the top of the technological advancements in our society, the things that we use and touch every single day, almost all of them are degree free. And so you can just look at that and see who's building and then take heart and say, oh, wait, you can learn these things. And they did not buy college degrees, learn them or to build anything. And so your kids don't have to ask permission either.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:05]:
But not only that, you can just use the legal requirement breakdown in the degree free way that just says, is there a legal requirement for degree? No. But even simpler than that, you can go to the legal requirement breakdown. And if you don't, it'd be the, well, those people aren't my son, those people aren't me, which is exactly what I would say. And I'd be like, I'm not that person. So that doesn't pertain to me. I need a degree because everybody else needs a degree. Okay. The sure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:30]:
But then you can just go to the legal requirement breakdown here in the degree free way. Just 2 questions. Does this job legally require a license? Yes or no? No, it doesn't. Okay. Nothing in software legally requires a license unless you're doing like government contract work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:44]:
Really what they're looking for is specific licensure, like CISSP or whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:47]:
That's what I'm saying. They need it for their contract. And that's basically the exemption to this is if you're working with the government at all, certain licenses and certain degrees are required. But if you're not gonna work with the government and you're just gonna work in the private sector, it's totally fine. If it's yes to does that job legally require a license, which not many jobs do, does the license legally require a degree, which in tech it never does pretty much. That is the way to tell. The next job on the vocational creativity list is cyber security analyst. You work to protect systems from threats.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:17]:
The way I describe this, when we talk about this in the launch program, is I say a cyber security analyst is a defensive cyber cybersecurity to oversimplify this. And cybersecurity analysts are defensive cybersecurity. Their job is to monitor and report and minimize risk. Whereas there's another side of this, which is certified ethical hackers and and then penetration testers, which are sometimes the same thing. But a CEH is an actual certification that you can get. Those are defensive cybersecurity people. So imagine bank robbers who are hired by a company to see if they can break into their bank. But instead of a bank, they're breaking into their computer systems, to their network systems, to their software, and just seeing if they can break things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:57]:
That's their job. And then they report on it so that they can close-up those weak spots.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:01]:
And then the last one that I wanna talk about is a cloud support specialist, and that's providing support for cloud based solutions.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:08]:
And cloud software is basically just large places where companies can store very small pieces and large amounts of very small pieces of data. We explain this a lot to people who don't know what it is. It's just

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:18]:
a very funny term for

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:20]:
what it is

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:20]:
because it's totally physical.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:22]:
It's not a cloud at all. All those data centers we're talking about are the cloud. Cloud are giant warehouses full of servers. Exactly. Which are very much not cloud like

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:30]:
at all. Those guys that I was talking to at dinner a few months ago, those guys are building the cloud. Do you

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:34]:
think that they workshop that? And maybe they're like, we can't just say the mountain.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:37]:
That cloud is a very physical place, a few miles away from where we are. They have a cloud in X, Y, and Z in Europe and then another cloud in the middle east. And it's just like, it's not the cloud. I think it was IBM.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:50]:
They try and vaults. I think they decided it was cloud.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:52]:
I think it was their, their coining of that term or something.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:54]:
That's funny. Cause I feel like they're not even one of the big player in the space. Right. It's AWS, Google, and Microsoft.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:59]:
I didn't fact check that guys. That's off the top of my dome. So please in the comments, please fact check me, Spotify, YouTube. But yeah, the cloud, I will say it's a very good marketing tactic because it really works.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:09]:
It's like nice and airy. Like, oh, just put it in the cloud. As opposed to store it in this tiny little chip inside the server in a giant warehouse with a bunch of metal.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:18]:
Right. Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:19]:
Like I said, I don't know what else they could have called it because the cloud is much nicer, but the vault or the mines would have been more accurate.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:26]:
Yeah. Cloud support specialists. They provide support for the cloud and cloud based software. And that's a really blanket term, but that's generally

