As a business owner who is a developer and hires developers: getting my experience was my responsibility. It's now yours. And you won't do it on my dime.

I'm not in the business of using money to make developers. I'm in the business of using developers to make money. The jobs I offer are not because I want to give someone a job, they're because I want someone to come do a job for me.

Until very recently, the vast majority of Fog Creek's devs came through the internship program. Which is restricted to people who are going back to school afterwards (and, with a few exceptions, is only for undergrads).

Worse: they demand that you can code, and don't consider it their problem to teach you how to do that.

Anyway I thought it was well established that years of experience is a bullshit measurement anyway and you should just apply no matter what - worst thing happens, you end up getting hired.

The worst that happens is that you have a bunch of go-nowhere time-wasting interviews with people who can't properly evaluate you anyway.

That time is certainly valuable to me.

That would be bad, but consider the time wasted if you ended up being hired by them.