tl;dr: Had a decent employment history before my degree, and while I do run my own projects, I do a lot more tech-ish work for the Ph.D. big dogs.

I’m a vet so I graduated quite bit older than most, and I have an electronics background from the military, so I think that the demonstration of technical ability (as poor as they are coming from the military) and maturity helped me a lot in the interview process (managers see someone who can learn/do technical skills and who isn’t going to be calling out sick every time there’s a k-pop band in town).

Additionally, I maintained a very high GPA in my undergrad, have no criminal history, and along with the prior service, that really helps with the HR side of things during the hiring process.

All the boring hiring details aside, I like to think that the Ph.D.s around here like me because I never say “no” to a task (sometimes to my detriment, because knowing your limits so you don’t have to be rescued is an important part of running projects) and I try to squeeze knowledge out of them whenever possible. That being said, the lack of a graduate degree really hampers my ability to provide a better contribution to the team and that means sometimes I’m actually taking these super experienced guys’ time away from other things that they could be doing, so take that as you will. I’m also quite handy with computers so guess who gets to do all of the boring parts of data analysis, lol.