Do you know someone who got a coding job without a degree?

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Comprehensive-Ice891@reddit

I was able to do it back in 2022. Didn't have a degree and decided to do a bootcamp. You just really need to lock in and study/know your dsa's and how to work through a codebase. Keep in mind that the market was in high demand of sde's during this time. Since then, sde jobs seem to have become super over saturated. I got caught in mass layoffs midway through 2024 and looking for a job with experience today seems just as hard as in 2022 with no exp

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SciGuy241@reddit (OP)

Can you recommend any companies that hire programmers with no experience?

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Comprehensive-Ice891@reddit

It's honestly a numbers game. Just apply to every entry level position you can. Use websites welcometothejungle.com that make sure the job postings are active. A lot of job postings on linkedin and other job boards are inactive. Remember that referrals help a lot so try and network and ask friends/family, etc. Good luck!

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CrazyAdditional4921@reddit

Me

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orion2222@reddit

I have a degree but it’s in psychology. Made a career change at 42 and just got my first promotion as a dev. It wasn’t easy, but nothing worthwhile is.

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Far_Programmer_5724@reddit

I feel like the wasn't easy part is the most important part we need to know about lol

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orion2222@reddit

Learning enough to get a job takes a lot of work, but actually finding that first job is just as hard (if not harder). I know everyone hates to hear it, but I think networking is critical.

I applied to 249 jobs and interviewed with 4 companies (legitimate interviews, not the automatic screening bs). Of those 4, 3 came from some kind of networking action. So I only had 1 lead out of 249 applications that was a cold application. If I had to do it all over again I’d double down on the networking.

I was struggling mentally towards the end there, but kept pushing. In all honesty I cried a bit when I got the job offer. I absolutely love my job and work for a great company, but the process was harder than I anticipated.

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Far_Programmer_5724@reddit

Dude thank you for sharing im so happy for you. I know quite a bit of coding but in an informal way and i don't know any coders so im constantly second guessing how good i am. I was in school for accounting and i make an okay amount as an accountant but i really enjoy coding (and i make programs for the place i work at).

I'll admit that your story is a bit scary for me because i was kind of hoping my code would speak for itself. But if networking is what needs to be done i hope i have luck in that department. Once again, im happy for you.

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booveebeevoo@reddit

I am 42 and I have been programming since I am nine years old. I think it’s amazing that y’all are doing this.

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Thin_Second3824@reddit

Can you give me advice how did you get a coding job at 42 I also had a career switch kinda but can’t get a job

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drucifer82@reddit

Duuuude I’m 42 now and learning programming. I’m so glad I’m not the only one doing midlife shifts!

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BogusBuffalo@reddit

Gonna be 42 in a couple of weeks. Learning in my spare time. Oof.

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drucifer82@reddit

I hear ya man. If you’ve got kids it can only be that much rougher.

I have the advantage of being without children, but even so I’m literally spending every moment I have at my keyboard pounding out code, reading code docs, or racking my brain trying to debug/problem solve.

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Immanence-@reddit

May I ask where I could go to practice and learn how to code?

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drucifer82@reddit

There are a lot of free sites, some offer paid courses. You can also set up an environment on your local machine.

I bought a textbook on Python 3 and have been using that, too.

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SevenFootHobbit@reddit

That's when I started. About to be 45. Was a 911 dispatcher. While I'm not a full time dev, I am in IT and do quite a bit of coding in my job. If you enjoy it don't give up! Lot's of hard walls to bang your head against but they do eventually break.

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drucifer82@reddit

After I finish my CS cert I was gonna go for an Azure cert so I can at least get something with IT and just keep coding on the side like I am now until I can get myself where I need to be there.

Seeing that I’m not alone only motivates me more.

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Ellippsis@reddit

39 and just applied to get my bachelor's in CS. Absolutely with y'all.

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bfruge78@reddit

Same boat, 46 and started @ LSUA for my bachelor’s in CS!

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Nez_Coupe@reddit

Same. About to be 41, about to finish a CS degree at Oregon State (online post baccalaureate) and scored a job in September as a database manager. Pumped for this midlife crisis

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Decoraan@reddit

Was it worth it? What was your career before?

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orion2222@reddit

100% worth it. I absolutely love the work. Plus, my starting salary as a bottom-of-the-ladder associate dev was the same I was making in senior management. I was a behavior analyst in my previous career and worked with children with various disabilities. I enjoyed that work very much, but after 14 years the burnout was real.

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Decoraan@reddit

I’m wondering about for the future. I’m currently a band 7 CBT therapist which I love. I love the evidence based science approach and the ability to get top ups and learn more while applying that with my clients.

This is decent and above average money even at the bottom of band 7 but I can’t help but wonder if I should look to change in the future and even if it’s feasible. I have a psychology BSc, Neuropsych MSc and two more PGdip’s related to Cbt therapy.

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Help-Need_A_Username@reddit

Care to share your journey?

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orion2222@reddit

I have a masters degree in psychology and worked as a behavior analyst. The work I was doing was fulfilling, but burnout was a real risk. Over time I was promoted to a senior management position, but was told my pay was pretty much capped and that was really demoralizing.

I won’t go into detail about how I got into programming, but loved it and decided to go all in. My wife owns a business and I was lucky enough to focus on completing a boot camp and job hunting full time. I pushed myself hard during the boot camp but loved every minute of it. But the real work started after the boot camp was completed.

It took almost 8 months of job hunting before I got hired, and that part was pretty rough. I was in a bad place mentally for a while but kept pushing. When I respond to these posts I’ve consistently said that networking is critical and I stand by that. I think the thing that makes the switch hard is that you’re learning to code (which is already very difficult), but you also need to be talking to people, staying involved, and getting your name out there as much as possible. You put in a ton of work not knowing when it’ll finally pay off. That being said, I look back now and am incredibly grateful I made the switch. As hard as it was, it’s 100% worth it.

If you have specific questions feel free to ask. I’m happy to help anyone in the same position as much as I can.

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CupFan1130@reddit

What bootcamp and how did you like it? What did you do that helped you network? Did the Bootcamp help with networking or the job search I’ve heard some do, Thanks.

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orion2222@reddit

I joined Flatiron for my boot camp. A lot of people talk shit about boot camps, and I can’t speak for all of them, but I thought it was fantastic. Digesting the information is like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hydrant, so you really have to enjoy it if it’s gonna work. At the end of the program they paired me with a career coach that I met with regularly. It took me a while to find a job but they provided the coach the entire time.

For networking, LinkedIn was good for staying visible but every relationship has the potential to help. There’s tons you can do, but the main goal is to stay visible and build relationships. Working on open source projects and hackathons are other great ways to meet more people.

Flatiron helped with both networking and the job search. I think they’re fully aware that actually landing the job is harder than completing the training.

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Lynx2447@reddit

He's married, leave him alone!

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berrysilverlog@reddit

What steps did you take to get to where you are? Also, what did you work as before?

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orion2222@reddit

It was a progression over several years. I volunteered to design an Excel macro for work and had no idea what a macro was. Once I figured it out I was hooked.

I self studied for a few years out of pure curiosity before joining a boot camp. I built several tools for work and did a few freelance jobs. I was a behavior analyst prior and worked with children with various disabilities. Loved that work too, but the growth was stagnant and burnout was rough.

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Aftabby@reddit

How long ago?

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orion2222@reddit

I was hired two years ago but didn’t start for six months (suuuuper long wait), so I’ve been working for about a year and a half.

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erickpaquin@reddit

Wow, good to know there's a bunch of us in that same boat! Turning 52 in a month, just left my job as a Linux admin for full time dev work (don't have the new job yet)... wasn't the best move of my life but really passionate about it and working hard so, crossing my fingers!

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SafeLanky3493@reddit

Congratulations !!

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NDaveT@reddit

Similar story here, except my degree was linguistics. I did take two or three computer science classes in college, I had taken AP Computer Science in high school, and I had programmed off and on as a hobby since I was 11 or 12 years old.

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konvay@reddit

I was going for linguistics when one of my courses was dropped for lack of student registration, picked up a C language course so I would still be full time student and never looked back.

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dontknowcant@reddit

I never thought of it like that. I'm studying English and Literary Studies and we did Chomsky's transformation generative grammar, so I think I will also apply your way of learning. I have had problems with coding because I couldn't get into it, but maybe having this mindset will work.

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exomni@reddit

Chomsky was really more of a mathematician, he mainly studied mathematics and philosophy, in particular when we talk about "computer science majors" we're really talking about philosophy: mathematical logic. Not programmers or coders. Chomsky's interests in linguistics were mainly via Harris, who he worked with because of their aligned political interests and interests in applying formal mathematical methods to studying the Hebrew langauge. Chomsky has spoken incredibly derisively of pretty much any coding activity, the machine translation project at MIT he was put on at 50% appointment for his professorial duties he called "of no intellectual interest, and also pointless", and he'd described breakthroughs in software like the most recent LLM models as "of no intellectual interest".

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username_or_email@reddit

we're really talking about philosophy: mathematical logic

I don't think philosophy can lay claim to logic any more than it can to physics. At some point in history, more or less any intellectual pursuit was philosophy. Once things start to become formalized, they tend to stop being called philosophy.

When people say that logic is at the heart of computer science and math, they aren't talking about philosophers like Aristotle, they're talking about mathematicians like Boole and Gödel.

Sure you can trace some historical continuum from Boole to Aristotle, but again, you can do that from pretty much any discipline back to someone who was at least nominally known as a philosopher.

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theusualguy512@reddit

I mean Chomsky is nowadays best known for his political thoughts and not his academics.

Ironically enough, I did not know him until I actually studied theoretical computer science. Despite his thoughts about coding, he is one of the well-known names of formal language theory.

I don't think you can go through a degree in CS without having touched on the hierarchy of regular, context-free, context-sensitive and recursively enumerable languages.

Although for some reason, context-sensitive languages come up a bit short in the courses, at least for me it did. I am incredibly vague on LBAs.

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Strange-Post-5571@reddit

Wow, brother! I'm 42 and am learning Python while working full-time in a non-tech role and with a 2-year-old daughter. I hope to eventually transition to being a dev. Thanks for the inspiration! Sometimes I wonder if I'm too old for it to be worthwhile.

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Habitat1998@reddit

How dis you achieve this from starting with psychology to ending in dev

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digitalWizzzard@reddit

Same, also had a bachelors in psychology. I ended up going to a coding bootcamp that offered an internship with a real company. I’m not sure they do that anymore, but it was enough to get my foot in the door.

7 years later and I’m leading a FE team at a fairly big company

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J_Bone_DS@reddit

This is positive to hear as I am currently learning to code and at the same age as you I feel like I'm a bit over the hill for it 😂 Glad to hear I'm absolutely not.

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Dead_Cash_Burn@reddit

History/Government degree. I got my first coding job after passing only 1 programming class! It was in C, of the 30 people that signed up only 4 passed. I might have been the only one with zero programming experience to pass. I got a job writing HTML/Javascript because I was told if I can figure out C I can figure out javascript. They were not wrong of course.

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ReveN_-@reddit

You just motivated me to learn C instead of python. I have 0 programming background but I’m really loving how everything works when I run the command and solve my lines to make it eventually work.

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puglife82@reddit

Ha exactly same with me but I went into analytics

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PM_ME_UR_CIRCUIT@reddit

I work with several people who have degrees in Math or Physics that most of their day is coding. Sometimes having the skill and just a degree is enough.

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Crazy-Egg6370@reddit

I'm interested too. I have a philosophy degree but I've always loved programming.

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enigmasi@reddit

I’m about to finish my core curriculum. We will see.

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ixe109@reddit

I'm interested to know how you went about it

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benevanstech@reddit

I help out at a free coding school (in Barcelona, Spain) that trains refugees who have zero coding background. We graduate \~80 students a year, and while some of them take some time to find jobs after graduating, and some end up in non-coding tech jobs (e.g. QA, support) we do have plenty of grads that go on to coding jobs.

