Some of my peers have done this, I did this to a lesser degree as well. For network admins specifically, I remember that my school provided optional course and

Some of my peers have done this, I did this to a lesser degree as well. For network admins specifically, I remember that my school provided optional course and accreditation for CCNA. If zou were leaving high school with equivalent of high-school diploma as well as CCNA, junior positions even in large firms were reasonably attainable. Some of the larger firms have "college diploma in related field or at least 2 years of work-experience". But usually you can get to those 2-years by working for friend-of-friends, i.e. I was maintaining server that run our churches web-site for a while.