[_ah]

Code More. Your analysis reveals a common mistake, and more (complex) projects is the answer. This mistake is not obvious from the outside!

Once you actually work in the industry for a while, you realize that most newbie side projects are incredibly small and distressingly unimpressive. Since you've never worked in a production codebase, your internal metric of difficulty and value is WAY off. You might think you have a really great Github, but I suspect that you need samples at least 4x as complex as what you've already done.

Remember that "CS Degree" is simply a indicator that you are solid hire. Hiring managers are looking to maximize the chance that you're worth the effort, so without the CS degree you'll need to work much much harder to prove your worth. Definitely possible! But not easy.

Oh, and don't lie. If you claim experience and interview with me, I'll drill you in detail about your claimed experience and what you learned. I'll figure out you were lying, and that's not a good hiring signal.