[scrabble]

I got my first dev job with no job experience, no degree, and no real portfolio to speak of.

Of course, I had been coding on my own for over a decade, was well read, and came with a wealth of other experience that was being looked for and was hard to find in a developer.

I also had a break in that in my previous job, knowing my goals, I spent most of my time developing tools to help the company out. It wasn't a developer position though and I was only in the role for two months.