Ashton Boland always has kept a keen eye on his future, starting when he was young, and the IT professional wants others coming through school behind him to do the same.
Boland, a software engineer on contract with a financial services company, takes time each year to revisit his old high school with a couple of friends to talk to students about careers in the tech industry. In particular, he wants them to consider whether it’s worth it, financially, to go to college over jumping in and getting started.
“We go in and we talk to them about how to set themselves up for basically what they want to do,” he said. “We talk to them about college, we talk to them about the pros and the cons of college, which I feel like you don’t get a whole lot of cons on college from your high school guidance counselor or any of the teachers there.”
Boland recommends college for students who can afford to go without sinking into debt, but for others like himself, he said they should consider the costs versus the benefits.
“You hear this all the time from people who are graduating with degrees and entering the job market these days and kind of feeling like it doesn’t hold as much weight as it used to, you know, coming in with a degree without having necessarily a whole lot of project experience,” he said.
“And that’s certainly truthful here in IT.”
Boland earned college credits while in a dual degree program at Lakewood High School in Licking County through a collaboration with Central Ohio Technical College.
A professor taught a course on computer information systems that Boland said was “extremely useful” in familiarizing the students with various aspects of IT.
“It was a fantastic program,” he said. “And we were very passionate about making sure that the kids coming from that program, just like we did a few years back, are set up for success.”
Since entering the workforce after a year studying video game programming at Shawnee State University, Boland has succeeded in landing a number of increasingly technical gigs after earning certifications in skills he taught himself. He wants that to be an example.
“Oftentimes, I recommend to the kids that it’s really about skills, and it’s about what you can show on paper as far as backing up those skills go,” he said. “Because IT is also rife with tons of people who say, ‘Oh, I can do this, I can do this,’ and then, you know, maybe they can’t.”
Boland said the IT industry “has more certifications than anyone could ever wrap their heads around” so the possibilities are endless. And he said the means to earning certifications can be found by anyone with “good Googling skills.”
The other major topic Boland and his friends broach with the high schoolers is entrepreneurism, and how there are many paths to be an entrepreneur in tech.
“I would say that an entrepreneurial mindset is the key takeaway,” he said. “Making sure that you are focused at the end of the day on what your time is worth and what you need to do to improve yourself, educationally, personally, making sure that you are set up for success for growth and for hitting long-term goals.
“If you’re coming out of high school with a good idea and the tech skills behind it, you know there are kids coming out nowadays who have been programming in Java since they were 10 years old and they came up with some app that made some company $2.3 million. And they did it at like 16.”
Boland is practicing what he preaches in his latest push for learning new skills, which required a bit more of a commitment.
In 2020, he joined the Air Force Reserves, where he’ll train in government cybersecurity while serving his country part-time for the next eight years.
“I kind of made that decision orienting myself towards long-term goals,” he said. “To augment my skills toward the higher end of cybersecurity, specifically interacting with Department of Defense systems and whatnot, which is where I’m speculating I’ll end up in, like, a 10- to 15-year timeline.”
Asked if he’s always talked like this, the 24-year-old laughed.
“I think my parents would say I’ve been talking like this since I was like 12 years old,” he said. “I’m an old soul.
“But I think, you know, we certainly don’t live in the best economic circumstances as a generation to do anything other than hustle like our lives depended on it,” he said. “And doing that early in a career is a lot better than floating around and then pursuing it later.”
