im studying on FCC, a course or 2 on Udemy, Youtube…as well as some apps like Sololearn and Grasshopper to help retain information. I will be starting to create projects soon and learning Github and all.
I feel that within a year or so my skills should be sufficient enough to land a job somewhere or slowly start freelancing, although id rather have a job with benefits.
i have glanced at a few web developer job postings and ALL seem to require a college degree, which I don’t have. I cant afford college and FLAT OUT REFUSE to go into debt for a degree.
what are the chances of landing a job with what i assume in a year or so time, a decent portfolio but no college degree?
If you show enough skill, a brave soul might see the oportunity and give a shot. It is very likely there will be a testing period and that the entry point will be lower, however.
Degree’s are primarily used to get your foot in the door with applications. If you do not get a degree you will have to work harder to get your foot in the door, just to get interviews.
Usually raw experience beats everything. If a company is looking for experience with X and you already have experience doing that, then apply. If there is automatic filtering on the job for degrees you will probably miss out. For those that don’t do this you should be “near the top of the pile” of applicants.
Networking allows you to subvert most of the degree requirements. If you know someone that can get you a job you can by-pass the usual online application process, but this requires a lot of work to build up your network and the ability to market your abilities, along with actually having existing experience.
All of what I said could be done with or without a degree, a degree just gives you an edge with most application processes, but it isn’t the only way to get a job
Without a degree you’ll have to work harder and probably apply to more positions. You’ll need a reason why someone would hire you instead of the next applicant who does have a degree.
Best thing is to try to get that experience: find an open source project to contribute to, do work for personal contacts, do freelance work, volunteer. And work on your network: go to Meetups, find talks in your area, develop your network of contacts so you can reach out to them when you’re ready to start looking.
My best employee ever had no college degree. I started employing him for a small freelance project and eventually took him on full time. Degrees can be great but they’re just one signal towards whether someone is competent, and often not a great signal.
If you don’t how to become a developer I really recommend you to try these learning paths: https://www.bitdegree.org/learning-paths
It is a very detailed plan of becoming a developer. It helped me a lot when I wanted to learn PHP.
