Sure you can. Here's a free programming boot camp to start you off. It's run by a billionaire - so it has to work. Right?. Can 42 US, a free coding school run by a French billionaire, actually work? | Ars Technica J.
Absolutely. Depends what kind of tech career you are talking about though. A good amount of coders/ programmers don't have a formal education. I worked for a software development company for a couple years, and there were probably 50+ developers on staff. Of the ones that I knew, I think that maybe one or two had a degree. The founders of the company who were also pretty tech savvy had degrees in non-technical fields. Many of the coders were absolutely terrific at what they did and could command a high salary at almost any organization. However, if you are talking about management positions, that is a bit of a different story. I'm not going to say that you could never reach the management ranks, but that is more difficult. If you want to go the route of IT Manager, IT Director, VP of IT, CIO/ CTO, you will most certainly need a degree. Again, it's not impossible to make it there without one, but unless you grow with a company for 10-15+ years, coming in off the streets competing with other senior level IT executives, many of which will have graduate degrees, you would be in a pretty tough competition. You could also go the route of help desk technician/ desktop support and work your way up to a Jr Sys Admin/ Network Admin. Most of those careers are typically held by people with CCNA, MCSE, MCSA, JNCIA, etc., certifications. Those are very good careers as well. Almost every company needs a good Sys Admin, and they typically make good money as well. Plus most of those certs don't require anything other than you hitting the books hard for a few months. No formal classes/ tuition required. Certification vouchers typically run anywhere from $100-300. There are other career tracks as well, like that of a DBA, Security, Mobile App development, etc.
