What can I even do with skills but no qualifications on paper?

As the title says. My current job is an interesting one, and the organization I work for is very good at keeping people in my position basically helpless by not giving us any actual on paper qualifications for my networking skills. Add that on top of them recently cutting my pay by 12k a year and they can fuck right off I want out.

My job is a lot of communication stuff, and I’ve gotten into a slight networking niche but not really.

I know lots about operating radios (HF, VHF, UHF etc) but not how to fix them.

I do a lot of basic networking stuff setting up IPsec protocols, VPNs, managing a file server, setting up EUDs on a network, Active Directory, some basic exchange server stuff.

Running cabling/low voltage stuff (cat5/6, coax, phone lines)

And encrypting network traffic

Is there any company that would actually see it as worth their time investing in me and making me more proficient in any of these categories, especially since a lot of it is just self taught? I don’t have money for school and going back to school is just a non option for me in general.

On top of that I do have some management experience too. Luckily I do have proof that I’ve been trained for this on paper. Its mostly for small teams (like I’m in charge of up to 5 people) but in the real world I’ve been in charge of many more (up to 15)

And I also managed a fleet of 15 vehicles/trailers as a secondary responsibility. I was responsible for their maintenance, tracking where they were and what they were doing, making sure the big trucks were road legal and drivers were following the road laws, and keeping them busy whenever possible.

But with again with no degrees, no networking qualifications (like Cisco stuff) would anyone bother investing in me? I’ve been doing this for 4 years now and I’m in my early 20s. And also what companies would require this experience in their staff?

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Jobadvisor

You've got more going for you than you think — the problem isn't your skills, it's that nobody's translated them into language a hiring manager recognizes. Let's fix that.

First, a real question that changes everything: do you have a security clearance?

The way you're describing this — radios, EUDs, encrypting network traffic, fleet of road-legal trucks — reads like a military or government-adjacent comms role. If you have an active clearance (even Secret), that alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars to defense contractors, because clearances are expensive and slow to get, and they will absolutely train someone with raw skills if it means they don't have to wait 6-12 months for a clearance to process. If that's your background, companies like Leidos, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Booz Allen, SAIC, and similar contractors hire exactly your profile constantly — radio techs, network installers, comms specialists — often with no degree required, just clearance + demonstrated skill.

If there's no clearance involved, the advice below still holds, just minus that lever.

Cheap certs that validate what you already know (no degree needed)

You don't need school. You need a few hundred dollars and some study time to put a name on what you've already taught yourself:

• CompTIA Network+ — covers exactly the stuff you listed (VPNs, IPsec basics, cabling, network fundamentals). This is the single highest-value cert for someone in your position because it's cheap, fast, and instantly recognized by HR filters that would otherwise auto-reject you for "no qualifications."
• CompTIA Security+ — covers encryption, access control, basic security ops. Given you're doing encrypted traffic and managing EUDs, you're probably 70% of the way there already.
• CCNA — more expensive in time, but this is the one that gets you taken seriously for actual network engineer roles, not just technician roles. Cisco's material is dense but you already know the concepts; you'd mostly be learning their terminology and exam format.

None of these require "going back to school." They're self-study + an exam fee. People study for Network+ in 4-8 weeks using free YouTube series (Professor Messer is the standard recommendation) and just pay for the exam itself.

What to actually call yourself / apply for

Your resume right now probably undersells you because you're describing tasks, not job titles. Translate:

• "Setting up IPsec, VPNs, AD, Exchange, EUDs" → Network Administrator or IT/Network Technician
• "Running cabling" → Structured Cabling Technician / Low Voltage Installer (this alone is a standalone trade with steady demand — ISPs, MSPs, and commercial cabling contractors hire for this constantly, decent pay, no degree, just an OSHA card and sometimes a BICSI cert eventually)
• "Operating HF/VHF/UHF radios" → RF/Communications Technician, valuable to public safety agencies, utilities (SCADA/radio networks), railroads, and broadcast
• "Managed 15 people informally, fleet of 15 vehicles" → Operations Supervisor experience — this is real, transferable management experience even if it's not on paper as a title. You list the scope (team size, responsibilities), not whether HR gave you a fancier title.

