[gethly]

There's an old saying - those who know, do. Those who don't, teach. In essence, you might have the knowledge, but you have no practice. That makes you mostly unemployable in tech.

But good news is that many companies want to fill some quotas and they require degrees, so you'll likely find some place in a larger company where what you can do means less than the letters that go before or after your name.

A situation from a personal experience - some years go, in a company where I worked at(advertising agency, i handled the websites), we were looking to hire someone. I do not rememebr what position it was. We were small company, 15-ish people. We got a ton of CVs. I rememebr one specific CV - there was a guy who had THREE university diplomas and was in his 30s, but had no work experience. This guy had 0 chance of being picked and his CV went straight to the trash bin. In tech, this is 10x more prominent as this sector is about what you can actually do and what you did in the past. Not what you know in theory and whatnot.

It is what it is. Good luck with your search. Definitely pick some popular language though, to broaden up your pool of opportunities. Don't be looking for Rust jobs or any of that nonsense. And don't expect large salary either. You have to earn it.

[padzochambers]

Thank you for your advice and I agree experience is superior to just knowing everything in a textbook. But out of interest, if the person with the diploma had a great portfolio and had amazing skillset, would you have possibly considered a little more then?

I'll be happy to get a junior level entry job to build that experience first. Right now I will focus on expanding my 'freelance' work.

[gethly]

That would completely change the situation, so yes.

The thing is that diplomas matter only in very few sectors. Like medicine, law, physics and such. But in tech, realistically, the value of a diploma is 0.

Again, focus on a popular language, do some projects with it(so you have something to showcase) and after you get hired you can start specialising on specific things. Like web services, 3D engines, database and whatever else you'd want or need.

In short, you have to be smart about transitioning from academia into the "real world". As you have a diploma and you have been teaching, it means you are likely in your 30s, which is great, because id you would be Gen-Z or Gen-A, you'd have much harder time getting hired. So you are not position all too bad.

[padzochambers]

I turn 29 tomorrow, the worlds my oyster ;) although it's nice hearing that 30s is a suitable age for jobs. Teaching students, I am often reminded that anything above 20 is very old.

I think focusing on python + flask will be my first aim and start a few projects, go from there.

[yodsanklai]

It's not because you teach that you don't do.

There are tons of tech companies, with very different ways of recruiting. Some companies do care about academic backgrounds, or niche programming languages, or ability to solve questions like leetcode.

[padzochambers]

Leetcode is something I've only discovered recently on my search for advice on getting back into programming. Seems like a plausible addition