Anecdote time: I have a friend at Google who started there as basically a glorified tech while he was attending a community college (so, no degree at all). Goog

Anecdote time: I have a friend at Google who started there as basically a glorified tech while he was attending a community college (so, no degree at all). Google has been paying for large chunks of his tuition, enabling him to scrape together enough money to go to UC Berkeley. He recently graduated, and simultaneously shifted from his technician position into engineering based on feedback from the engineers he worked with. Mind you, it took him a pretty long time to do so, and lots of things could have gone wrong on the way, but its definitely possible.