I certainly agree that formal credentials are secondary to demonstrated competence, but in the specific case of neither credentials nor experience, people with credentials and no experience have always had the first choice at the job.

When you have neither, getting a job in uncertain, there are many variables outside of your control. But getting a degree is completely within your control so it is the better choice of your time. Given the monetary constraint ($3,600 / year for community college (x2) and $7,500/year (x2) for state college) From my experience the job you will get in year 4 (and during the summers of year 3 and 4) will pay you more and offer better advancement than if you had started working in year 1 and not pursued a credential.

If you already have experience, then you also already have a network of people who have worked with you and know what you can do, and getting a job is a matter of finding the person in your network who will vouch for you.

That sounds about right. For me, I fell into a weird scenario where I was still in school right during the peak of the late 90's "dot com bubble" era, when anybody could get a job as a programmer if they could turn a computer on. So I quit school and went to work. And after keeping that first job 4 and a half years, I never had any trouble with a job after that, even without having a bachelor's degree.

Strangely though, I've accumulated 3 associate degrees (general education, computer programming, and high performance computing) over the years as well. Somehow, with all that, nobody ever mentions that I never finished my bachelors degree.

Not sure if it's possible to replicate that career path these days or not. I may just be the product of a specific era of history.

> Silicon Valley used to be famous for the exact opposite: the story was always that formal credentials were less important than demonstrated competence. Have things really changed that much?

It still is and same for the other tech hubs.

The tons of complaints are likely from people who have no degree AND no experience and want to break into the industry and the 100k jobs. Of course, they have troubles, for good reasons.

Simple maths; For every experienced HN dev, there are 100 redittors with nothing who wants in.

Where are you on the east coast?

The RTP (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC) area.

I moved to this area from the West Coast and found the market much better for these same reasons. Happily living in a forested area while working as a developer.

Yeah NC and GA seem to have much more / better jobs than SC (where I am stuck). I might have a developer job if I was still in the Atlanta metro area.