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Professional_Ad4703@reddit

I got one in a big European tech company. Car mechanic by trade. Now i work as a senior software engineer and tech lead

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jeejeeviper@reddit

Yeah my good friend graduated (2021) with a biology degree but didn’t like it after college so he paid for a coding bootcamp and now he’s pretty well off for only 27

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AdventurousResort370@reddit

me

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OpportunityHot1576@reddit

Me...but I was /I am a hacker👾

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MotherGrotesque@reddit

Me 😄

Moreover, I'm 100% self-taught. I got my first coding job in 2016 studying from Youtube, Udemy and borrowed books.

I would like to say there was magic and everything was nice but brutally honest I was poor, my family was poor and I invested 30h+ a day just coding, coding and coding until I was a bit better than the average junior, so I got the job.

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Zealousideal-Will-91@reddit

No degree software engineer, started my career in IT doing normal IT stuff managing servers and user accounts. I was then hired as a contractor Full stack for 2 years then moved into my current position. There are 3 important things never stop learning, know how to talk and explain, and Networking. First one setups your skills and idea of what you want, second makes you worth 10x value plus other tech people get it, and networking is pretty much just advertising for yourself. Think of your self as a product, you skills are the service and gauge how to sell them and how to improve. Also note what people want and attack that point

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Euphoric-Ideal7442@reddit

Me :3

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WorstRegardsBye@reddit

Well me, I didn’t finish my bachelors on CS. I got an internship before “finishing” and continued from there, changing companies to get promotions. I’m a tech lead now with 5 years of experience

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PixlFX@reddit

Myself.

While I was in high school I worked on ecommerce 'bots'. If you remember during covid how sneakers, consoles and graphics cards were hard to get, I developed bots to purchase them. Through connections in the space, I joined an existing team to help build out their bot. It paid 60k, but that is better than nothing when you're in high school. The job wasn't easy at all, since we had to tend to any site updates, anti-bot updates, and manage over 1000 customers. A lot of 2am nights coding and debugging for a new release, with school at 9am the next day.

Fast forward about a year and a half, the niche is pretty much gone, as all the products became more widely available and the 'bubble' popped. Immediately started my job search after high school, and after a few months landed it at a medium sized SaaS.

The reseller space is still paying dividends to this day, as I connected a lot with the people there. I wouldn't discount any community you're a part of, they might help you land your first role or next. I say this as I'm interviewing for a pretty well known company, due to the team needing someone with my experience.

My advice for people trying to break into tech without a degree? Build things, it's something to watch a video on 'how to code in X language', but taking advice from those videos and building software from it will cement it into your mind. That's how I found my favorite language. It's also perfectly fine if programming doesn't work for you, and you shouldn't feel ashamed if it doesn't make sense no matter how hard you try.

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Cool_Bridge_5261@reddit

Yes, myself. An acquaintance hit me up in February of 2023, asking if I could build a website for her new business because she knew me as someone who was "good with computers". The site needed eCommerce functionality.

Rather than use something like Shopify or Squarespace or Wix, which is what she assumed I would do, I decided to subject myself to the masochism of learning the MERN stack and building everything from scratch in three months while working my full-time manual labor job. I had no full-stack development experience and had only ever done a few crash courses on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. That said, I did require amphetamines to complete this task.

To complete this project, I worked through, copying line-by-line, Brad Travery's "MERN From Scratch 2023 | eCommerce Platform" on Udemy. Then, using what I learned, I modified what resulted from that course until I had something that met the business requirements, after which I handled DNS stuff and deployment and launched the site. I made $300. First portfolio project complete, May 2023, hooray!

While explaining the MERN stack to a friend of mine at a local cafe as I was working on the project, a Senior Engineer who worked at Databricks happened to be in the same cafe and overheard me. He encouraged me to start looking for a job soon. So, after the site launch, I asked a friend of mine who had experience building Squarespace websites for small businesses if she had any advice for getting into contracting. She suggested I message a friend of hers who happened to be both a CTO and Director of Technology at two small local companies.

I messaged him, he gave me what advice he could, and mentioned one of the companies he worked at might be hiring more React devs in the near future. I asked for further details regarding what tech stack they used, he told me Next.js with Tailwind, and I proceeded to spend the next few months following along with CodeWithAntonio's Next.js YouTube tutorials until said company had a spot and hired me part-time in November of 2023. I did everything I could to hit the ground running, and they hired me full-time in January of 2024, allowing me to finally quit working jobs I hate.

I've been a full-stack dev for over a year now, have received two raises in that time, and still don't have a high school diploma.

TL:DR; A lot of hard-work, determination and substance abuse, but mostly a LOT of luck meeting the right people and doing everything I could to follow up on those connections.

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da_bean_counter@reddit

I took a 6 month boot camp at 28 and now I’m a 29 yr old junior front end web dev

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Exciting_Repeat_5995@reddit

If you mean without degree in computer science, then I have a degree in Physics but working as a dev. But to be honest, those fields are interconnected

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b_on_the_keys@reddit

I took a role change from Technical Support Engineer to Software Development Engineer back in November. I have no degree, really no college experience at all. I’ve never completed a full online course for programming cause I found them hard to stick with, and I have no certifications. What did it for me was working at my company for many years in warehousing, working my way up while learning some programming concepts on the side. Around 2.5 years in I was promoted to manager and I tried to automate as much of that job as possible (the computer parts of course lol, I loved being hands on as a people manager). That essentially gave me some real world applications of my skills to discuss in an interview. At the 5.5 years mark I finally got accepted to a technical support engineer role. After about 6 months, I got pulled to a software team and worked under my technical support engineer title while I got direct experience working as an SDE. Then at the 7.5 years mark I was officially given my SDE role.

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Jrollins621@reddit

Me. Mid forties. No degree or formal education in anything software. I just always had a natural talent I guess and not afraid to take risks putting in for jobs I’m not qualified for on paper. Currently a senior software engineer. Have been doing this for the last 15 years. Didn’t exactly take the quick path to get to where I’m at, but here I am.

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erebusman@reddit

I did.

I bo g it a 1300 page Java book and did itself paced..and wrote an application while I was doing all the exercises.

Every chapter I would say " oh look .. hered how I can save my data.." or "oh I bet I can use this dictionary to store some data".

When I was commuting I would listen to free Stanford University lectures on iTunes for Java also.

When I was done I then studied for the Java 6 certification exam like a madman for 30 days and then I interviewed at a Java shop - they said I scored the highest on their tests anyone had ever done.

Ironically I was making 55k in IT at the time and getting that job got me up to a whopping 56K..

But it opened the door and I make more now

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Klutzy-Love-25@reddit

Buddy of mine dropped out. He’s an AI engineer and writes better code than I could if I practiced for 15 years. If you’re gifted you can find a job

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penguinino@reddit

I have a degree in biology and a job as a SWE

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vysmvm@reddit

hi im someone. full time, i only have my highschool diploma.

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MarkDapper7613@reddit

I was a software developer at Costco, working on programs on the Iseries. It’s hard to find RPG developers without outsourcing them so the company isn’t super strict on developers having a degree. I have a certificate in software development but no degree. I left the position after about a year.

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ohhmy097@reddit

One of the lead engineers on our team, youngest on our team, and easily the brightest has no degree.

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Kidfromtha650@reddit

Idk about the last 5 years but in my 25 years or so in Tech, A LOT. I'm not a developer but I do code on occasion for work and have no degree.

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ractivator@reddit

🙋🏻‍♂️

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husky_whisperer@reddit

🙋

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work_anon_lincoln@reddit

I taught a person who had their journeyman ticket in automotive. They are now working as a software dev for 3 years.

How did they do it?

During covid, they lost their job - so I encouraged them to learn a bit of python. Just to see how they found the language and working with computers. After this I slowly taught them uni level courses (just the important ones for the job, python, java, software design, ds and algos) - after which we started working on a side project together (something to show off for his portfolio). The rest is history.

I think having a mentor like me present helped them a lot, and it also helped me understand the concept better.

So yeah, to answer your question this is how they got a coding job without a degree.

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Cultural-Question-50@reddit

Got into an internship, and was eventually hired by the same company.

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_v3nd3tt4@reddit

Me. High school dropout. I got into coding and quickly took it serious, dedicating 12 hours a day. After a few years I was helping beginners in forums and having discussions with professionals. That's when I thought I had a shot at getting a job in it. I applied to a few places, got interviews but denied. But I learned a lot about what was expected and what they were looking for when I went through the interview process. I made some projects specifically for demo purposes, and put them on USB. One of those projects was a website which show cased my other projects. I took with me any achievements I received from other employers and my yearly reviews, to display my professional competency and attitude for progression. I took a white board test, passed with what he described as close to 100% as I would get, and was hired. Been working professionally for 13 years now.

While I did drop out of high-school, I got my GED around the time I started learning programming because I saw an ad for a technical college that taught game development, and i thought it fit perfectly since i was learning dev and i also have an artistic nature. I went to that college (Gibbs), but it turned out to be a scam and was a pretty week graphic design course, not game dev. I had these before I landed my first job. I did not finish Gibbs due to personal circumstances. After 10 years I decided to go to school for computer science, and I was there for 1 year and dropped out due to not being able to afford the classes (paying cash since Gibbs was a loan and I wasn't eligible for another loan).

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itemluminouswadison@reddit

Yes I interviewed him and hired him

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ldconfig@reddit

I don’t have a degree but have held a few coding jobs in the past (recently laid off)

It makes it a lot more challenging and you’ll be first in line for layoffs and such but it’s not impossible. LOTS of jobs deny me off the bat for having no degree despite 8+ years of experience at this point.

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AridVII@reddit

I know him

He's me

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FrozenFirebat@reddit

I worked retail out of high school and never went to college. I always liked programming and one day, here on reddit of all places, I met a guy creating a startup in the gaming space that needed a graphics programmer familiar with Vulkan, which had just come out and I happened to be an early adopter.

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Spider-Dev@reddit

Me! Currently 41 years old with an associates in film production.

I taught myself Java over a 4 year period starting in 2010. Got my first job as an android dev at a start-up in 2015. Was there just under a year before moving to a contractor agency. After about a year and a half, I was hired at NBC Universal.

In 2019, I made the move to Disney as a Senior Android dev. You can say a lot about the company but I can honestly say being on their digital team has been the best job I've ever had in any industry. Pay, benefits, work/life balance...no complaints whatsoever

I've hit a wall, though. I can't move into lead and manager roles without a degree. I'm going to school online in my spare time and was able to get life experience credit towards it. Starting at 33% completion towards my Comp Sci bachelor's with the goal of completing it in 2 years. Using Disney's tuition reimbursement, it'll cost me just the electives when all is said and done

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Low_Print9874@reddit

Me! Went to a code camp in 2018 and 6 months later got a job at a startup.

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spectre013@reddit

Finally got a degree after being a software engineer for 25 years

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helios392@reddit

Myself. Got a job as technical support/QA for a small company, worked my way up to developer. After about 8-10 years combined experience the company went under and I landed a full stack software engineer position at Microsoft.

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CodeFactoryWorker@reddit

I didn’t have a degree when I landed my first coding job. I was factory worker until 25.

I however pursued online university, and it opened more opportunities than before.

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WOLFMAN_SPA@reddit

Me

I went to a coding bootcamp. Been in the industry 5 years.

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UsualAd3503@reddit

My dad is a high level engineer at Microsoft with no degree, he joined Microsoft when the company he worked at was bought out.

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amishstripclub@reddit

I don’t have a degree. I asked here on Reddit 11yrs ago about programming a competitor to Etsy. People flamed me (of course) and someone suggested I learn to program it myself. So I did. Been a software engineer professionally for 10 years now.

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mandaliet@reddit

Do you mean without a CS degree, or without any degree at all? I've had team members without CS degrees, people who had only associates degrees rather than four-year degrees (i.e. community college graduates), etc. But if you mean absolutely no degree, I don't know that I've encountered that personally.

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internetbl0ke@reddit

yeah me

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dieginmachin@reddit

A friend of mine learned to code and got into Y Combinator

He learned in YT

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Automatic_assists9@reddit

learning on the internet for free and practice practise practice

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Rue9X@reddit

I have a degree in creative writing but have almost exclusively worked as a programmer.

Worked in manual game QA for several years. Worked in legal document processing, got bored and automated my workflow. Boss's boss noticed, got asked to put together a team of crack coders.

Been coding at different places ever since.

