Do employers hire self taught programmers?

submitted by yabbit from self.programming

Most material is online anyway so I don't feel the need to shell out thousands of dollars for an education I could get on youtube

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[–]fschmidt 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Show me your open source code.

[–]yabbit[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm thinking of becoming a programmer but I won't waste my time if I can't get hired anyways

[–]SoCo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Smaller places, yes; bigger places, no. There are many smaller places. Of course it is much harder to get your foot in the door.

From the company's perspective, hiring someone means a huge and risky investment. Degrees and certs are a lazy way to feel like you have confidence that a programmer is going to work out, making your investment worthwhile. As the other commenter has said, provide something to show, so that they feel confident in your abilities (such as open source projects or contributions).

I was hired as a programmer without a degree. I was later hired as a programmer while getting a degree. Now my degree is worthless and I have a student loan. I still have the job I was working at when going to school.

[–]suzew 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, I know someone who got hired at Apple as a software developer without a college degree.
With brains and hard work (and generational wealth, can't discount that (btw, he wasn't rich, but not too poor)), you can do many things.