[todd_wanna_code]

> I don't see the need for a degree if you have the skills.

What skills? I see everyone saying this but the idea what industry considers skills is kinda elusive, at least to me. And I am asking this sincerely as someone who wants to break the poverty cycle. I haven't been a kid for two years now and I sincerely regret not focusing on my education instead of playing around with friends while I had the time. But what's in the past is in the past, what can I do now to improve myself from here?

I started learning to code around September-October of 2016 and applied at quite a few places during the latter half of 2017. I got rejected everywhere because they were looking for someone with either a more formal background or years of experiences. Now I understand that I was wrong to expect that I can get a job after learning for a year or so. But still, what is the skills that one should have that can equate the value of a degree from an accredited institution? Is it the number of hours or years I will spend learning? Is it the number project on GitHub? Do people who hire care about Github? One of the guys who rejected me said that there's not much incentive to hire self-taught guys as jr dev or interns since now there's a steady supply of educated engineers for such positions and the supply is increasing.

Now, I understand there's a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I plan to continue to code as a hobby and learn programming properly this time from the basics. But even then do you think just being able to code is enough of a skill to break the poverty cycle?