[turc1656]

I don't know enough to say whether or not it's the best but...NYC is great for developers of a certain personality type. Specifically in the finance industry. There are a lot of corporate HQ's here that maintain large systems and have public and internal websites and services that require maintenance. Being friendly with Dev/IT staff at my current and previous employer, I can attest to the fact that they all say finding people who can actually code well is very tough. They seem to not think highly of college degrees, purely because the colleges are handing out degrees to people who can't code. That is the major reason they care far less about the degree. Another reason is that the IT guys in finance (and probably most places) care a lot less about "pedigree" or some kind of perceived educational status. Pretty much all of the corporate lawyers and execs where I am are all Ivy League educated. Dev/IT doesn't care about that if you can do the job - and they have easily testable methods to verify you can actually do the job, as we all know. The biggest roadblock is getting the interview in the first place if you don't have the usual background. In that case, you would probably need to know someone who works for the company to help get your resume in front of someone.

Also of note - I have seen a lot of very talented developers leave the financial companies I have worked for because they find the Dev work unexciting and they view their continued learning as stunted or completely nonexistent. They all seem to hate supporting line-of-business applications for whatever reason. That being said, it usually pays pretty well because these are business critical services that support either a large user base or are behind a large amount of money. Case in point - the brother of a friend of mine never went to college but was a self-taught programmer and is extremely talented - he works for a hedge fund running their entire infrastructure and makes more than double what I make.

If the corporate thing isn't your style, there are also a fair amount of startups here in NYC. But I don't have enough knowledge about them to comment on compensation, job stability, work culture, etc.

[newbear]

Any advice you can give me on how to find these companies?

[turc1656]

If you don't already know anyone who works in Dev/IT at any finance-related company in NYC, I would say your best bet is to go to networking events. There are always events all over the city every week. I get emails every week about them. You can also sign up to specific groups at sites like meetup.com and go to the events when they schedule to meet up in person. A quick search on that site yielded a bunch of relevant groups in NYC: https://www.meetup.com/mysqlnyc/ https://www.meetup.com/NY-FinTech/ https://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/ https://www.meetup.com/nyandroiddevelopers/ https://www.meetup.com/UX-Data/ https://www.meetup.com/NYC-Data-Engineering/ and for the ladies: https://www.meetup.com/WomenWhoCodeNYC/

Granted, these are learning-oriented rather than strictly networking, so the topics of conversation aren't going to be focused on job openings. But networking is obviously a part of it and you can reach out to the contacts you make at these events.

Basically, anything where you can talk to someone face to face so they can get a feel for you and you can make an impression on them. That's the goal. If they like your personality and they think you are competent, they are far more willing to open the door for you and overlook the degree requirement. But you definitely must be very, very competent if you don't have the degree.

Best of luck.