Who actually hires this profile

• MSPs (managed service providers) — these companies live and die on people who can do exactly your list: AD, Exchange, VPNs, cabling, EUD management. They often hire on demonstrated skill over paper because client work moves fast and they can't wait for someone to finish a 4-year degree.
• ISPs and telecom companies — cabling and RF background is directly relevant.
• Utilities — SCADA networks, radio systems for field crews, very similar skill stack to yours.
• Government contractors — if clearance is in play, this is your strongest lane.
• Public safety / 911 dispatch and radio infrastructure — your radio background specifically is a niche a lot of IT people don't have.

Practical next step: Pick Network+ first since it's the broadest validator of what you already do, study for 4-6 weeks, then start applying to MSP and network tech roles while studying — don't wait until you're "fully qualified" to start applying, since you already have 4 years of real experience the cert will just make legible to a resume scanner.

choosing a career for money instead of passion is completely valid and i'm tired of people making it seem like it's not?

i just need to say this somewhere because the advice i keep getting is making me feel like i'm doing something wrong when i genuinely don't think i am.

i'm in my early twenties and i've been working toward getting into finance. not because i'm passionate about it but because i grew up watching financial instability affect my family in ways i never want to repeat and security means something real and specific to me that i think people who've always had it don't fully understand.

what i actually love is ceramics and i've been doing it since i was sixteen and it fills something in me that nothing else does. but i've also watched people monetize the things they love and slowly resent those things and i don't want that for ceramics. i want it to stay mine with no pressure attached.

so my plan is simple. build financial stability through my career and keep ceramics as the thing that exists outside of all of that.

every time i explain this i get the same response. some version of you'll be miserable if you don't find meaning in your work or life is too short to do something you don't love and i understand where that comes from but it feels like advice designed for people who can afford to take that risk.

i know what financial stress looks like up close. i know what it does to people over time. i'm not willing to gamble my stability on the hope that passion pays consistently because for most people it doesn't.

keeping the thing you love separate from the thing that pays you is not settling. it's actually one of the more intentional decisions you can make and more people should hear that instead of being told they're doing life wrong for wanting to feel financially safe.

Jobadvisor

You're not doing anything wrong, and the reasoning you've laid out isn't a rationalization — it's a strategy. There's a real difference.

The "follow your passion" advice assumes a baseline of safety that lets risk feel exciting instead of terrifying. If you've never had to wonder whether the lights stay on, "do what you love and the money follows" sounds like wisdom. If you have watched instability wreck people you care about, that same advice sounds like someone asking you to gamble with the one thing you've decided you'll never gamble with again. You're right that it's often advice from people who never had to test it.

What you're describing — building stability deliberately, then protecting the thing you love from ever needing to perform for money — is a known and respected pattern, not a consolation prize. A lot of people who've watched their creative work turn into a job describe exactly what you're trying to avoid: the joy gets replaced by deadlines, client opinions, the algorithm, invoices. Keeping ceramics untouched by any of that isn't you settling for less of it. It's you protecting more of it.

I'd push back gently on one thing, but it's not the core of your plan — it's just a refinement. "Finance for money, ceramics for meaning" can sound like you're writing off the possibility that the finance career itself might end up engaging you on its own terms, years in. That's not a contradiction of your plan. You can build security as the primary goal and still end up finding parts of the work genuinely interesting — that wouldn't make your original reasoning wrong, it'd just be a bonus you didn't require. The trap to avoid isn't choosing finance for stability. It's assuming upfront that stability and engagement are mutually exclusive, when sometimes they're not — they just don't have to both be true for the plan to be worth it.

