No College Degree. Will I Ever Be Able to Get a Job?

I’ve been practicing here multiple hours a day every day and doing Codewars besides. I’m learning at a very steady rate and I’m actually enjoying it immensely! My addiction to video games suddenly vanished and I’m now addicted to coding. It’s been only 2 weeks though so I’m a complete beginner still and the stage of looking for jobs is still far ahead.

On to the point of the topic. I failed out of college because I was severely depressed for several years and had no motivation to do anything productive in my life until recently. This site definitely helped breathe life back into me.

I decided to search for coding related internships and jobs online in my country (Egypt) out of curiosity, only to find out that all of them without a single exception required a college degree. Is what I’m doing now pointless? Will I never be able to have a job still regardless of how skilled I might eventually get? Also, what are my chances of ever working abroad? Would a company abroad be willing to hire a person with no college degree? Working and living abroad is the biggest dream of mine currently…

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Hey,
Don’t feel discouraged. There are plenty of remote jobs available for web developers. These jobs are only going to increase now, thanks to COVID-19. You could always try applying for them.
In the worst-case scenario, you could try alternative sources of income like freelancing.
Just focus on giving your best right now. Good Luck! :slight_smile:

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My coding uncle said that if you know what you are doing, the newer companies don’t give a crap if you have a degree or not. Just be confident and you will be fine.
By the way, I have been straight down your path no less than a few months ago. I cried myself to sleep because I didn’t know if I would ever have a career.

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It’s significantly easier to get a STEM job with a degree but not having a degree does not necessarily prevent your from getting a STEM job.

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It depends. There are some companies that won’t hire you without a degree. There are some companies don’t like people with degrees. There are some that hate bootcamps. There are some that only want bootcamps. Some want a mix of people. Some don’t care.

It’s like asking if you can find a girl that likes a guy in a mustache. Sure. Some will love it. Some will hate it. Some won’t care. It doesn’t matter - you don’t have to get them all to like you - just the right one. It’s the same with jobs.

Does it lower your odds? A little. Does it make it impossible? No. I work for a major company where 80% of the people don’t have a computer degree - it’s one of those companies that wants a mix. There are all kinds out there. You don’t have to qualify for every job. You just have to qualify for some of them.

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts: your feed was motivating

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Hey buddy! So how you’ve been doing so far?
PD: Did you mean “…if you have a degree…”?

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I’m doing good. I’m about to apply for my first job. I’ll ask 70k, and I’ll probably get 50k for the area I live in.

Lol, I meant “if you have a degree or not”. I messed up. i make a lot of mistakes when I write fast.

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