[coderKen]

Really sucks man. Most times companies are looking for people with experience, most self-taught programmers like myself built up that experience over the year(regardless of what language)s through side projects in college and stupid stuff for fun. It pays to build up your portfolio while doing your 9-5. One can't just take tutorials within a year, build a test app and get a job, am not sure if the tech industry works that way.

[anysz]

Sorry but I have to take offense to this. Whatever side projects and stupid stuff (your words) you did in college for fun 100% pale in comparison to the full fledged Rails app I built over 3 months 90 hours/week for work, and the other 2 iOS apps I built and released on the App Store, which took an order of magnitude more time than the Rails app.

Not fair on your part to downplay these efforts by condescendingly calling apps I built "test apps" (what just because I read a tutorial? How did you learn????). You maybe don't realize it, but the only reason you're able to get a job as a self-taught developer is because you're in the US and you have a Bachelor's. That is the way the tech industry works.

[coderKen]

I'm really sorry if you took my words the wrong way, I guess it came out wrong. I'm not downplaying your efforts, on the contrary I think they are great, most people give up after 3days of debugging. IMHO I'm just saying that sometimes companies look for experience not just from apps, but also from years of programming. For the record, I'm not in the U.S (never been there before), but I've worked for U.S(New York) based companies as a remote developer. I currently work as a remote developer for another startup in Germany. I've never left Africa before. I taught myself to code, learnt the hard way(I mean epileptic power supply, no/poor internet service) and I don't really value my degree, I'm not sure if it has helped in any way, ironically I don't have it(have not gone back to get it) and have never applied for a job with it. I admire your efforts and wish you good luck in all your future endeavours.