Managers with her attitude annoyingly unrealistic, but there are some truths to it. It's difficult to convince a brand name company to hire you if you just graduated from a no name school or some bootcamp. I went to Berkeley and MIT and worked at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. I never have to convince anyone about my passion. This article isn't for me. People with less attractive pedigrees need extras to land interviews and jobs. I give the same advice to my friends who are new to programming.

disclaimer: my opinions are entirely my own and not endorsed by my employer.

Your DO section starts when you have already gotten the interview...but that is the hardest part for someone who is self taught or fresh out of a bootcamp.

You need to do everything in the article just to get an interview, just to get a chance.

Getting your foot in the door is by far the hardest part of trying to make a career switch into software development. A lot of people say that you shouldn't have to eat, drink, and sleep code and self-marketing to get an interview with a non-traditional background.

My opinion is that people changing their careers into software development have it easy. Name me another engineering degree where you can teach yourself and get an interview without a degree in that field.

I completely agree with you in principle, yet I still find myself working on a personal website with stuff to show off how I think and work.

In any industry, you need to capture people's attention one way or another. You can craft your personal brand through a website, and your projects and your articles --

Or you can craft your personal brand in person, by schmoozing and networking and making sure people know who you are and what you can do.

I'm not the best people person, but I am a truly excellent software engineer and businessman. I haven't had much success maintaining a loyal network of people who will connect me with opportunities, but I do have an excellent track record of building great software.

The problem is, how do I convince people of that? Most of my code is proprietary and cannot be shared with prospective clients or companies.

I believe that insisting on seeing code is a trap. Code is notoriously tricky to evaluate without actually running it for a while, anyway - look at all the bugs that make it through code reviews - so it works well for "ok they're not completely full of shit" but rarely a lot beyond that.

If there's truly interesting and clever architectural stuff going on, that can be explained in words in an interview (in person or not). That puts some burden back on people skills, but... if you're creating clever solutions you can't explain to other technical people, I'm going to be worried about your ability to work on a team anyway.

If I'm hiring someone with more than 5 years of experience I'm hoping they can tell me some interesting war stories or have some interesting design ideas when asked about a potential business problem.

A serious question: Where do you find companies who aren't looking for someone who wants to have no life outside of work, and has no relatable projects or experience to brag about?

I do believe I am good at my "craft", am a quick learner, and am a direct communicator, but don't have a degree or certification to shove that notion down a prospective employer's throat like is expected of me. Every prospective employer I speak with seems to think I should have either a bachelor's degree or 5 years of experience on my resume. How do I get there outside of college and debt?

Some people must be passionate to be good - or at least I need that passion to be more than average.

Also, skill is an arms race. You do have to be better than the alternatives to get hired.