[rxsel]

For context: No degree, Very comfortable (salary over 150, savings, family, etc) and in my mid 20s with 5 years of experience.

Here’s how I went from being generationally poor to that:

1) Taught myself the skill. Really put my head down and learned.

2) Demonstrate you know what your doing and have a passion for it (fake it if you don’t and just want to get paid) through projects, contributions, volunteering, having your own site with mentioned projects writing etc. You’re building an image here.

3) Literally get your foot in the door anywhere, doesn’t matter how bad. Mine was at a local web dev shop locally as an “intern” in a tiny office w/ 4 people.

4) Start racking up XP and use that XP as leverage going forward. I mean really sell it. And always talk up your previous experience.

People tend to care more about experience, ability to get shit done, and personality over education in this field.

But yeah that was my experience having been in the same boat.

[jbhouse]

Can (anecdotally) confirm

Just did some interviews last week. Read through each candidate's experience section so I would have an idea of what they worked on and how I should calibrate my technical questions.

Stopped reading after the technical section because quite frankly educational attainment, in my experience, is at best loosely correlated with being able to think clearly and get things done.

Also, kudos to you rxsel!

[rxsel]

Sorry for the late response, getting used to submitting on here, but thank you, and I agree, higher education in the US requires grit to get through especially if you’re not the “school type” yet it’s the baseline most people use to gauge someone’s “potential economic value” an ROI and I frankly just don’t agree with that. Some of the smartest, proactive, and most creative people I’ve ever met have been “structured education” adverse.

Im a huge huge huge believer of there being a massive opportunity in disrupting education, and I mean beyond the “shoehorn tech into everything” approach.

Education in the general term is the literal liberating factor within an individual. The more you understand the world around you the more confident you become in that world.

That’s why I push all my people and anyone who is willing to listen towards tech and other industries that are more “merit based” on the spectrum. As well as gravitating towards well paying trades that can fund their future intellectual endeavors.

I can go on about education forever but I’ll just stop before I get carried away :)

Thank you for the kind words @jbhouse