[hfthrowaway]

I'll share my story here. I graduated with a non-CS degree and zero programming experience. It took me about 3 months to land my first programming gig (freelance), then an internship a few months later, and now I'm a junior developer at a great hedge fund.

I'll point out that I optimized for getting a full-time job as fast as I could. I have college loans to pay off, so I couldn't afford to spend months learning CS thoroughly. I learned enough to get past interviews, and focused the rest of my time on other high ROI things like networking/coding projects. Critically, I now have the luxury of having an income, and have both my day job and side projects to fuel my learning of the finer details.