A 29-year-old Hannah Maruyama is earning $100,000 in AI without even having a bachelor’s degree. In conversation with CNBC Make It, she revealed that she stopped going to Georgia Southern University in Savannah after a couple of semesters because she was “bored”. While she did believe that without an actual degree her career will be limited to low paying jobs only, her future stated otherwise.
In her 20s, she worked as a lifeguard, bartender and even a deckhand on a dolphin-watching boat, never earning more than $30,000 (approx 25 lakh) a year. Later, she opened a cosmetic tattoo studio with her husband that eventually shut down due to Covid-19 pandemic. She was also let go from the call centre job that she was doing on the side.
Desperate for a job, she looked for a job online on Quora and Reddit, where it was established that getting a certification in tech can help her find a good job. She then became a Salesforce certified administrator, a certification that promises to pay at least $70,000 or more after just 4 weeks of joining the course. This course costed her $300 for three months which then resulted in her landing a Salesforce developer job at a business management consulting firm in Honolulu. This role paid $70,000.
Most of these positions did not require a bachelor’s degree but emphasised on technical and soft skills of the applicant. “Even if I didn’t meet the educational requirements, I applied and would note in my application or during the interview that I’ll learn anything I need to as quickly as I can,” she said.
In addition to this, she also opened a TikTok account with name @degreefree, where she revealed how young applicants can look for and land a job without a college degree. These videos received over 500,000 views and several comments from 20-something users. The viewers even started asking her advice on their career path without a college degree.
She later left her Salesforce job to join a consulting firm, Neo License, a startup that builds AI software, as their head of operations. This job pays her $100,000 salary. She told, “I could see there was a ceiling at the company that I was at and thought I would have more hands-on experience and a greater impact working for a startup,” Maruyama said. She emphasised that consistent upskilling has been “the biggest advantage” in helping her advance her tech career.
She now has certifications in data analytics and project management, among others.
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