[hackermailman]

YMMV, but if you find a real university course and not a mooc that does not have public solutions, and you complete it, if you email the instructor they may give you a sort-of letter of competency, if you approach them straight and show them you have completed all the work, and tell them why you need need their recommendation. I hesitate to write this from frauds spamming professors demanding letters but somewhere is somebody who was me 10 years ago who had no legitimate work history, no university class credits but put in the work, and might need this advice. It has to be an esoteric theory subject that does not have easy to find answers, in my case it was the experimental dbms that a well known professor was designing that I had contributed to with PRs. He provided this recommendation and it was responsible for where I am today. Just saying if you really are a self-learner, and not some fraud doing bare minimum effort and just wanting money, specifically you are actually interested in the content of these kinds of courses and solving the hard problems in this field, you can indeed become successful teaching yourself ... to a point of course, you need to work somewhere and learn from people who have been to school but getting your way in, it is possible.