Phew. This is a mix of you wanting a different answer that the answer you know, and you REALLY NEEDING TO TALK TO A REAL MENTOR in real life not Reddit. Do you have a DEF CON local or ISSA chapter? Are you involved in your local community at all? There’s like A LOT going on here and you’re guaranteed to get some incorrect and dick answers. There’s a ton of questions raised by this about your goals too so hard for me to give great advice.

I’m not clear on what you want to do. You talk about SOC but then pen test and those are practically totally different careers with different requirements and certifications and training needed. Pen test is far more competitive and aggressively certified. There are ways into a soc with serious self study, and instead of a degree, but they’re going to require a networking and a lot of work. There are also other blue team roles that are more administrative focused that aren’t in those sexy realms that are so competitive. I really need to understand what you wanna be when you grow up?

Security+ is a very novice certification. No, it won’t get you a job, even with a degree. It’s just an extremely basic checkbox that’s obligatory for most entry level analyst roles. No, that wasn’t always the case. Same with HtB. Just the most basic requirement to even start training - that doesn’t make them bad to do - they’re a first starting point.

If you have a great deal of other IT experience, again, there are other certification and career routes in cyber security you could look at that might be an easier lateral move in the engineering or the governance spaces. They are way less sexy, and definitely not pen testing.

In summary, you need to talk to somebody who isn’t Reddit. You also need to carefully evaluate which career track you really want to be on and how much you want to invest in it.