Except I'm not looking for sympathy. And your assertion that a CS degree prepares you for real life programming is almost laughable. Plenty of people work in areas that are only peripherally related to their majors without detriment to their trade. Your comparison of web dev to being a doctor tells me your understanding of the trade isn't all that clear.

If for no other reason, a CS degree is useful because it helps find entry level jobs which lead to actual experience. Without a CS degree, though, how can you really ascertain whether it's useful for "real life programming" or not? You've done okay without it, but you don't know how well you'd have done with one.

Second, I, and apparently several people you interviewed with, would claim physics isn't even peripherally related to web development. If you were writing simulation software or FEA software, I'd completely agree. But where's the connection to web development?

Finally, I was making an analogy, not comparing web development to being a doctor.

Ok, I see your point. On my earlier post, I was typing on my phone, but it comes off as rude where I was trying to be brief.

I understand that a CS degree would've made things much easier on getting a job, and I would've been offered a higher salary as well, I'm sure. As I said, that's why I don't ask for sympathy, I know full well that my path is probably the less traditional one. But even so I had plenty of hours of programming on the courses I took -- C/C++, Digital Electronics (programming FPGA boards, tinkering CPUs/APUs), not to mention that I had an 18 month internship -- which is where I learned about web dev -- and I designed two relational databases in previous part-time jobs. All of this came up during my various interviews, and I wasn't ever given a callback until I was. So I'd say there's an abundance of candidates, even if there's potentially a skill gap on those candidates it's a gap that's easily bridged, but too many employers don't want to invest any time training in their employees, which shouldn't be the norm in any industry, but is somehow acceptable in our current tech industry.

What size companies were you applying to? I've heard that smaller corps tend to put emphasis on CS education, while the big ones (big enough to have research divisions, like Google and Microsoft) are happy to consider people from other quantitative fields so long as they can code and know something about algorithms.

I know people with math, statistics and aeronautical engineering backgrounds who've worked at Google and Microsoft. I'm sure physicists would fit in too.

Oh, come off it. 18 year olds make bad career decisions all the time as they lack the experience and information that would help them making the right choice. Sometimes there is external pressure. Also, people change. And sometimes you realise halfway through your programme that your major is really not for you.

Our company is staffing up a full IT department right now. We don't even look at the education section.

Oh? You went to school for 4 years for CS? Good for you. Show me what you've built/what you've done. Anyone can get a degree; doers build.

I'm not saying there aren't companies who do that. But you must realize your company is an exception, right? The majority of companies use a CS degree to filter candidates.

The OP made things more difficult for himself, so it makes little sense to complain about how difficult of a time he had. He could have made it 10x easier by switching majors to CS.

Why switch majors? Drop the education part, build something, show it to companies looking, profit.

Degrees are overrated.

I think you missed my point.

Probably. It happens. Apologies for not connecting on the thought.

An entry level physicist has a Ph.D. not a Bachelor's. I believe this is true for all the sciences. A B.S. in biology or chemistry gets you a job as a lab tech, maybe.