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:35]:
being really general here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:36]:
Right. Exactly. And then there is a whole wide world. I want it to take 2 seconds to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it specifically because I don't want to suggest any of them because crystal, I don't know what your son's needs and wants are. So I don't want to suggest that he go get one of these, but I did want to talk about certifications for a second, because this is definitely a way to maybe not circumvent, but fast track some of the validation of the skills that you're going to be self learning or learning through different programs and different courses, things like that. Certifications definitely have a very prevalent role in the tech industry at large, both in hardware and in software. There are so many different acronyms.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:19]:
It's mind boggling. Your eyes glaze over when you hear all the acronyms.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:22]:
I say this as somebody who one got my first tech job as a direct result of a tech certification. The only good tech certification is a certification that you have research that you see coming up often in jobs that fit your needs. That is the only good tech certification for you. Random tech certifications have no value. Targeted tech certifications that you see asking on different job descriptions that are jobs you want, and that your son has gone, oh, that fits my needs. Those are worth getting. So if he keeps seeing cybersecurity analysts like entry level or junior cybersecurity analyst jobs, and that's the job that fits his needs, and they keep asking for his comp TIA security plus that's a good tech certification, but random tech certifications are not. And one of the things I wanted to caution about here too, is that community colleges in particular are a little bit smarter than 4 year universities.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:12]:
One of the things they have recently started doing is loading up their classes with certifications, tech certifications specifically. And that's really not the best thing in the world because I'll see people who say, oh, I'm going to go take this class. I'm going to go take this course at a community college because they're going to give me my CompTIA plus and CompTIA plus takes 2 weeks to study for and get, and it costs $300 to take the exam. And that is why they're doing it because they'll make 1,000 of dollars off of somebody who not in the case of Crystal Sun, because at least it's free. But the idea that you should just go and take a community college class to get tech certifications is not smart because if you have not thought through what you actually need, and you're just trying to stack tech certifications, because you think that they might be valuable as opposed to have research specific jobs and you see specific certifications come up. The more words there are behind the certification, the more useful it is, especially if it's a specific software like Oracle or Azure, which is Microsoft. So you're looking for really specific ones because they need you to know how to use a specific type of software. That's why they're valuable.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:10]:
It's not because it's a tech certification. It's because they need you to know how to use a specific software to do the job that you're going to be hired for. And that's why they're valuable. And that's the only time that they are valuable.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:20]:
Just to play off of what you said, just for a second, going after the tech certifications willy nilly, just without realizing whether or not you need it or not. And you're just going for it. It is the same thing as going to get your degree when you don't know why you're there to get your degree. So maybe you're going to feel a little bit smarter because you're going to a community college. It might not even be a college. It might just be a course that you're taking online. It could be a pretty cheap course as well. And you're like, well, I'm getting it for $40 and I just have to self study for 2 weeks, 3 weeks a month.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:50]:
And then I get it. It's pretty simple, but you're doing the same thing as wasting 4 years of your life getting something that you shouldn't get or that you don't need. You're gonna have all of these certifications in your education area, but you're not going to be able to get any of the jobs because you weren't targeting which ones you're getting.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:07]:
It's basically the same thing that's happening with degrees. One of the things I saw was Google with Coursera launched a few different certifications, data analytics, project management, a few different things. I think it was about 4 years ago, 5 years ago. And a bunch of people now are saying, oh, it's just not worth it. And I'm like, no, you didn't check to see if the job actually needed you to have it. And you just went and got it. And then nothing happened because you weren't targeted about the type of job you were trying to get with it. And so you just went out and bought a random tech certification in the same way that people go out and buy random college degrees and then go, oh, my degree didn't do anything for me.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:36]:
I'm like, yeah, that's because you didn't need to get it because you didn't need it for what you were doing or it didn't serve a greater purpose in that it was going to enable you to get whatever job that fits your needs. That's the reason it didn't work out for you. Same thing with the tech certifications and people just just think that it's productive, but productive when you should be doing something else or doing literally nothing is actually not productive.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:54]:
And yeah, Crystal, that was for you. Thank you so much for your question. I hope that we answered it. That That was kind of a 2 for 1. And I think that we answered both questions, and then we can answer the question that wasn't asked, which is go back all the way to the beginning. So hopefully you didn't think that we talked at you too much. If you found this helpful, please let us know in the comments. We are trying to do more of these Mailbag episodes if that's something that you're interested in.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:18]:
The way that we're doing the format of it is exactly like this. You guys go to ask.degreefree.co, and you are going to do a video just like how Crystal did a video here, and you are going to ask your questions. The reason why you're doing a video is so that we could see your face. We wanna see your face. We wanna know that we're helping somebody real, and we have hopefully a positive impact on your life and your family's life. And so once again, ask dotdegreefree.co for all of those people that are asking about certain industries and everything like that. Please, you can totally ask those questions. We are always going to answer every single episode.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:52]:
We are going to say, go back to their needs, go back to their wants, and then we can talk about the vocational creativity stuff. But yeah, that was this week's episode. I think that was pretty good. What did you think?

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:00]:
I think it was very thorough. I feel good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:03]:
And that was kind of a slash vocational creativity one as well. And that's pretty much it until next week, guys. Aloha.