My main plan in life right now is to get a career in IT and grow it into my own consulting gig – this is my retirement plan. IT field is VAST, so I don’t know where to start and what to aim for. Maybe someone could point me in a right direction.

Here’s some background
I am 36yo born in USSR, grew up in Lithuania, living in US for last 15 years.
I am the living example of underachievement.
When I was a kid – I was a wiz-kid. At the tender age of 4 I didn’t only read and write, I could also play chess pretty well, knew some history and knew geography – I could tell capitols of every country by heart. In my school of 4000+ kids I was always an example teachers would refer to. In the beginning of a school year I would get all the text books and study them and finish in about a week. I read a lot of classical literature, played musical instruments and danced on my hind legs (joking). All of this attention f~~~ed with my head big time of course, and everyone hated me (no wonder)
My father took me once to a computer lab of a nuclear power plant where he worked, and I saw cabinets processing perforated cards and a first PC, on which I played a snake game – I was blown away. Later on Atari gaming computers came out (Boulder Dash, River Ride anybody?) – I spent all my free time just watching other people play. When ZX Spectrum came out – I begged my father to get me one. I was loading games off cassette tapes, then started poking them, which introduced me to programming. I got really busy with it and started writing code (in 7th grade??). I remember I wrote a graphic interface for ZX Spectrum which used a cursor moving through the screen using directional keys (I haven’t seen a mouse then) – my father was blown away. Fast forward a couple of years – we had informatics classes in school. I was better with computers than anyone else (including teachers) – so they let me be a school’s systems administrator (9th grade). At that time we had dial-up internet, my informatics teacher was a good friend of mine, so I had keys from the classroom and could come there on weekends and browse the internet.
When I graduated from school, I made the biggest mistake of my life – I went to a business school. I had IT as my second major, but I never graduated, because I moved to US in 2000. My goal was to get into investments business, so I got masters in Economics and went for CFA designation. In a meanwhile I was working for Emerson in intercompany accounting. It was so unrewarding and boring, that all I was doing, was writing excel and outlook macros for work automation.
It turned out that there was no way for me to get into investments, especially after 2008, and the job I was doing – I couldn’t handle the complexities of it.  I ruined my career in finance and hit rock bottom hard (fired, no references). Now I am staying humble, working a manly job with no deadlines that pays 13/hr and living in the basement of my own house.

I want to switch gears and go back to IT, but I am not sure where and how. Schools is a kindergarten for adults and a scam financially – I don’t want to go there. I feel I could study on my own like I’ve always did. And I already know all the stuff they was going to teach me anyways – so why bother. I feel that a degree is not what’s really needed, it’s the knowledge- degree or not. I don’t need no stinking brick and mortar school to study something. I feel that I could study and pass tests for certificates on my own.

What puzzles me is where I should focus my efforts. Because I worked in finance, I think that Oracle cert would be a good bet. Or becoming a DBA
There seems to be a strong demand for IT specialists in accounting/finance. I know that IT people in our dept. were basically prayed on.
On the other hand, I always dreamed of being a actual games developer. But maybe writing high frequency trading algorithms is the way to go?
I am not sure if I am ADHD or not (at least that’s what I’ve been diagnosed with), but I heard that a lot of IT work is actually very structured and boring. Everyone is compartmentalized and there are deadlines and s~~~ like that. I am assuming that IT work can be somewhat exciting and creative, but I am afraid that most of the times it is not. I know I love data and coding to the point where I could do it for free, so I am pretty sure boring won’t be an issue, but it still makes me worried – what if I choose a wrong track and regret it yet again.
What part of IT do you guys see as unboring and promising going in the future? Because this is where I want to be.
I suck at writing long and coherent posts – if I keep going I am afraid I’m never going to post this.
Please let me know what you think, ask questions and maybe we could have a back and forth using this topic.

Thank you all so very much for reading this and any suggestions.

On the plus side, I can say I witnessed a company going through a layoff. The IT guys were cut, and within a few weeks hired back. They could actually do things, unlike their white collar betters.

On the down side, I think you will have lots of competition from places like India if you want to do it remotely.

I heard this about on the radio yesterday:
Schnurman: Fossil sells out its tech workers

If you are in IT and you were starting everything from scratch – where would you go and what would you do?

Industry certifications are the way to go.

Start with:

Cisco networking engineer, VM ware certifications, Microsoft certified engineer

As for it being fun, it can be sometimes. I don’t mind crawling under desks of hotties while they flash their panties at me. I just smile and walk away. No way I’ll fall into one of those traps! Been there done that…

Good luck with your search

I’m in a similar position as you, although i’m a construction worker who at 35 years old is looking at less physical ways of earning an income.

So far as i can make out, Batcave’s philosophy is to learn all things tech and produce your own projects on the side of your day job which if you put the effort in will be in developing eventually.

I think the main take away i get from him is to have a colossal work ethic and really go for it. Get so good, you’re not easily replaced by any prospective company you work for. As a mgtow you should have the time to dump into what will be a long haul but will grant you an extremely rewarding future.

Put your energy into your projects, and don’t waste it chasing women. Good luck to you, me and thank you Batcave.

My main question I never asked is: If you are in IT and you were starting everything from scratch – where would you go and what would you do?

IF I was just starting out in IT. I would go for the 3 basic certs (A+,Net+,  and Sec+) and then look at what part of IT you actually like doing.

I couldn’t stand dealing with code or any programming languages at all. You mentioned getting <span style=”font-family: ‘Open Sans’, sans-serif;”><span style=”font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;”>an Oracle cert. That is also a good idea. You can hopefully use your unrelated masters in lieu of experience or it may help you stand above other applicants and those newly acquired IT certs simply show your new commitment in that specific area. </span></span>

I work in IT but I would much rather be serving beer on a beach everyday instead if I could make it happen. A retired friend of mine is doing that at the moment in costa rica and it sounds like the dream.

I also want to point out that while I believe in most cases colleges are a complete scam I will recommend that you take a look at WGU (Western Governors University) it has some advantages over regular college. Firstly it is all online but it is a regionally accredited college and has accreditation by microsoft, cisco, CNSS etc.

They have terms that are not strictly college terms, they are 6 month terms that essentially start whenever you start and the term is a flat rate of $1500.
They give credit by your passing industry certifications, so as you get through learning the material at your speed you schedule to take the certification (Covered by the $1500 term fee) and you pass you can now start another class. Basically you can do as many classes as you can pass as fast as you want.

For instance completing the IT security bachelor will give you the bachelor degree and the following certifications
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA®)
Cisco Certified Network Associate Security (CCNA® Security)
CompTIA A+
CompTIA Network+
CompTIA Security+
CompTIA Project+
CompTIA Linux+

So to sum up, IT security and check out WGU.edu and see if it is anything you are interested in.

Also if you go into IT security you should consider the CISSP certification it is pretty much the one everyone is looking for in IT security at the moment.

I’m a self-employed enterprise IT guy so I have to deal with pretty much everything under the Sun. I have not done much programming lately, but I used to write programs that processed scientific data. That was really fun work, actually. As BatCave stated, you’ll need to get lost in the books.

If you’re going to go solo, you must also develop your soft people skills like networking and sales just as well as your technical chops. You also must be able to handle Executives. First they are in charge, and once you get their approval the employees will roll right on over for you with no resistance allowing you to get your job done. Also, you’re only as good as your last backup.

I don’t do residential work, but I know guys who do.

I took some MCSE classes and have degrees in Management and a Physical Science plus tons of on the job experience.