Shanelle Gibson, unable to bear the debts accumulated from pursuing a bachelor’s degree, chose to drop out of Valdosta State University in Georgia after just one year of study. Subsequently, she worked in warehouses, pizza kitchens, daycare centers, and even served in the Air Force for six months before retiring due to health reasons. Despite all these experiences, her life did not see any improvement.
Looking back on her journey, the now 33-year-old Ms. Gibson told CNBC that she has no regrets about those years. These experiences ultimately led her to pursue a career in technology and product development, which she is deeply passionate about.
According to a report by CNBC on January 12, Ms. Gibson is now the Chief Scrum Master at a small healthcare company, earning an annual salary of approximately $132,000. She expressed that if she had continued working jobs in her early twenties earning less than $15 per hour, such a high salary would have been “unfathomable.”
So how did Ms. Gibson achieve professional success without a bachelor’s degree?
Recalling back, Ms. Gibson had a sudden moment of realization one morning in 2015. Surrounded by piles of boxes and exhausted colleagues, she thought to herself, “I shouldn’t be here.” This prompted her to resign and start job hunting.
Eager for change, she posted her resume on Craigslist. A manager from the parking management software startup, ParkingSoft, saw her resume and invited her to interview for a position as a phone dispatcher at their Atlanta office.
Ms. Gibson landed the job and quickly excelled. A few weeks later, her boss noticed her proactive approach in solving customer issues rather than simply transferring calls to the service team, leading to her promotion to Customer Support Analyst.
“That job kick-started my tech career,” she said. “All the technical skills I learned from that job – from SQL programming language to JIRA project tracking software – made me a more confident, competitive candidate for high-paying tech positions, even without a degree.”
After leaving ParkingSoft in 2019, Ms. Gibson held various technical support and project management positions at companies like Ceridian Dayforce and UnitedHealthcare over the next two years.
A friend suggested she try becoming a Scrum Master, a role that guides product development teams using a simplified project management framework.
The idea appealed to Ms. Gibson as she sought a more challenging role to fully utilize her problems-solving abilities. She completed a two-day, $400 course through Scrum Alliance to obtain her Scrum Master certification.
Shortly after, she secured her first Scrum Master position at UnitedHealthcare. In 2022, she joined her current company as the Chief Scrum Master.
This role also marked Ms. Gibson’s first job with a salary exceeding $100,000. Crossing the six-figure threshold was “quite shocking” for her.
She continued, “Achieving this milestone made me realize that earning six figures has no special formula. It depends on how much effort you are willing to put in to reach that goal, rather than letting things like degree requirements limit you.”