But that's a footnote, not a correction. The core of what you're saying — that security is not a lesser goal than passion, and that protecting something you love from monetization is a form of care, not avoidance — is sound. You don't need to keep defending it from people who haven't lived the thing you're planning around.

Mandates and Forced Shift Rotations with only 12hrs between swaps

To whom it may concern,

I don't know why a company should have to force mandate employees to cover overtime? You allowed too many people to take off work so now you're pulling folks from other shifts because you need coverage. Not only that but you're forcing employees into 7-14 day stretches without a double time day and call our Sunday premium "good enough" when in reality it's a slap to the face. You say "Oh, you can find someone to cover you." No, because majority of the time they're already working or got mandated themselves. "Pick up Overtime so you don't work it" and "you can't be mandated on midnights" is a lie. You're still having employees who work plenty of hours get mandated and deny folks Overtime who want to work it. You swap people from days to midnights on a dime. Tell me how safe it is for me to work seven 12s and on Thursday when I get out at 6pm, you expect me to work midnights starting Friday night at 6pm. How is that safe to force people to flip their sleep schedules like that? More accidents happen in the work place because of irregular sleep schedule and coverage. You gripe and complain that things aren't being done right yet you're forcing employees into a position where they can't even get a good night sleep or know if they're going or coming. You told us "We're not doing mandates anymore" yet here you are doing it all over again. Screw you and your lies. I hope your pillow is hot and you get a string caught in your toenail every time you put your socks on to come into this place you call work. Screw you.

Sincerely,

A pissed employee who used to care

Jobadvisor

That's a lot to carry, and the safety concern underneath the anger is real — not just a feeling. Flipping from a 6pm shift end on Thursday to a 6pm shift start Friday isn't a minor inconvenience; it's asking your body to reverse its circadian rhythm with almost no recovery window. The research on shift work is pretty consistent on this: rapid rotation with insufficient rest between shifts is linked to higher rates of workplace injury, more errors, and worse long-term health outcomes. You're not being dramatic when you say accidents happen because of this — that's documented, not just felt.

And the pattern you're describing — "we're not doing mandates anymore" followed by mandates, "you can't be mandated on midnights" followed by exactly that — that's the kind of thing that wears down trust fast, especially on top of being physically exhausted.

I want to help you in a way that actually moves something. A few directions this could go:

- **If this was about getting it out of your system** — fair enough, and I hope it helped some.

- **If you want to actually send something** — to HR, a manager, or higher up — I can help you turn this into a version that keeps every bit of the substance (the mandate frequency, the 12-hour turnaround, the broken promises, the safety risk) but is written in a way that's harder to dismiss out of hand. Anger is justified here, but a letter with insults in it gives the recipient an easy way to file it under "disgruntled employee" instead of "legitimate safety issue."

- **If you want to escalate it formally** — depending on where you are, rest-between-shifts and mandatory overtime issues can sometimes fall under OSHA complaints, a union grievance if you're organized, or state labor board rules. I can help you figure out which applies and what documentation would help your case.

What would actually be useful to you right now?

They don't offer proper training

These companies are absolute trash. I truly hope I can reach financial independence soon because they are horrible and don't want to deal with them anymore. They expect you to figure everything out and work autonomously, yet they never provide proper training. When they actually attempt to train you, it’s chaotic, disorganized, and fragmentary. They toss you into the deep end with setting you up to fail.

They are vultures that prey on people's desperation. Someone told me today to never bleed around sharks, and that is the perfect way to put it. The moment they smell your vulnerability, they will absolutely destroy you. They will even take advantage of you if you are getting chemotherapy.

Jobadvisor

This sounds like it's been building for a while, and it sounds genuinely exhausting — being expected to perform like you've had training you were never actually given, then getting blamed (implicitly or explicitly) when things go sideways because of it. That's a setup designed to make you feel like the problem when the system is.

The chemotherapy comment stands out to me, though. Is that hypothetical, or is something like that actually happening — to you or someone you know?