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RufusVS@reddit

The last 5 years is vastly different to my career in the computer business: I never completed college, but I grew up with the growth of computers, so at the time demand for programmers was such a degree was not a requirement. In fact, there were very few colleges with Computer Science programs to begin with. Nowadays you have to have connections or an amazing resume and even those may not even get you through the door. I'm semi-retired now, not looking for work, but if interesting work finds me, I'd work for the intellectual challenges and a little pin money. I don't envy folks looking for work these days. As I understand it, you vastly improve the odds if you contribute code to an open-source project or two, and have at least one working project of your own available on github to show what you are capable of. The good news would be the company that looks at your accomplishments rather than a degree, is a company you'd be happier working for. Good luck!

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shirajragaming@reddit

Yes

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Longjumping_Farm1@reddit

This is the camp I'm in. Currently learning coding, specifically python. Ive a degree in linguistics but nothing CS related.

I've absolutely zero idea going forward how to get a job out of it. Very happy to do an internship or start entry level but don't know how or where.

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Aware_Patience_4252@reddit

Myself I suppose

Taught myself, started working part time in a start up, got lucky with an opportunity to work abroad for a while

This got me ~3 years of experience in the industry, some good standards I learned to include in my portfolio projects and time spend with clients in a foreign country. Looks good enough on a resume together to land a junior job provided you can talk and present your skills in some way

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Trick-Interaction396@reddit

Mark Zuckerberg

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movin-north@reddit

Studied liberal arts.

Around age 26 or 27, decided to try learning programming-- Bought a book on Php & MySQL. Over the next 3-4 years, I taught myself basic python & web design, then got more and more into javascript.

Programming really did not click for me until I took a course on statistics, where I programmed in R. Then I finally had an epiphany about data & passing data into functions to operate on the data and output some result... and realized "ohhhh that's all programming is?"

Lived in a tent and in a foreign country during parts of that time, in order to keep my expenses down so I could continue self-teaching

It wasn't until I realized "if I want to be a SWE, I should move to SWE Mecca: Silicon Valley". Landed my first job in SWE in about one month. Laid off 4 months later b/c no more projects for me to work on (i completed a marketing data integration between two apps, via rest api & a nodejs script).

After being laid off... It took me about a year to finally get my next job. During that year is when I really spent time living in a tent, in a foreign country, and on a rural property (with no social life)... and I spent about 6 months of that time focused just on one project: I built a full stack web app w/ NodeJS, ReactJS, and PostgreSQL.

Once I finished the project, I published a website about my background & the project. And within 2 weeks, was in an interview process for a remote programming job.

Was it easy? No.

Was it worth it? Definitely. I love having these skills and the ability to create new things.

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Metsuu-@reddit

I got hired for my first job 9 months ago with another guy I’ll call Bob. Bob has a degree but it’s in another field altogether. This is about as close as I’ve gotten… I know a few people that got a job while in a degree though!

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bothunter@reddit

Yup. Worked at Microsoft for awhile. One of my coworkers was a principal level software engineer who worked his way up from tech support after getting kicked out of college.

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R2D2_VERSE@reddit

Myself, I started my degree, did two years and right when I was getting into the hardcore cs stuff I dropped out, started getting jobs, and used the impostor syndrome to go the extra mile every time. Also, I learned how to get jobs without a degree, I realized nobody asked about your degree when you had developed anything on your own. My case I had developed two mobile apps with react native during react native early days so I actually started learning these react principles as soon as they came out and I just rode the react wave all the way through here. Ended up getting a well paying corp job for 145 k where all the shit I learned was only useful to get their shit cleaned, but they dont care how I do it. Now probably close to loose it to ai so glad didnt get a degree

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ActiveSalamander6580@reddit

I did. I trained people how to use the system, Operations manager for development saw how I planned and approached things, asked me to apply for the role of developing the system. I did some logical thinking tests at the interview and managed to secure it.

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glaz5@reddit

Me in August of this year. Built a portfolio of stuff I was interested in and applied through Indeed using custom resumes/cover letters for each company I was interested in (no default Indeed resumes). Was lucky enough to land an interview and did well enough to be hired.

That being said the job was a nightmare fintech sweatshop expecting 50+hr work weeks and I quit only days ago, but thats a story for another time...

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iusetoomuchdrano@reddit

What was the interview process like?

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glaz5@reddit

Long, about 3 weeks. Composed of a inital phonecall, generic zoom interview, coding assessment, panel interview, then job offer

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UbiquitousStarlord@reddit

If you think 50+ hours qualifies as a sweatshop, then you must be French or Italian. Jokes aside, congrats! You might have already quit but at least you broke in and landed your first role.

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D0MiN0H@reddit

does it count if my degree is in English? i did a boot camp in 2019 and i’m a senior dev in fintech rn

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eden-need-hollywatah@reddit

Half of the guys on youtube to be fair

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Content-Tank6027@reddit

Lots of people. The trick is to not get rejected by HR, so personal contacts come into play. After you have non-zero experience lack of degree is not a problem at all. Also if you are student lack of degree is again not a problem.

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ShadoughyFigure@reddit

Me. I worked in IT Support for seven years, and for the last two I was doing a lot of automation in Powershell and Python. That taught me a lot of the basics of programming and I eventually got into .NET. In 2020 I worked at small but quickly growing company, as a senior support technician, and they offered me a full stack developer position. I did get lucky in many respects. I worked at a place that allowed me time to learn and in 2020 the market was quite different.

However, I still believe this is a viable path to becoming a programmer, even if it takes a lot of time, work, and a little luck to get there. Many Redditors will tell you that you'll never get a programming job without any sort of degree, but they've been saying that since before I was a programmer.

The key is to never stop learning. Once you have a solid understanding of the basics of your chosen language, learn about more abstract concepts, learn about design patterns and basic design principles. Learn the SOLID principles, and learn how they are actually applied. Build stuff. Challenge yourself. Learn about Azure or AWS and deploy an app service or a function app. Learn about pipelines. Learn about CI/CD.

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Gonza-dev@reddit

Yes, me, but it was in the ending of 2021 (high demand + 1.5 self taught on web dev + one recomendation) I got my first coding job in the first interview I had.

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xxlaww@reddit

Most devs i know don't have a college degree. Most college graduates/bachelors that I know work in entry level IT

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LossPreventionGuy@reddit

the majority of the people I worked with did not go to school for computer science. it's really not necessary if you're properly motivated.

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bazinga-boi@reddit

Yeah, he works at Shopify now. Dudes a stud and super smart

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vibingrvlife@reddit

I have a degree in education but switching to programming later in life. Going the self-taught route.

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random-malachi@reddit

Me, but this was in 2016. I was a “web specialist” for a county library system working with PHP, MySQL, Solr. 40k TC. I graduated around 2020 and shortly after I became a senior engineer in info sec 120k.

My secret was to read a lot, practice coding, started at the library in another role and look for a path (clerk, to tech trainer, to the first web dev gig). Part of being hirable is luck, but it also helps to tell a story. Mine was “I am working really hard on my degree and love coding and helping the public and…”

I know this is not typical for anyone today. People do still work in the industry without degrees. They just have experience. That first job requires luck and planning.

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Infamous-Mechanic-41@reddit

I’m probably too late for this to be any use. But here goes. I’m on my 3rd coding job since 2017 and I graduated high school almost 20 years ago. I did it by learning my first languages throughout grade 3-4, got heavy into web dev throughout high school (PHP, MySQL), did loads of technical support jobs. Relocated when I got with my wife and basically experienced a reset where I did factories, restaurants, and gas stations for a few years. Finally broke back into the tech sector in this area, got a great referral to a healthcare company shortly after a former coworker joined them. I did support for that company a couple years… this was the first job that allowed me to write code and automate support tasks, I also got really close with dev teams, did lots of QA and related automations, and finally got invited to interview for a coding role. I grinded out experience and promotions for a few years before jumping to another company and doubling my salary basically overnight.

I’ve had a few offers here and there but used them to negotiate raises until the beginning of this year when I accepted my 3rd engineering job.

It IS NOT easy. I got lucky with the healthcare job because they were making a greenfield app and didn’t have time to develop for support tasks, so I proved myself there. If it weren’t for that stroke of luck, I’d probably still be trying to make a living with PC repair and other support activities.

Getting a new role is highly competitive for educated folks, so when you find a role that will accept knowledge and/or experience in lieu of education, it’s twice as competitive.

I found a program through coursera which has an experience based admissions program for a masters; I’ll begin studying in that program this summer. Naysayers suggest that it’s a waste of my time since I have enough YOE to remove education from my resume if I did have it. But I doubt they truly understand my struggles and the implications on my mental health when I start searching for new roles.

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JestersDead77@reddit

Me.

I was learning programming on my own for a while, and had considered making a career change, but it was too hard to commit to quitting my job to do a bootcamp.

Then covid happened and I lost my job. I did a bootcamp and got hired after about 3 months of sending out applications. I've been there about 4 years. I have no real degree, but my old career was technical, and I had a couple little personal projects on my resume.

If a company is hiring juniors, they generally assume you don't really know shit. As long as you can pass the code challenges, they're sometimes more swayed by the interview than your degree.

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onyxengine@reddit

Yea, me

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MarkGiaconiaAuthor@reddit

I’ve been hiring people into coding jobs for like 15 years. I’d say over half the people applying and getting hired don’t have CS/SE degrees, and some have no degrees at all. If you can code you can code. I had no degree when I started coding in the Army, then got an English lit degree, and wasn’t until I could already write code fluently that I got an MS in software eng and in hindsight I really didn’t need to do that. FWIW

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Realistic-Ad5812@reddit

lol me, no degree but coding fulltime.

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Mysterious_Poem4081@reddit

I got a coding job with no degree. Dropped out of uni my second year attempting to major in Econ. I worked my way up from tech support > help desk > system administration > field engineering > software engineer > AI Engineer

The things is that certs, work experience and tangible projects do matter a lot. To get to the next level you have to do something to “prove” your ability whether it be getting an applicable certification or doing a real project. For me I started learning how to code, then I started learning how to do practical things like building an e-commerce website and deploying it to a cloud service or building an API generator. These are things that are youtube-able and chatgpt-able. You just need to find the time a patience to hone those skills and create something real.

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Nutzori@reddit

I am currently getting a degree and theres a younger guy in my class who already worked at a game company before enrolling. He is doing it for the credentials later on even though he already has the skills. Pretty common if you become a hobbyist as a teenager.

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Dypa3@reddit

Meeeee

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magnagag@reddit

Me, dropped uni at first grade. 3years in software engineering.

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Thick_Locksmith5944@reddit

I did. I'm senior software engineer. Last time I switched jobs was 2 years ago.

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Boopbeepboopmeep@reddit

Yeah

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JohnVonachen@reddit

I don’t have a 4 year degree and I have had a number of development jobs. My first job was as swqa for medical devices which was in 1998 when there was a pretty large and expanding economic tech bubble. After that I was hired as a developer for a game studio around 2000. Today? Nearly impossible to be hired as a developer with no 4 year degree and no experience, in fact even then. Nearly impossible. Why would they? It’s perfectly reasonable. No one wants to train even a tiny little bit. Zero. That’s just life.

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IJaaay@reddit

I did. Got one this year. Built practice projects to showcase skills.

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PrimaryRelative4036@reddit

I know many people who do not have a computer science degree and are far better developers than people with degrees.

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SinkGeneral4619@reddit

Yes as a head of engineering I've employed quite a few of them. I don't have a degree myself.

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tetshi@reddit

Literally me and every single person I work with. So… 8 of us?

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drewism@reddit

Yes. Myself. I didn't need a degree so never bothered. But I got in early back in the 1996. I had been coding since I was 6 basically and in the '90s you didn't really need a degree if you were good enough. Next year (2026) I will hit 30 years of programming experience, been working at a high level for 3 decades. Sadly my experience here is not relevant to today's engineers where there is much, much, much, much more competition.

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world_dark_place@reddit

I cant reach industry even with a masters and 1 yoe...

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justveryverytired@reddit

Me. Career transition. Took a web dev bootcamp during the pandemic. Continued learning while building a couple small projects. Someone I knew was on a team that wanted a green newbie they could mold, and told me to apply. I applied, showed them my side projects, spent all weekend on the coding challenge (build some specific functionality in a CMS framework). Got the job.

