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Agree with others here that you should check out Sales, Sales Eng, or Product roles. You can make quite a bit more money than a lot of engineers if you do well with sales, particularly as someone who deeply understands tech that they're selling. Military experience could actually be somewhat relevant for sales, and the courageous kind of attitude ("I'll perform well and make it work regardless") is pretty much the main requirement. Starting in Sales Eng could be a good way to get to know a particular Sales team and get them to know you, quickly see what its really like to be a seller, and then potentially work your way into a Sales role. Constantly being in the room to see how lots of different sellers work is like getting paid to do sales training, if it turns out to be interesting to you. When it comes to school, even if the tuition is free, you're still investing a lot of time and effort. For someone who already knows how to program and has meaningful real-life people/leadership experience, my suggestion would just be to be realistic about what you want to do, what you really want to get out of school, and whether or not it's really necessary. Don't know about you, but I know people who seem to fall into the trap of making that kind of decision as a punt on making any real decisions. Being able to show a bachelor's degree is unfortunately still a big deal for a lot of hiring managers, but "going to school" is also not really a binary decision; there are ways to very quickly test out of a ton of classes and get a bachelor's degree from a lesser known school, if the key rationale would be to just stamp your card. Also keep in mind that typically, Sales and Software Eng are two of the best examples of roles where being self-educated/naturally talented makes it very easy for everyone to overlook the lack of a degree... if you turn out to be kind of a natural fit in sales, AND already know how to program... having a degree probably isn't make or break for you. Learning and giving yourself room to explore can be very satisfying in its own way, but that could also just be stuff you get paid to do in a new role. |