[externalreality]

You should be fine. Start applying for jobs. You have 7 years of experience. If you want (and can afford it) go finish your degree. Professors are definitely a resource and, since you will be more experienced than most, mentor people we owe it to the new CS people to help them in anyway we can like those who have helped us.

[perfect_loop]

Thanks a lot for the tips. Unfortunately, credits from my school expire after 5 years, so I'd have to start from the beginning and to be fully honest I really don't think I'd benefit from the material anymore as me and my team were grappling with pretty hard CS problems for the past 5 years that truly pushed me to learn and internalize a lot of CS.

[CydeWeys]

It's worth calling up the CS department at your school, or going in person if you're still in the area, to see about possible exceptions. A lot of these rules aren't written in stone, and since you have been keeping up with programming these past 7 years you should have no problem getting right back into the swing of CS undergrad. The rule might exist just to prevent students from being set up for failure if they attempt to return to complete a long-abandoned degree whose subject they haven't even thought about recently, which won't be true in your case. And they may want to make accommodations to bring you back, as having diversity of age, experience, and especially industry experience is important to a lot of college administrators.

So don't rule it out until you have a serious conversation with them about it!

[edge17]

100% agree with this, a lot of the rules exist to cover the common case. The common case isn't your situation, so they may empathize with you. Industry experience is also important as @CydeWeys pointed out.

[barry-cotter]

You have enough work experience to get into the Oxford M.Sc. in Software Engineering if you ever decide to do that.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-softwar...

Lambda School is hiring for multiple positions and as a growth stage startup would probably love a former founder.

https://lambdaschool.com/careers/

[logfromblammo]

At most regionally accredited schools in the US, the credits do not expire. They stay on your undergrad transcript forever. It is the degree requirements that expire. And it is the transferability to other schools that degrades. You need to investigate this further. It may be that your credits did not expire, but your degree plan did, and most of your previous credits would still be usable for an updated degree plan.

Otherwise, tell us what school expires its credits, so the community can avoid it like plague.

[externalreality]

> I really don't think I'd benefit from the material anymore You'll still be fine. A lot of successful programmers don't have degrees. I am a fan of formal education you learn a lot beyond the course material but you don't seem like you are at any loss.