FWIW I got zero traction with the “spray and pray” method of sending out thousands of resumes. The career counselors at the boot camp were right: it is your personal connections and network that will most likely get you that first job. Tell everyone you know you’re looking for a dev job, and have them tell everyone they know. And build stuff. Doesn’t matter what.

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world_dark_place@reddit

Oh shit and im studying a masters...

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RaiseYourDongersOP@reddit

My problem is I dont really know what to build. I should work on side projects but I'm at a loss for what those would be

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Sufficient-Copy-9012@reddit

Thats great, can you share the bootcamp details or suggets any bootcamp or a roadmap as currently I am learning HTMl & CSS through ODIN and youtube but I am not sure thats the correct path.

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cheekynative@reddit

This is the way

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TA-X876@reddit

I couldn't agree more with your last statement. After I finished coding bootcamp I went to dozens of interviews which lead nowhere.

When an acquaintance put in a good word for me at their friends company, I got a job after the first interview.

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Ruck_and_Maul@reddit

This was me too. Bootcamp at the start of 2022. Every job since then I have been referred to via my network and then passed interviews.

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V62926685@reddit

Personally, I learned the basic web design stack (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) simply from examining various pages in the late-nineties/early-aughts.

Much later I took a C++ class in a local college for the two semesters it lasted. Loved the Prof and went well ahead of the course criteria. The rest of college was going to be completely unrelated crap, so I dropped out and instead found an IT job.

I started as a basic help desk tech supporting numerous sites across the US, at one point even running it solo for a good while and still rocking the queue. During that time, I used that C++ I learned to automate some BS file scrubbing someone was spending multiple hours a week performing; I just threw together a quick console app with a configuration file to define the record filtering rules. Personally, I did it because it's what I knew should be done there, however it fell well above my pay grade, considering we had an in-house dev team whose manager took notice and gave props where due. Began negotiations into the dev team, but my family was moving and that didn't pan out.

Next job was a contract-to-hire kinda role for a software development company, where I became the SME for the platform I was assigned to and was hired as such immediately after the contract allowed. A QA Automation job opened up, C# based, which I'd never compiled before; seen once or twice but never compiled. I took over that code base and improved it by literally over 65% runtime reduction and reliability across full stack testing within the first year; 95% by the time I left that to join the dev team for my first official app dev role.

I'm still coding, primarily in C#, though I'm a couple companies further in at this point. I can easily sit and code all day and enjoy every minute to varying degrees. I love what I do and currently love the crew and company I code with. Degrees only show that you can grasp the general concepts; it doesn't speak shit to one's ability to abstractly design software while adhering to established coding standards or even an affinity for linguistics in general.

Good luck

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tnnrk@reddit

Build stuff and know someone who works somewhere that’s hiring to get experience.

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dryo@reddit

me,was 32, Product Design Engineer, with 7 years of experience then everyone stopped giving shit about physical product design engineers, decided to shift, thought It was a good to just transition to UX, saw how limiting that was, prepared for a year on the basics, then took a bootcamp, nailed it, got a job after three months of a gruelling total 75 applications and an extra personal project, got a job, sucked at it, learned, changed departments, now, a Sec Dev Ops Engineer.

Not easy, but totally worth it.

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bluefyre91@reddit

Graduated with a degree in biology, but learned coding (Python and R) on my own for bioinformatics. Then, later got a coding-based job in bioinformatics.

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Logical_Angle2935@reddit

Personally, I would hire someone without a degree if they demonstrate skills and experience. That is a hard path to take, but not impossible.

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Quiet_Storm13@reddit

Me. Dropped out of college and got a sales job because I needed money. 5 years later I did a coding bootcamp and had landed a job after completing the program.

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Effective-South-5814@reddit

One of my closest friends quit university after the first year and started working on as an internship in a company. In 3 years he switched companies like 6 times or more. In 6-7 years he became Tech Lead, now he is a CTO in a company abroad in Europe (8 years career). He refused a couple of big tech opportunities and went for some leadership position in smaller companies. No degree, no certifications, nothing. Programming is his work and also his hobby. I tried to follow his footsteps, but was not for me.

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OptimalFox1800@reddit

Couple of people

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tamerlan_g@reddit

I don’t have any degree, I got around 5 years of professional experience.

I seem to be doing well and in the beginning was a bit insecure about my lack of college education but I simply studied the fundamentals myself using teachyourselfcs curriculum.

But keep in mind that I like programming and have been doing it since I was a kid, I don’t see it as a chore, I just do what I find fun.

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Thanos0423@reddit

I did. Currently making 200k after bonuses and everything.

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Inner-Sundae-8669@reddit

I have a bachelor's in accounting, been working as a developer for about 6-7 years. Actually i don't think a degree helps that much, colleges are too slow, being taught by people who, if it's their first year teaching, and they were super up to date on the newest technologies, barely worked back when react (for example) was brand new, that's if they ever worked in the industry at all. Experience doing the thing they want done trumps everything, experience can be acquired when you're not on the job by building things. Certs don't really matter either, they show that you're into it, that's about it. Experience shows you can cut it, big difference.

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raginpsycho@reddit

I have someone on my team that did

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Stiff_Stubble@reddit

Yes- they took a data boot camp and then became an analyst

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FordPrefect343@reddit

Yup, a buddy of mine got a job through his program, still has finished it and he works at a large company as a backend dev now

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According_Maximum222@reddit

By without a degree, do you mean without a computer science degree?

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ItsRaageee@reddit

Hey, transitioned from a management role in a retail store to software engineering. 9 months of learning and have been working for a year and a half.

Just intensive learning sessions, at my own pace learning from courses or YouTube.

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thomasyhall@reddit

Me (36M). I was a nurse but left in 2017 because I didn't feel valued. I went on glassdoor and looked up the nearest company with a high employee satisfaction rating and found a relatively new tech startup. I started in support and had no coding or IT experience. I am a lifelong apple user, so I thought I couldn't do any of the real computer stuff. My first self-learning was freecodecamp so i could convey customer requests more intelligently to our devs, then I moved on to youtube. Kept asking for more responsibility and today I'm our Devops engineer managing the gcp infra, our full stack engineer ideating and creating pages for production, and our data engineer building queries for native data sets and orchestrating with tools like airflow and Jenkins. I'm still crazy underpaid, but the education opportunity and the independence have been incredible. I was lucky to find a company that let me wear a lot of hats. It's definitely you who has to show you have the room on your head.

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SirGreenDragon@reddit

I have gotten many programming jobs without a degree. I got my BS in 2022, but I got my first full-time programming job in 1984.

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Forumrider4life@reddit

I would say you can but you need either a good portfolio or years with the company. Sometimes you can get tabletops where you can show you know what you do but that would potentially be smaller orgs.

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Freyja_the_derpyderp@reddit

I used to hire full stack or front end devs with just boot camps if they could complete my dev test and answer my questions

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k-rizza@reddit

I’m a high school drop out.

I’ve just always been very interested in tech. I started off as a graphic designer. I learned photoshop, illustrator, InDesign, etc in an after school program. Shortly after I got interested in web development. I attempted to learn Adobe Flash coding and kinda failed. Years later I learned PHP, I bought a course and started building things. I’ve used everything from C# to objective C and many web technologies.

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HadEnoughOfThisWorld@reddit

SVP in my company got a coding job without degree. But this was in the 90s during COBOL time.

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SciGuy241@reddit (OP)

Ok. Thanks. Not what I was looking for. Sorry should have specified the last 5 years.

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jameyiguess@reddit

Of course I know him. He's me.

Plus like half my teammates.

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Pretagonist@reddit

Yeah, we have like two guys who actually have degrees. I flunked out a couple of years into uni and some on my team haven't ever finished any higher education. Although those of us without any degree have been tinkering with computers and programming since we were children.

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jameyiguess@reddit

Yeah that latter part sounds true

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Available-Agency8307@reddit

I know a guy that started in sales at AT&T, started selling network infrastructure, got into setting it up, then became a network engineer, now he works on a lot of cool projects and makes like 200k

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darkmemory@reddit

I have a degree, but only in Modern Lit. First job I got out of school was for a joke of a start up, worked there for less than a month before I left due to their lack of ability to do anything, after that got a random interview with a consultancy agency that was basically just a coding interview and miniproject, did that, got hired, got shipped around to a couple of projects, eventually got sent out to a major corp, worked there for over a decade, for a couple different agencies. Went from a jr. dev to sr., to sr. eng., to sr. architect.

But the real process that I think was important was before any of that. It's about building a love for problem solving and foundations of system-oriented thinking. If you struggle with either of those, working to build those skills will be the most valuable, not just for this profession, but for life in general. Allow yourself to be curious. Strive to understand the underlying aspects that tie pieces together, and put in the time to evaluate them personally so you engage with the topics as live breathing entities instead of just rules. Understanding the positions ideas can fit are still important, but rules are not concrete things, they are abstractions, knowing how to build that abstraction in ways that benefit the real world application will only come about from thinking and theorizing about it.

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TheGiik@reddit

Me! I self-taught GML for like 10 years, made some popular mods for a game. Then I asked the guy who made the game for a job over twitter, since I noticed them struggling to get updates out. He said yeah sure, and i've been working for 'em for like 5 years now.

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sunmat02@reddit

I know someone who dropped out of her first year of college, she had taught herself coding and got a position in a company doing consulting for people who needed cloud setups, mostly on Azure. Over the years she became an expert in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, to the point of being noticed by Microsoft (because she kept contacting them to point out flaws, ask for features for her customers, etc.) and she got recruited by them recently, at a senior level.

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SharkLaunch@reddit

I got started when I was 18, did a boot camp at 22, hired at 23. I'm just in it for the code.

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Go0bling@reddit

yea but u need an “education”

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DamionDreggs@reddit

Heh, "education" is for people who know stuff.

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DamionDreggs@reddit

I do not have a degree. I have been developing software professionally for 15 years, but started as a hobby on and off for about ten years prior to that.

If you're passionate about something it's easy to get a job, all you have to do is be seen doing the thing you're passionate about

It's also easy because you'll work for half of what everyone around you is getting paid for long enough to build up your experience!

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CarIcy6146@reddit

Me. Had to start small and leverage into new positions and roles every year or two. My first coding job was a job placement in high school. Did this for a bit and built up a portfolio at home on the side. Something that could demonstrate my well rounded abilities. Been a steady climb ever since.

In my experience the only thing that really separates me from my peers who have degrees is they may know some computer science theory stuff and I don’t. But my experience far surpasses any technical training I lack. Knowing how to solve problems and be resourceful is more important than technical training IMO

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Feeling_Photograph_5@reddit

Yes, one of the senior developers on my team does not have a degree, and we hired another self-taught dev but he later went on to earn his degree.

And I know a bunch of developers that have non-CS degrees. My own degree is in IT, not CS.

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jacobvso@reddit

I don't have a true developer job but I have a job where I do lots of coding and where I was hired partly because of my coding skills. I don't think I could have been actually hired as a software developer. It's all about combining the skills you have.

I did it by first taking some solid introductory courses, then working on a series of projects that I came up with myself and found interesting, each time documenting the outcome elaborately on my Github and writing a smaller blurb for my CV.

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ZakielTelsa@reddit

I am a SQL Dev. Does that count? Still got massive Imposter syndrome after 2.5 years.

I graduated high school at 37 years old. Got the job at 41 years old. All my experience was Customer Service management prior.

I took a boot camp class for C# that besides learning some basic fundamentals was a waste of time and money, except it was enough to convince them to give me the job I have that I am not good enough to be doing, but I try hard.

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Auios@reddit

Of course I know him. He's me.

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RoxoRoxo@reddit

a buddy of mine from the army got one, hes got some college cooking time no idea if he ever graduated though.

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trojanvirus_exe@reddit

Learning online bro and internships back when

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SickPuppy01@reddit

Me. Coding has been hobby since I got my first computer (ZX81) back in the 80s.

I didn't really pick up doing as a job until I was in my late 30s, when I set myself up as a freelancer. I started on small projects and built up my skills so I could take on bigger and bigger projects. I blogged and recorded my whole journey on several sites like LinkedIn. A couple of projects turned into corporate jobs.

