Depends on the company and how they hire. Yeah, there are many companies that won't even consider you, but that leaves a lot of excellent candidates for others. Our lead developer joined around 6 years ago as a junior with zero prior experience outside his own side projects. (Which isn't to say it would be normal to go from zero to lead in that time period, but to underline how exceptional he is given he was able to do so.) Many of our other top developers over the years have had similarly non-standard backgrounds. Our screening process is definitely unconventional though; I barely consider resumes until well into the process.

I think if you're legitimately smart and dedicated, and put the time in to build knowledge, you'll be able to get a start somewhere. And once you have real work experience, the credential becomes less and less relevant.

FWIW I do find there's value in actual comp sci and software engineering degrees, and I will give those some amount of weight. But as far as bootcamps, if two candidates demonstrate the same level of skill, knowledge, dedication, etc., it makes zero difference to me if one has a boot camp and the other is self taught.

This is an amazing story and I’m glad you’re open to juniors that are from unconventional backgrounds. But you must recognize you’re an exception; my point still stands that odds are garbage for self-teaching and it’s not as easy as flippantly saying “well, just self-educate then!”

I don’t think I’m an exception. But to the extent that I am, I think it has more to do with people believing that they need a CS degree. They believe they need one, people tell them they need one, so they get one. I didn’t go to college, and I can’t specifically recall that fact ever even coming up.

Curious how you folks screen resumes without education background on them. Do you check out GitHub profiles in detail? That seems incredibly time-intensive.

We haven't been able to get our interviewers do that consistently, and a lot of our self-taught hires report that basically no one in the past has ever grilled them about their personal projects, and that we were the first company to do so.

We include a fizzbuzz-style coding question in the job posting itself, and ask people to include an answer with their application. 90%+ don't bother (the ones who are just spamming resumes) and can be immediately ignored. Of the remainder, at least half can be cut pretty easily based on their submission. Usually the remainder make one of a set of minor mistakes, or if not, there are several ways to approach the problem, so either way there's something straightforward I can write back to ask. Usually manage to whittle the list down a bit further based on those conversations, and usually then I'll look at resumes.

> Resumes like that will be sorted out even if she might be brilliant, intelligent, and just needs a chance.

That sounds like exactly the core of the broken hiring processes. Shouldn't a good hiring manager try to create a process that finds these brilliant, intelligent candidates?

My own experience disagrees. I'm a self-taught engineer (on Python even) and I did have recruiters finding me and passing on my resume when I was first entering the job market ten years ago, and I had hiring managers giving me the shot at the screening (which I passed). I've had a pretty smooth career since then.

The industry has changed in the last decade. There’s enough college (and yes, boot camp) grads, and enough scam artists wasting hiring manager’s time, that someone with no history will need some kind of “in”.

The QA route - the modern version of the oft vaunted “start in the mail room and work hard” position - is mostly gone too.

What are your qualifications? Do they have hiring manager boot camp?