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The problems most people have with candidates not having a degree are: a) It's harder to prove they know their stuff b) there's an impression that they are bums and shied away from hard work, or somehow lacked the intelligence and drive You can solve both of these issues by taking your career seriously. Getting your foot in the door is going to be harder at first because you're young and you have no degree, but it seems you've worked at multiple places already. Get references from them, have them talk to your future employer on the phone. This is the strongest vote of confidence one can get and definitely matters more than a degree. Make sure each new job you take progresses in some way: More responsibility, higher rank, more / different tech, more complicated project. For each job, keep track of your accomplishments on the job as easy to digest one-liners. Put these in your resume. Your resume items and progression should tell a clear story that you're good (which is easy since you started so young) and you're getting even better. In addition, show that you're not purely a cog. If you can reflect the fact that you also understand the business aspects and reason why you do things, that you can course-correct misguided top down policies from management, that you can serve not only as techie but also, say, marketer, that you can communicate with non-technicals, then that makes you doubly valuable. Also, show that you have expertise. Go to conferences, be a regular in local user groups, speak in front of people, teach people. Four years of progressing employment, combined with these bonuses should really negate the fact that you don't have a degree in terms of getting hired (I think degree is valuable for other reasons, but let's put that aside for now). The one exception is large employers like Google, MS, the Government, etc. which sometimes have hard HR requirements and just cannot comprehend bending them even if they like you. But anyway, I recommend that people with degrees try to do all this too. It really builds the idea of investing in you as a valuable asset and a person rather than buying a replaceable cog. Value-add matters. |