But when I applied for jobs elsewhere, my lack of degree wasn't really an issue as I was able to point to my proven record with a combination of my blogging and client testimonials. I now work for a software company in central London.

Many lazy HR departments use a degree education as a lazy way of filtering applicants down. Having other proof of your skills can get you around this.

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NeonVolcom@reddit

Yeah me lol. But I started as QA and through contracting I was able to netowkr and build up my skills. Been programming for 10 years, professionally coding for 5.

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Garblin@reddit

Client of mine, can't give much details, but went from a cashier to a lead dev over the course of about a decade of serious self study and hard work.

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gms_fan@reddit

Me. I did software consulting when I was in high school and wrote a system for managing video rental stores and sold that to several businesses.
I was in the military for 7 years doing some not very computer related things.
Afterward, I was hired by the US subsidiary of a small British software company that Microsoft bought a year later and then I worked at Microsoft for 17 years total, as well as a speech startup, Amazon and Unity Technologies.

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Xeripha@reddit

I love it.

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xXShadowAssassin69Xx@reddit

Can you tell me more about building software and then reselling it? I have build many video production tools that would save video creators a lot of time, but haven’t really thought through selling it. Would love to hear your story from someone who’s done this successfully!

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gms_fan@reddit

It's utterly different now than it was in that pre-internet, pre-mobile device time. In many ways, it has gotten easier, in some more difficult.

Tools for writing software now are generally free or very inexpensive. These used to be major investments. Like a C compiler or a really good assembler/debugger package would cost perhaps a couple hundred dollars (adjusted for inflation). Distribution was literally duplicating floppies, putting labels on them and mailing them.

Today, you have a wide range of excellent tools and frameworks for free, you have the internet to learn and join communities. For distribution, you can build a web-based solution with zero install to user machines or you can use app stores like Apple, Google, Amazon, Steam or Microsoft. (There are also specialty software channels that focus on academic or industrial segments and I'm sure tons of others I'm not even aware of.)

The downside is that the added exposure of connected apps means you are always concerned about security and there are all kinds of regulations around user data. In exchange for dealing with that, though, you have an audience not of hundreds or perhaps thousands, but an international potential customer base of many millions.

You mention video tools. People think of Steam as a place for games, but there are quite a few productivity tools sold there too. So you'd publish it on any one of those stores I mentioned but it really is YOUR responsibility to market that app to your intended audience. Which isn't easy. Traditionally, this has been the role of a publisher, but for a small operation any publishing deal would usually come AFTER you've demonstrated success.

And, of course, all those app stores and publishers and payment servicers are all going to take a cut of the revenues. That's really just part of doing business today.

If you build something that genuinely solves what I call a "valuable problem" for a customer - that is, a problem they have that they see is worth them spending money to solve - then you can definitely make money still in this business. Sometimes a lot of it.

My advice would be to take some steps but grow at the speed of cash. You certainly shouldn't take on debt or partners to make this happen.

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xXShadowAssassin69Xx@reddit

This is very insightful. A lot to think about. Thank you!

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Sagoram123@reddit

Me. Comp Sci major 2014-2016. Dropped out because I was looking up coursework ahead of time. Realized I didn’t need to pay money for knowledge. Spent years doing Udemy courses, freecodecamp, etc. 4 years later, I wanted/needed the structure to put together all the pieces, so I attended a full-time bootcamp. Coworker who also went to that bootcamp hired me.

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Krikcet@reddit

I have two music degrees, but I learned to code using The Odin Project (mostly) and landed a job. It's been about 2.5 years now. I went from zero code experience to job offer in 1 year and 26 days.

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Due-Storage-9039@reddit

Me, I’ve been programming since a child and I refused to pay thousands for someone to poorly explain what I already knew. When I was 30 I finally found a hiring manager that took me seriously and I went from making 28k a year in fast food management to 120k senior dev in 2 years after that day.

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Street-Sail-9277@reddit

Me. Completed a dev bootcamp. I would not pursue this field unless you code for fun, therefore love it, industry is collapsing.

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Fleet_Fox_47@reddit

Yes, me. But it was more than 15 years ago and the industry was different then. Very high demand for devs and fewer CS grads available to hire. I had started in the tech industry already in a non-developer role and taught myself to code.

Keep in mind the bar on what devs need to know is higher now than what it was then. Basic front-end dev knowledge isn’t worth as much as it used to be.

I think the important thing to understand is why not get the CS degree. Because you don’t want the cost? The time it would take? Because you aren’t sure yet if coding is for you? Depending on the answer, the next step for you could look different.

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cyberladyDFW@reddit

Yes. I know a few

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Abhi_04@reddit

A friend of mine(in India) after 6-7 semesters in college, was unable to clear a few subjects, and decided to drop from college since those were mandatory but he was not at all interested.

Didn't really inform parents and started applying to few places(startups/service based companies) for internship. Started working with them, eventually got full time offer in the same companies.

In 2020, it was COVID, everything was remote, enrolled again in those courses, since colleges were lenient he was able to clear those courses, got the degree.

Switched to a better role and companies and now earning a dream package.

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Fit-Pound-3098@reddit

I did with just an associate's degree for 20 years ago, but I haven't even put it on my resume. However, this was back in 2022 when the industry was booming, and it started as a part-time gig which got converted to full-time when I impressed them with my performance in the first 3 months.

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rustyseapants@reddit

Our 2016 Developer Survey found that 56% of developers in fact do not have a college degree in computer science or related fields. The most popular way for developers to learn is by “self-teaching” in some way 69% of respondents told us they were at least partially self-taught; 13% said they were entirely self-taught

Source:https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/10/07/do-developers-need-college-degrees/

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EveningAd6783@reddit

I have a degree from pedagogy. now I do ML

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ShiroNii@reddit

A few -

Friend 1 who was in the Navy, finished his deployment, went to get a CS degree but dropped it in his first year in favor of a bootcamp. No college degree. Got a job as a SWE right after his bootcamp, then moved onto a new higher paying role after about 2 years. Laid off recently and is currently having difficulties finding a new role.

Friend 2 with a non-CS bachelor's, I think it was something in bio. Also went through a bootcamp and found a job as a SWE after. He shows a lot of interest in the career as a whole and spends a lot of his personal time reading about languages and tools as a hobby.

Friend 3 also graduated with a non-CS bachelor's, but became interested in the field on his own and started learning by building fun projects. No bootcamp for friend 3.

However, friend 3 has the highest success rate in getting interviews and making it to the final round. Personal projects, grinding LeetCode, and studying System Design are three things he had going for him when it came to getting a job.

Also the two friends who landed a role right after their bootcamps were in 2019, so take that with a grain of salt. I've heard the conversion rate from bootcamp to first job has dipped considerably in the recent years. I would take the safe route and study the usual interview prep alongside building a personal project, and just keep applying.

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freddeFN93@reddit

I showed a briefcase of my work on the interview, explained them along with a convincing attitude and educated manner.

I faked the CV though since every employer require a degree in programming or likewise education, to even get to an interview.

I just put some merits on behalf of what I thought was required( any program or school of 3y minimum would do). Apply to the jobs you like, include your projects in the CV and propose a talk about them aswell.

I am self employed today after almost 5 years as a software developer and I did most by myself googling etc.

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Important-Product210@reddit

They switched careers and came by a 6 month bootcamp. The knowledge gap is vast but intelligence offsets it and some of them learn veeery fast and that's refreshing.

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exomni@reddit

I transitioned from another field. I consider that field extremely related to software engineering, it involves tons of programming, but employers couldn't have cared less.

After months of being ignored on all my job applications I took an unpaid internship because I figured as long as I wasn't getting paid anyway, I might as well start building experience on my resume.

I think that unpaid internship really helped, because from there I finally got an interview for a paying job in town, and since then it's been pretty smooth. My assessment is that once you're in the industry you are building years of experience on your resume, and interviews will be easier to come by (and you'll have good networking opportunities). But breaking in was really quite hard and that was emotionally and mentally taxing: my talent and knowledge really didn't matter, employers would hardly give me the time of day. I'm glad I could live off ramen back then.

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Mayorka_22@reddit

Coding was my hobby since I was 9. I got my first "job" at 14 I started working as freelancer game developer/app developer worked with 5 clients I know not impressive but wanted to share :)

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exomni@reddit

Most people I know in programming have some sort of degree, either 4-year US or international equivalent or higher. However it's often not in computer science.

I've met a few people who dropped out of college early or went on hiatus, and just a handful who never did any college. Some of them took bootcamps to learn to program, others are just self-taught and worked on personal projects to build a portfolio for their job applications, others had a few years of programming classes from college and that's how they learned programming but they didn't finish their degree.

A lot of them have since gone back to school to get a degree. There are a lot of companies whose HR departments require all employees across the company to have a 4-year degree simply to apply, so it's not a good idea to get one jsut to tick the box, although if you are just ticking the box you should do it as cheaply as possible, postpone it if you can get a job first, do as much online-classes/local community-college transfer credits etc. At the end of the day unless you're going to some ivy-league school where the degree itself or the connections you can make are opening doors for you, it's really just for ticking a box.

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Sea_Helicopter4488@reddit

I have almost 20 years of experience and I didn’t went to college

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mdgart@reddit

Yes, me

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MrWorldwide94@reddit

I did. No degree. Just got fired from my first coding job after about 8 months. Was planning to share my journey in here soon.

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Sprinkadinky@reddit

I did, went from Warehousing up to ERP Administration (NetSuite) with focus on Automation (I learned JS & Python on the job and spare time)

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Sonic_andtails@reddit

I had a co-worker who was a Python developer and also a carpenter. He had zero background in tech before making the switch. Obviously, everything comes at a price—he invested a lot and worked hard. However, people usually don’t see that; they only notice that he’s a developer now, not the journey that got him there.

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Bridge4_Kal@reddit

Yeah, me.

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mraees93@reddit

Me. I did a learnership

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rustyshaackleeford@reddit

Me but I'm very bad at it

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floridalegend@reddit

I only have an Associates Degree without programming courses. Never matter once. I’ve had roles were I was focused on programming, but mostly it’s always paired with design. I worked on projects until I was hired and then everything else propelled onward. Ultimately I wanted to be a creative director, and that role requires to be very well rounded. Now I’m marketing manager, but web development programming is a large part of my job.

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smellbow@reddit

I have no degree, just UK college certs. Spent years working in little IT repair shops. Got into a support role at a school and then moved to a support role at a local Uni. Still work there but moved from 1st line to 2nd then 3rd and then into a developer role doing all sorts. Spent a lot of the down time in IT roles doing online coding tutorials and just messing around trying to make "stuff" nothing complicated, just getting the basics down. Imposter syndrome is a constant battle but I do enjoy the work and feel I'm always learning. 43 years old.

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Sure_Net_2216@reddit

Yeah I know many boot campers who are now working in software

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VanEagles17@reddit

My gf is a game designer and I've met lots of people in games that got their start self taught. Not sure how that market is these days though with outsourcing and importing workers.

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cahmyafahm@reddit

I have a mate who did a tafe course in IT (not sure what the equivalent is but it's more like certificates). Got a job programming print mail. He is now head of the dev/architects making very good money in management.

I worked for him for a while, he got me my first job.

I also work in IT though not a software dev I do spend a lot of time coding and I did not get an IT degree, though I got a degree that was adjacent and had a few programming courses.

My cousin never finished his degree and he has worked for Nokia. Though it is harder to compare the 90s.

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lucidguy@reddit

I assume you mean "without a CS degree", in which case I am someone who did that. I have always been a nerd and dabbled in programming, however my degree is in architecture. I ended up working for a company where I began writing my own tools and making updates to internal tools they had, and ended up taking over development of their internal tools. I then translated that experience to a junior dev role for a custom app consultancy 8 years ago. I apparently did ok, as I am now the DoE there. There was a fair amount of luck involved, I'm sure, but it is possible. There are also companies that offer internships/apprenticeships that can be potentially translate into full time roles that often don't require a degree, might be worth looking into.

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powerglove-@reddit

So me, kind of. I have a 2 year Computer Programming diploma from a community college in Canada. So while I did have practical hands-on learning, it wasn’t your traditional comp sci path. Graduated in 2015, and was just promoted to staff engineer this year (ultimately it worked out pretty well).

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MisterAngstrom@reddit

I was an Infosys employee for one year. I do not have a CS or any tech degree. I took a six month Bootcamp a few years ago and studied hard. The career services department had a deal with Infosys, so I got fast tracked. The interview was super general and easy. “What are the four pillars of OOP? Choose one to tell me more about.” Six months on bench, taking internal certifications in Java and Angular, then six months on a very badly managed project. I left as soon as I could hahaha

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slimcoder@reddit

I dont have a degree but I'm tech lead in uk based organization.

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Holmesless@reddit

Yes. They started coding as a hobby as a kid. Made mods for game as kid. Hacked some games as a kid. Eventually just got a intern out of highschool at local place. Gaming would get asked to make stuff for the game and gave him enough proof to land the job.

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saintpetejackboy@reddit

This sounds a lot like me when I started up. Mainly thanks to an RPG Maker website called Gaming World where I haunted the forums and IRC but it spawned into me learning a ton of different programming languages and other stuff related to game development and web development (I liked the community more than the actual fruits).

That quickly turned into modding games and it wasn't long before a local company swooped me up to redesign their inventory system.

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nog_u@reddit

Yeah, me! Dropped out from biochem when I learned my hobby (building game servers for my friends) actually taught me some in-demand skills.

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ZirixCZ@reddit

informatics in biochemistry?

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nog_u@reddit

It's just a degree I started to impress my parents. I don't recall having many informatics classes on it though

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saintpetejackboy@reddit

I have had a ton. I just walk in places and start yapping or doing an unrelated job and then sneak over. Super easy, and I have been a felon (multiple) this whole time and spent a good chunk of time in federal prison. I seldom "dressed for success" or anything like that. The primary thing I always do is see a problem, code a solution and then demo it and go from there. Once companies see you can solve one problem, they start to supply you more and more. Before long, one of the problems you solve finally makes things click, or is so helpful that your contributions can't be ignored.

A lot of times, I will demo with explanations about how much time a process might save (like automation of a task that, over a month, turns out to save many hours of human labor). Having breakdowns of how exactly the contribution is beneficial and also being willing and able to go home and code on your own time (with nobody telling you to, outside the scope of your job) is invaluable.

Here is a secret technique I use: if a company pays you to answer phones, they are NOT paying you to design a better routing and system and handling interface for the calls with easily searchable recordings that have already been translated to text and analyzed by AI. But, when you are off the clock, you can do whatever the fuck you want. The company doesn't control you then, so you can go home and make this really crazy shit and then show up and demo it. Schedule a meeting. Nothing stops you!

Most people have an aversion to 'working off the clock', but you have to realize that, off the clock, you work for YOU and not the company. So instead of doing the same process from them you already know is terrible, you can program a better solution.

Maybe it works for you, maybe it doesn't. You can also always go freelance. There are a ton of "incel" type programmers, I don't know how to describe it. They are like "nobody will ever hire me no matter what even though I am the best programmer ever", and meanwhile you have people like me who have been shitty programmers for decades and never really had an issue. If somebody is really so good, they should be able to freelance at a competitive pay to a nice salary. The truth is, they also are shitty programmers who just won't admit it and other actual developers can smell it all over them when they become boastful, as can hiring managers and prospective companies.

I am a very anti-work type person, but I constantly find my self advocating that people go work off the clock. It is the one true secret key to success in life. If you are not currently employed full time as a programmer, but you want to be, hire your self off the clock to solve real world problems. Even when it doesn't make you $, it makes you knowledge, which is infinitely more valuable.

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ubaz3@reddit

I had a degree but in finance. I transitioned into tech after I took CS50x from having no prior CS knowledge. I applied to A LOT of jobs but after time I finally got my first role as a software engineer because I took and passed a technical test for a startup.

It does take more effort if you don’t have a CS degree but it is possible.

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HirsuteHacker@reddit

Yeah, me during COVID. I did a 10 month course and got a job after about 5 weeks of searching. I then got headhunted for a significantly better company after about a year and a half, because I kept my LinkedIn up to date

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SukaYebana@reddit

I did, Eastern EU and I got lucky

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PatientLandscape3114@reddit

It is me. I have a coding job now with no CS degree.

I got into the company doing client facing sales/account management work and was able to build a reputation as the "excel guy". From there I kept pushing the envelope and volunteering to build custom reporting and data flows using whatever tools I could get my hands on, and after a couple years of that was offered full time programming job at the company.

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Astronomy_@reddit

Yes, my SO - but he began his career in the early 2000s and tells me that it was way easier, even a couple years ago, than it is to get started right now. He had a family friend who he worked for doing computer fixing stuff, then freelanced coding solutions and ran his own consultancy for a handful of years after that. Then he moved from the US to the UK to enter the corporate side of this field and now has more than 10 years of professional experience under his belt. He's a principal software engineer now. I'm very proud of him and look up to him for this because, to me, he's a great example of someone who carved his way and proved himself from scratch with determination.

It's possible if you're very passionate and determined, even today. but I will warn you that I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science in May from a reputable and respected university and am still searching for a job, so take my information as you will. It's feeling like a bachelor's and a couple years of experience is the bare minimum for what employers want for "entry level" these days (not saying it's fair, but that's just how it feels). I've even seen some "entry level" listings asking for a master's and a year of two of experience as the minimum. Part of me wishes I could've done the same as my SO, but I felt that the degree would've given me an easier time getting my foot in the door even though it's already pretty difficult even with the degree now. Huge props to anyone who's made it without a degree; it's very admirable to me.

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AtavisRune@reddit

I am in charge of hiring for a tech company. We will hire without a degree but they have to have proof of exceptional skills. Projects, references, and good interpersonal skills.

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Ill-Kaleidoscope-621@reddit

Me. High school grad, military, and community college dropout. I have some networking certs. Now i do operations for Tech company, and write lots of code. Im very senior now.

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Fun-Fee5939@reddit

I did. Degree in music. Started programming in 2007 on my own apps, got my first job in 2019. I had a good amount of projects to showcase on my resume a bunch were still live and I had also studied a bunch of leet code style questions because I knew about the interview process.

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Linguists_Unite@reddit

I have a degree, but in Linguistics. Worked a bartendering job before making a switch at 30. Took 2 years to find the first dev job. Did a 1-year program at a local uni, which gave good direction and pace, but shit instruction, so most learning came from YouTube and other free source (with an occasional paid Udemy course) and from selling small jobs along the way.

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0mkar@reddit

I am one such programmer. You can check my GitHub 😉.

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Gwart1911@reddit

Me. Started learning 2009 and owned a few web design agencies but didn’t make the jump to a career software engineer until 2019

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blakami_lau@reddit

Look for Ola Bini in wikipedia.

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stevent12x@reddit

Me.

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Ingeloakastimizilian@reddit

Me.

It took hundreds of job applications back in 2017, but I did it. I had a GitHub with a couple of pet projects on it. Otherwise I feel like it took getting lucky. My original degrees are in Biology (bachelors and masters)

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iathrowaway23@reddit

Yes, I have a dear friend who is one of the most talented coders I have met. He did it out of a hobby and then led to professional career after a TON of encouragement and coaching to work on self worth.

Self taught for the most part. He is one of shoot, at least a dozen people I know that have done it that way.

Good Luck

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masterV56@reddit

No

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OleHickoryTech@reddit

A friend of mine started doing web dev in the early 2000s without a degree. Gained more and more clients, learned another skill or two and is a partner with an investment firm managing their software they use.

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heyimcarlk@reddit

Associate's degree.... But yes

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_Mag0g_@reddit

Former Principal Programmer at a game company I worked for. Wrote a book on math, talked at GDC, no college degree.
Student of mine with a degree in music that got Masters with specialization in programming where I teach (SMU Guildhall). Also not the only music major I have met in the industry.
Other majors like math and physics transfer to coding quite readily as well.

If you want to do it without any degree at all, make a really great portfolio and do lots of personal networking. Large company HR will toss your resume out without looking at it due to lack of a degree. You will likely need to know someone personally to get a job.

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Altruistic-Cattle761@reddit

Yes. Me.

This question gets asked so much I get tired of writing the same thing over and over, so I just point people back to my earlier comments on the subject: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1i1k7k3/comment/m772pqj/

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Nemosaurus@reddit

That’s me.

I got in at a help desk and showed people my side projects during lunch and automated some repetitive tasks.

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tetractys_gnosys@reddit

Me!

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Available_One_4634@reddit

I have no degree and I’ve been working in fintech as a software engineer for the last 3 1/2 years. My path was 14 week bootcamp and ended up with a great job.

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oclafloptson@reddit

Every professional programmer I've ever known irl has been a high school dropout. Not a lot... 6 people. Of course they work with people who went through higher education. My perspective is from confirmation bias

Two of those people pretty much exclusively hire people without degrees because those people are more likely to be humble and conform, feeling less entitled to their position. Which is honestly kind of a messed up power play

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demonslayer901@reddit

The best programmer I know dropped out of high school to make Minecraft mods. Dude makes 200k+ at Amazon.

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Buntygurl@reddit

Without a degree, sure, lots, but not without the influence and help of others, parents, siblings, friends, etc.

How did they do it? Study, practice and continuous learning, and dogged persistence in finding a job.

That's why they call it work, despite loving to do it.

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jihrik@reddit

I know some guys, and I did the same. There is no degree, just a lot of effort, and I landed a full-stack developer job a few months ago ...

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Pasec94@reddit

I just started as software developer with a welding background

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IamImposter@reddit

Well you already knew how to put different pieces together

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Pasec94@reddit

Was a real plus I heard the same story with different backgrounds it is always the same. If you have practical knowledge of the field you building software you will always have a advantage.

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UbiquitousStarlord@reddit

Congrats! Would you say it’s still doable as a self-taught in this market? I’m 7 months into learning, but having doubts about near-term job prospects.

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Pasec94@reddit

Yes my plus was I all ready know the practical part and could talk on the same level as the welder. So know what sort needs to do to help them. I was earning money with welding and dud software on the side. But jobs are really different depending on countries and field's.

If you good at what you doing and can apply your knowledge you will always find work, for me I can still fall to my old professional in case something happens, loud, dirty work will always be there.

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Long_Instruction_391@reddit

I love and hate this advice. I currently have a job at a hydraulic shop, I’m currently learning javascript and struggle to spread the word around in fear of someone finding out at my current job as me and my family rely on this income. I’m not ready yet with my current knowledge, about 8 months into my learning journey and i know i still have a ton to learn.

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connorjpg@reddit

Yes, multiple of my coworkers… but they all were hired pre-2016. Nowadays although still possible it’s a lot harder to break in. given the chance, most companies will likely take a developer with a degree given all things are the same. Therefore, you really need to offset the lack of degree with impressive projects and a huge portfolio and maybe source contributions, and and I can’t iterate this enough, extreme amounts of networking.

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cmockett@reddit

Me, bootcamp at 34yo in 2015

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HemetValleyMall1982@reddit

I did.

Got started in entry level Technical Support, moved to QA/Testing. Everyone around me knew I could write code, so it eventually lead to a software developer position.

I would add also that I am very thankful for this path.

Working in Tech Support will grant you the user experience and frustrations of the software. When you write software, you are writing code for the benefit of the company, sure, but also for the end-user. Tech Support gives a level of empathy that just isn't possible by studying business requirements and software design documents.

Working in QA will grant you the ability to check every fucking little thing about the software you are writing. It also helps with being thorough with unit testing. My peers are always joking that I write too many unit tests. Oh well.

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Adorable-Boot-3970@reddit

I’ve been a software engineer for nearly 25 years. In that time I’ve known hundreds of developers.

I think 1 of them didn’t have a degree at all, and perhaps 2 of them had a degree in computer science or software engineering.

At least 98% of all the developers I’ve ever worked with have degrees, but virtually none of them have degrees in developing.

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wReckLesss_@reddit

Yeah, myself. I got an opportunity to learn on the job. I'd never really messed with computers before, but my boss told the IT manager I was a quick learner, and they asked if I wanted to learn some stuff. From there, I learned Linux, shell scripting, a little bit of networking, and eventually started web development.

I think about that exact moment in my life very often. I have no clue what I'd be doing for work if it never happened. I was working in the shipping and receiving department, and before that, had only done retail and was a college dropout.

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im_in_hiding@reddit

I'm a software developer with a Bachelor's degree in business

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bycdiaz@reddit

I don’t have a technical degree but have one in political theory. I learned at The Odin Project.

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Real-Lobster-973@reddit

I know a friend who has a couple colleagues that work in tech/developer roles who have no degree, but they seem to be very low-end small jobs. I personally haven't heard of anyone landing good paying jobs at medium/large sized companies that did not have a degree.

I would assume that landing jobs like this would require what a lot of people in this comment section have been detailing: some form of career change that made it possible, extreme dedication and passion from young age, got a job before finishing the degree, lots of practical work, connections/networking and such. In other words, it likely isn't a easy feat to land jobs without a degree in programming.

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deantoadblatt1@reddit

Hey it’s me. Don’t do it, it’s hard as fuck without connections.

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Professional-Code010@reddit

Self-taught route is finished. I wouldn't say this pre-pandemic. Hence why bootcamps exploded before and during that time. Job positions are very competitive now and AI job listing filters are brutal. A BSc Degree is a must now, especially In the US market.

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doomedramen@reddit

Learnt everything I know about programming from YouTube and stack overflow. I have been a senior software engineer for about 10 years now (I’m 36). Only education is school and art college. I’m in the UK.

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cappurnikus@reddit

I have no higher education. I started learning to code as a teenager in the 90s. I took a job as a CSR at a Corp, learned the business and started automating. Eventually I created something that gained executive attention.

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jefftakeover@reddit

I graduated high school and have taken classes at a community college. I dropped out and took a coding class from a local technical college. Manatee technical institute. While at MTI I competed in skills USA contest with my classmate and won the gold medal. Used that to get a job as an intern then went full time. Then used that experience to land a bigger job at one of the largest financial firms in my city and been there since.

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xXShadowAssassin69Xx@reddit

I learned to code in my free time making random things like aimbots for video games and stuff that scraped mine and my buddies liked videos on tiktok and compiled them into a single video so we could watch them on discord together in something we called “meme review” lol. All that to say for years it was just for fun and one day I told my boss “hey I can build some software to automate xyz if you pay me for my time” and they were thrilled and I’m starting on it today.

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Shaq_K47@reddit

I did. Left uni after studying politics for a year. Picked up programming as a side hobby as i worked menial jobs. Enjoyed it and became decent with html and css, so I enrolled onto a bootcamp for fullstack development. After that I worked on portfolio projects for 6 months until I landed a 2 year apprenticeship as a software dev, and I plan to stay with the company after the 2 years. I'm from the UK btw.

A few people on my bootcamp cohort managed to land full junior roles within 2/3 months. So it's possible. You just need to put in work on building up your portfolio of projects during and especially after something like a bootcamp. I hope that helps :)

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aleshere@reddit

Self taught pre and during Covid. A couple of years of freelancing for friends and family. Then got a job in academia as a web dev. Nothing fancy but works perfectly for me. My degree is business.

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PierogiEater@reddit

Yes

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novagenesis@reddit

Yes. I have personally hired 2 people without dev-related degrees. One was a bootcamper. The other was a higher-risk hire who was a lifetime hobby developer.

But to be clear, it's getting harder to break into the field of late because the market is so shitty on that.

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Alystan2@reddit

A friend of mine self taught then started small freelance then picked up a real junior coding job then...

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DaegurthMiddnight@reddit

Yes, me

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supercoach@reddit

You're pulling the piss right?

I didn't get a degree. It would be easier to list the devs I know who got degrees rather than those without.

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Queueue_@reddit

Of course I know him. He's me.

To be fair, I did go to college for CS for 3 years. I dropped out during covid, then worked my ass off learning what I needed to know for web dev while working for my parents. I don't know if I could have landed that first job without some college, as it gave me really great foundational knowledge.

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ConversationWise212@reddit

I started in economics after high school.
Automated away most of my own work and half of the work for the section.
Boss suggested I find an IT job for my own mental health.

30 years later I'm still in software development and having fun.

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Patient-Cup-2477@reddit

Most SWE roles are no longer asking for CS degrees, and if they are, they'll accept equivalent experience in its place. The degree can help, but plenty of people get hired without one.

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Rinuko@reddit

I agree. It might be against you if you’re going up against someone with a degree with equal skill and personality, but making a good impression and have a solid CV/portfolio will get you to the interview. This has been my experiences on both side of the table.

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puffferfish@reddit

I know someone who got her degree in art appreciation? Some weird shit. She said the only people that typically ever get the degree come from super wealthy families that pay for it, and then have connections to hook them up with the career at art galleries. Said that the job is to keep busy rather than make money.

Anyways, she got the degree in art, started learning computer science and got a job at NASA. She then got her PhD in aerospace engineering. I can’t tell you how she made any of these leaps, or how a PhD program accepted an art appreciation degree with a computer science background, but it happened.

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AleksandrNevsky@reddit

Yeah but they got into the industry like 15 years ago after doing their own projects for a while. I've no idea if it can be done now.

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Rinuko@reddit

It can definitely be done now. It’s harder cause lot of competition, depends where you are too. Like it might be harder or easier if you’re in the US, Europe or Asia.

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Quantization@reddit

Most likely not. Most programmers are gonna be replaced by AI in the next 10 years.

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Holiday-Plum-8054@reddit

My uncle did, but he taught himself programming in the 70s, so it might be different now.

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zdxqvr@reddit

2 come to mind, one was my boss lol

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d3synchronization@reddit

I do not have a degree although that's because I am bored and dyslexia doesn't help. I can't grab a book and read it for more than 5 minutes. What I am great at is searching the web and rifling through information fast and getting the gist each time. I ve started writing algorithms in qbasic around 6th grade of elementary school. I did make an effort and went to university but well it s boring. I did like the computer labs and anything with hands on experience. But most things I already knew by searching myself.

Some computer science stuff is needed to build a mindset. mostly about what a computer is how it works, and what you should expect from the computer.

Furthermore what you are going to need to build is a programmer's mindset, platforms like leetcode will help a lot with puzzles, for handling different problems.

Next step study OOP, what it is how it works and how it helps you. Use Java or C# I d say. Or if you like hard core stuff C++ is the way to go.

Build small projects, well documented, and put em in github, with a readme file so ppl can check you out, and your coding quality.

Learn to use AI to boost your learning experience. Don't ask it to make you an omelette. Ask it to teach you, how to use X Y Z , and demonstrate it with an example written in C# for example... Ask for small stuff.

There are some times that the answer of AI might be partially incorrect, or it might have conjured a reply out of his ass, imagining things, If you know what's possible, and what's not. You can filter out the bullshit.

Last step design patterns, makes your code look efficient, clean and easy to maintain. It can be the most important thing of all.

Most companies hiring might have a technical assessment, they usually give you some problems like those on leetcode to solve to check your logic, and how you approach an issue, there are some that will give you a small project.

Invest 15 minutes twice a day, instead of scrolling tiktok or similar apps , during shitting hours to learn stuff, and 1hour to test stuff on a IDE.

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guitartechie@reddit

Reading your answer is really invigorating and it's nice to know that I can still pursue programming without a degree

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AncientStormGod@reddit

During shitting hours really got me 🤣

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hercec@reddit

This was really helpful lol gonna try to follow your steps, been wanting to learn more programming. Currently just do front end websites (html / css /js)

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Carthax12@reddit

Me.

I never finished college, despite starting 4 times. Time, money, moving -- they all suck.

I started at the service desk at a mom-n-pop computer store, then helpdesk at AOL, help desk at a steel mill, Harrah's New Orleans for 88 days (worst. Manager. EVAR.).

Then IT Support Manager at a pharmaceutical gas manufacturer, Radioshack for a year, then to my own support business for 20 months (I am NOT an entrepreneur! LOL), back to Radioshack for nearly 2 years, a small tech company for a year, Dell Gold Tech Support...

Help desk at a medical center (where I learned some VB6 to do some small projects to help end users).

Traveling tech for 2 years (did a bit more VB6 and VB.Net).

Then to a convenience store help desk where I built a helpdesk tool in VB.Net and then rebuilt it in C# -- the tool reduced average call length by 70%. After I had been there for nearly 5 years, I got moved to QA. A year later, I was a junior developer. 2 years later, they started all kinds of frippery about firing the devs and hiring an outside dev shop...

So I left for my current company 5 years ago, where I started as a junior developer and moved to a senior position after not quite two years.

So, yeah... EIGHTEEN YEARS in some form of help desk or another, along with a few stints at Radioshack, before I got my first developer position.

It would have been far more effective to get a degree and go straight into development 25 years ago.

That said, though, I would not change my experiences for the world -- I learned a lot of people skills on the helpdesk that have really helped me as a developer. ...and besides that, I would have likely not met my wife if I had done traditional school and straight to a development job, as I met her traveling for "a small tech company for a year" from the above litany. :-)

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alexwh68@reddit

Me, I never finished school, let alone a degree, but I have been a commercial dev for over 30 years, my reputation is only as good as my last completed project as that is what prospective clients want to know about. I am a freelancer now but have worked in teams in the past.

I am self taught.

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Rinuko@reddit

Yeah, me.

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Sea-Damage7752@reddit

Skill + Project + Network + Luck

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CambodianRoger@reddit

I got a job with 3 months' experience doing free online courses. The company I joined had 2 other devs without a degree and 3 Devs with completely unrelated degrees.

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easy2bcold@reddit

I have 0 degrees and got my first job at 30 after a bootcamp, now 5 years deep and doing rly well

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dariusbiggs@reddit

Yes, a fair few, good background in science, engineering. or math. Combined with a good amount of experience and a portfolio of work.

Self taught devs are fine, generally not people I would put in charge of the architecture of a new product from a green field (it's a skill that is hard to learn), but anything else perfectly suitable.

They frequently also have some form of DevOps experience, so that makes them useful in other areas as well.

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RazzmatazzJolly7166@reddit

me, i took a bootcamp and now i work on the field. i have a degree in journalism but no one cares about it. recruiters didn't even ask me about my university qualifications

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_BIG_ALBANIAN_KOK@reddit

I don't have a degree and I've been working since I was 19 (29 now)

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chrkb78@reddit

Yes. Me. That is, if by degree, you mean something related to IT or CS. I do have a M.Sc. in psychology, but no formal IT-related education, except for a 3 month Java bootcamp. I’m in my fifth year as a professional developer.

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A-Grey-World@reddit

I know one pretty well, being one.

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McBoobenstein@reddit

No

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designerandgeek@reddit

I (M51) have been coding for much of my life just out of interest and fun. I got a job last year as a PHP developer for a pretty big CMS, after about 10 years of working with WordPress and Statamic, then working as a solo dev in a small company using Statamic and Laravel. Always trying to follow best practices, use TDD, following inspiring devs on YouTube etc., so I had a pretty good coding attitude and good code to show in the interviews. That said, I count myself pretty lucky to have come across this company/position and getting hired with my background and age.

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abiteofcrime@reddit

Me. Ive been a contractor for nearly 3 years at this point. I went to a boot camp that ended in spring 2022 and got this gig through a friend right out of the boot camp.

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stenlio1337@reddit

All the balkan countries go into coding without degrees. Just a few programming courses and they go to seniors, managers, team leads and work for major software companies

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great_divider@reddit

Yes, and they are an autodidact and obsessed with learning about programming.

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brinkcitykilla@reddit

I did, I went through a 3 month coding bootcamp in 2018. They had a very strong record of graduate employment and were pretty selective on enrollment (allegedly over 300 applied and they accept around 30 people). We primarily learned Java and web applications but it covered much more stuff like git, SQL, testing. A handful of people dropped out of the course and others proved to be true rockstar coders. I was somewhere in the lower middle range of the group and had to work very hard. Ultimately the biggest skills I got was being able to learn new things quickly / asking the right questions / using tools and resources to figure things out / being able to communicate my thought process / having a good attitude / work well with others. I.E. not primarily coding skills but proving that I can be valuable member of a tech team.

I ended up landing a position as a full stack dev in .NET / C# right after I finished.

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DudeWhereAreWe1996@reddit

I worked at a company for a bit that would let you register for like an in-house bootcamp or something. So I think most were typical devs with degrees, some were from normal IT (which I think is an associate's), and some were from nothing related like in sales where I assume no degree was required.

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Special-Island-4014@reddit

Yes but the was 6 years ago when money was cheap and tech jobs where everywhere companies are pickier now

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Orangubara@reddit

Yeah - Me :)
I learned for about 2 weeks and got first Java Developer job (not possible nowadays - I got very lucky), later on my years of experience were way more important than a degree so I don't even post "Education" section in my CV and no-one ask for it lol :)

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oniman999@reddit

Of course I know him, he's me.

Quit my job at a paper mill to start taking online classes for a CS degree. At the end of my first semester I went to look for an internship so I could hit the ground running when I graduated. Instead I found out the IBM facility near me has a great apprenticeship program where you work and study for a year and at the end are considered and paid the same as a degree holding software dev. Fantastic program, but they do it so they can severely underpay, so I eventually had to move on to the job I'm at now. Currently make 95k a year with no degree (technically I have an associates in general studies).

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obnoxus@reddit

I know a bunch of people who could

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Spxcebxr_@reddit

Out of simple curiosity what particular reason is it that you don't want to go down the degree route?

To answer your question about 3 years ago now I became a dev with no degree. Though it

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coughycoffee@reddit

Yes hello, it's me 👋

No degree of any kind and now I'm a software engineer with 8 years of professional experience and the technical lead in a team of 6.

The main things that I think got my foot in the door was literally just a bit of luck and knowing my strengths at the time. Prior to my first role I was quite proficient with computers and tech in general and was a hobbyist programmer. For my first role I applied for a position which on paper was as a DevOps engineer, but in reality I was more of a hybrid general IT systems administrator who could also write automation scripts and manage CI/CD pipelines.

I stayed in this role for close to 4 years with the intention to soak up as much knowledge and experience as possible, then when I felt confident in my abilities I found my next role as a more typical DevOps engineer (at least as typical as these roles can be).

From there I basically made the transition through from DevOps -> Cloud -> Platform -> Full-stack engineer

I don't think I took the easiest or most typical role progression since I started with a somewhat niche specialisation at the time, and then years later eventually ended up in a Full-stack software engineering role. But by doing this I feel I have a much more well rounded view of what's needed to build and maintain a solution than if I jumped straight into a development role.

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Garvinjist@reddit

Me. It took a long time though. I studied and worked on projects for about 7 years before I applied in 2023 and got hired. Almost 2 years working now.

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TA-X876@reddit

I did.

I never managed to finish university (was doing pharmacology, not CS) but did a coding bootcamp for 3 months. I learned HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and MySQL during that time.

Now I am working a government job with great pay and very relaxed attitude at work, and I couldn't be happier!

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steveplaysguitar@reddit

Technically? He worked as a mechanic at a factory and learned how the electrical shit worked and by the time he retired was the electrical technician supervisor helping to work on the PLC programming.

My former boss. Good guy. PLCs are relatively easy to learn the programming for though. You can get reasonably proficient with a month or two of solid study and practice.

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willcodefordonuts@reddit

Yes I’ve hired three people who didn’t have a degree.

One had a completely unrelated degree and did a bootcamp

One did a coding course and then was good at talking to people so met mentors and learned to code in their own time. That got them opportunities

One was a self taught dev and had already worked in industry before they were hired by me and were very good.

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KCJazzCat@reddit

I did. Played around in code when I was a kid. Released a rinky dink app on the App Store. Got a job with a startup and parlayed that into a slightly bigger role. Kept moving up until I was a VP level. I’m very grateful for the timing of when I was trying to advance my career, that path would be a LOT harder, maybe impossible today.

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FretfulCoder@reddit

Me. I worked as an admin for years at a job where the admin tasks were repetitive, so I learnt in my own time how I could automate them. A junior dev position opened up at the company I was working for, so when I applied and showed the senior dev what I had created, they took me on.

Prior to this, I didn't have any experience or qualifications related to software development, just a passion for it.

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BOKUtoiuOnna@reddit

Me. I did a free bootcamp. Worked very very hard and got a placement. Left after a year, did a few more months studying myself and got a better job.

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Bivolion13@reddit

Me? I mean I got a 2 year IT degree with no programming experience. I think I got lucky though. I have a "can-do" attitude the company liked, and I guess people loved me enough when I was in helpdesk that when a junior dev position opened up, the manager just hired me with the intent to train me.

Now i've been promoted three times in the past 8 years and I frankly still am not sure what I'm doing but I'm a programmer

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AncientAmbassador475@reddit

Me

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PedroFPardo@reddit

Me. How I did it? I was born too long ago, that's how I did it. When I started college, there were no Computer Science degrees, so I started a Maths degree. I got a job coding before finishing my degree. I thought I could handle both, but it turned out I couldn't. I had to choose between a paid job and finishing my degree. I chose the job and kept learning to code while working. Now I'm 54, and I'm back at college trying to finish my maths degree while working full time. I'm doing it as a hobby, one or two subjects each year. It's hard, but I'm getting there. I'm planning to finish my degree before retirement.

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Zalenka@reddit

I am a programmer with...a music degree. I did a lot of programming in my youth, did a bit in HS at a technical college and got a job doing programming for a college job.

I think having a college degree helped me and a CS degree would have helped me earlier in my career.

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Creative-Ad-2224@reddit

Bro don't listen to old stories current market situation is different.
Old times they would accept anyone.
Also u can go through connection where the product belongs to the person hiring.
Generally every company check software degree.

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octahexxer@reddit

Been listening to podcasts about the pioneers in IT...almost none of them had an education...they where to obsessed with something to care what others said...none of them had become a success if they had listened to what others said. But they all had raw talent and coded every wake hour to solve a problem only they could see.

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Exotic_Day6319@reddit

I know a bunch of people that meet your description, me including.

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Time_Forever26@reddit

i done a software engineering apprenticeship with barely any coding skills

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VokN@reddit

Dude did an LLB then swapped to a boot camp and is now a senior MLE

Graduated in 2021

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Dan8720@reddit

Lots of people. It varies a lot depending on the culture of the company though.

When I worked in an agency it was about 50% of people that got into it from lots of different routes.

I now work for an American Sass company where I would say very few people are self taught. There's quite a few degrees from what I would describe as fancy expensive US universities. Brown, Cornell etc

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gaspoweredcat@reddit

me but i wont lie the how was mostly luck, its just having the right person recognize your ability

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_tr9800a_@reddit

I've been a Data Engineer for six years now and am only now getting my BSc. I just started finding excuses to use coding in my jobs until I had enough demonstrable experience to go for a proper job.

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NoAd7364@reddit

Me I have multiple software patents and been coding since I was 12 I’m 56 now and have a high level job in department of defense with high school diploma

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rm-rf-npr@reddit

Yes, me. Starting in 2018 and I'm a senior now. You can do anything if you put your mind to it.

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yolowagon@reddit

Yes, but he is enrolled into bachelors CS degree part-time and its in progress

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CarloCGC@reddit

Me, I only have a GCSE level education and got a job in QA, was given opportunity to train for software internally for a year as the company wanted cheap engineers to work on web casino games using java. Ended up working in AAA game dev at a co-dev studio and I still do today.

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OldManAtterz@reddit

Yes, but I started coding as a kid in the 80s and have worked almost 3 decades with coding. I however I think the barrier of entry is much higher than when I started back in the day.

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zeruch@reddit

I've known dozens, many of them having done so decades ago when the industry did not give a flying, nautical or land based damn about credentials, just skills. So many of them ended up in early roles and learned more as they went. I know dozens more that have degrees, but not in CS. A late friend who worked on HPC systems had a degree in philosophy, another was a core Android guy who technically didn't finish high school, another was senior QA automation with an undergrad in kinesiology, etc...

Base skills, and the ability to be inventive and ambitious was the way to go in the 80s and 90s.

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FindDOnePiece@reddit

Me. So i basically studied for Electronics degree, and in my juior year started working part-time in lab, where i had to model a lot of things in Python. Also my diploma involved working with R-CNN models for image processing problems. In the end of my senior year I applied for an internship as a Data Scientist. After 5 month they took me as a junior Computer Vision engineer, and it's been 1.5 year since I'm working at that position.

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MissPandaSloth@reddit

Me. Though it was a position I changed within the company and they like me, so I had an advantage.

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bearded_monkey_pdx@reddit

I was involved in hiring a programmer at a logistics company , we picked the guy with no degree over a masters from penn state simply because no degree guy was willing to think outside the box and willing to put in effort

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Orlandogameschool@reddit

Me , my brother

Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager. If I’m trying to hire a bad ass programmer for my game company would I hire sciguy241 who has an amazing portfolio, demos, a git job, a personal website ect. Or the other dude with a nice resume and degree but no real tangible work?

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Imaginary-Ad9535@reddit

Github or work experience > multiple degrees. Most of the time I don’t even look at degrees or grades.

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Electronic_Ant9931@reddit

Yes, 2 people I am close to are self-taught

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rizzo891@reddit

A buddy of mine did through doing a bootcamp but he did it during Covid which was apparently peak time to do it

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Mysterious_Screen116@reddit

Yes, many. A lot of people who worked IT or Testing jobs for a few years and built skills / landed an opportunity.

Others were motivated from a young age.

Many of them 'got lucky': someone gave them a chance. Talking to people and always being ready for an opportunity is key

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SoftwareDoctor@reddit

Yes, me for example.

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Error-7-0-7-@reddit

I'm 24 and graduated highschool in 2018. Out of the 6 people I know who went into computer science, only 1 got a job at Meta after graduating at MIT. Everyone else is not working a coding/CS job despite looking for one after graduating.

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dwe_jsy@reddit

Many people I know

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guerillarob@reddit

Not a coder but I turned a love for Linux into a SRE job. I started out doing entry level support and worked my way up.

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Impressive_Goose_937@reddit

Got an internship (1 year) through contacts made at high school, I was able to sell that experience as real experience and went on as a developer

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Ruck_and_Maul@reddit

Me. Career transition via bootcamp in 2022.

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nbg91@reddit

I did it 6 years ago, self taught for a couple years using FreeCodeAcademy + various other resources

Put a lot of effort into networking at meetups/hackathons, got an opportunity at a good tech company in my country/city, never looked back

I think it would be tougher today though

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icodecookie@reddit

Internship they did well and got the job

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yopla@reddit

When I started barely half had degrees or degree related to CS. But back then it was the .com rush and there was such a pressure for programmers that anyone who could tell the difference between a keyboard and a monitor was considered better than nothing. My first team lead was a marine biology dropout and we had a couple of HS dropout too.

Nowadays you need to bring a lot more proof that you can do the job to offset the lack of diploma. Either you've already done something sizeable on your own that you can showcase or you could to slug it nearly for free in a startup that can't afford to pay an engineer until you get a couple of years of xp and move up from there. (And before someone starts bitching about working for free, remember people pay for school).

Anyway, it doesn't matter how you get it but you need a portfolio that compensates for lack of education.

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Wingedchestnut@reddit

Yes coding bootcamp but that was before corona. The chances of someone without a degree to get a job in current jobmarket is extremely small.

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RevolutionaryCrab452@reddit

What do you mean how? You can easily learn to code while doing projects.

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Dus1988@reddit

Me.

Though I can't claim zero higher Ed.

Basically took a web design class in high school. Was able to work as a graphic designer for print and web after highschool. Started doing php web development (including some WordPress). Decided I liked it, changed my college major from architecture, to software engineering. About a year into college I was able to land a front end job in web development using .NET, and jquery. Eventually transitioned into a full stack role. Didn't finish college because at some point I just was like "I'm already working in the industry". I'm mostly self taught, but I've always been a computer techy. I had CS classes in college but for the most part I already knew the content when I took those classes. The exception being hardware logic gates and assembly language classes.

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zeloxolez@reddit

me

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SciGuy241@reddit (OP)

How did you do it?