This transcends geography. Show competency by building something that demonstrates your technical ability. Better yet, build 2 things.
Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them.
That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview. Unless you've taken a Data Structures & Algorithms class recently, you can forget working there.
> Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview
I gotta second the above statement. A software engineering job often has so many unqualified applicants that it's just not practical to give every applicant a courtesy phone call. In these cases, a CS degree requirement is a way to filter out the people who are spamming their resume; or the crazies who just don't understand the kind of experience that the job requires.
That being said, it doesn't hurt to couch-surf in Silicon valley for a week or two. There are a lot of (cough) "startups" that need dirt-cheap developers that you can meet at every single networking event. You'll have 2-3 years of putting up with stupid ideas that go belly up every few months, but as you build your network, you'll eventually find someone who values your skills and forgets that you don't have a pedigree.
You misread apparently. No one said anything about a CS degree. And your intuition is wrong. The Facebooks and the Googles are the companies who are confident enough in their screening that they don't care much about your formal education anymore.
Sure. Just put something on your resume that gives a recruiter some confidence in your capability with respect to those data structures and algorithms. A computer science degree is only one way of doing that.
Cosign. I live in the Washington, DC area. I hired a Web Dev from Boulder, CO because he had Udacity training and a impressive portfolio of projects. The projects showed me that he loved to build things. I also noticed that he had a ton of comments on Youtube, Stackoverflow, and Github showing that he was actively learning more about new web frameworks.
This is the only answer. I'm self taught, but even after working with different software companies for years, side projects are always the thing that gets me my next role.
> This is the only answer. I'm self taught, but even after working with different software companies for years, side projects are always the thing that gets me my next role.
Under what section in your resume do you put your side projects? Is it under Work Experience?
I have a section called "notable projects", which lists about 4 or 5 in detail (I don't believe that resume's need to be a single page). But generally - the cover letter is always more important anyway (and especially if you don't have an intro). I usually like to try and tie why I'm the right person for a role, to some specific work I've accomplished in XYZ side project.
> Unless you've taken a Data Structures & Algorithms class recently, you can forget working there.
IMHO, if someone claims to be a self-taught programmer but doesn't understand these things at the same level as someone who graduated and have had a few years of real experience since, he isn't really a competent programmer. Putting together libraries without understanding of underlying mechanisms isn't programming.
You can brush up on data structures and algorithms and pass their interview. It just takes a bit of extra effort. Plus its knowledge that helps on your everyday work.
Source: Self taught who constantly studies CS stuff.
After this, which is IMO the only valid answer, we could talk about web devs with degree looking for jobs at startups founded by self-taught web devs without degree...
I don't know how anyone could answer this question accurately unless they've gone through the process of applying for jobs in many different cities when they had no work experience.
In San Francisco I was able to break into the market - it didn't happen quickly - it took a couple of years to move from free websites for friends to part-time work to a full-time salaried position. I have a music performance degree. That was about six years ago.
My sister was able to break into a real job much more quickly. She had a degree from UC Berkeley in Oceanography and then went to Hack Reactor for a couple of months. After a couple of months of applying for jobs, she got a pretty decent salaried position. This was from late 2015 to early 2016.
When you are starting out, it seems like getting a job is a matter of
1) Having a portfolio of work demonstrating that you can code
2) Applying to a ton of jobs
The San Francisco Bay Area has so many jobs that you can apply to positions literally all day long.
If you can code well and get freelance gigs, and if you are completely flexible, you might want to consider becoming a global nomad. I'm sitting in Medellin, Colombia right now with a team of developers from around the world who are here because their money goes three times as far as anywhere else with this level of quality of life.
I don't know enough to say whether or not it's the best but...NYC is great for developers of a certain personality type. Specifically in the finance industry. There are a lot of corporate HQ's here that maintain large systems and have public and internal websites and services that require maintenance. Being friendly with Dev/IT staff at my current and previous employer, I can attest to the fact that they all say finding people who can actually code well is very tough. They seem to not think highly of college degrees, purely because the colleges are handing out degrees to people who can't code. That is the major reason they care far less about the degree. Another reason is that the IT guys in finance (and probably most places) care a lot less about "pedigree" or some kind of perceived educational status. Pretty much all of the corporate lawyers and execs where I am are all Ivy League educated. Dev/IT doesn't care about that if you can do the job - and they have easily testable methods to verify you can actually do the job, as we all know. The biggest roadblock is getting the interview in the first place if you don't have the usual background. In that case, you would probably need to know someone who works for the company to help get your resume in front of someone.
Also of note - I have seen a lot of very talented developers leave the financial companies I have worked for because they find the Dev work unexciting and they view their continued learning as stunted or completely nonexistent. They all seem to hate supporting line-of-business applications for whatever reason. That being said, it usually pays pretty well because these are business critical services that support either a large user base or are behind a large amount of money. Case in point - the brother of a friend of mine never went to college but was a self-taught programmer and is extremely talented - he works for a hedge fund running their entire infrastructure and makes more than double what I make.
If the corporate thing isn't your style, there are also a fair amount of startups here in NYC. But I don't have enough knowledge about them to comment on compensation, job stability, work culture, etc.
Granted, these are learning-oriented rather than strictly networking, so the topics of conversation aren't going to be focused on job openings. But networking is obviously a part of it and you can reach out to the contacts you make at these events.
Basically, anything where you can talk to someone face to face so they can get a feel for you and you can make an impression on them. That's the goal. If they like your personality and they think you are competent, they are far more willing to open the door for you and overlook the degree requirement. But you definitely must be very, very competent if you don't have the degree.
I have some experience with this since I went straight from high school to working in San Francisco. I don't know about the best city for someone without degree, but the best city for tech by far is San Francisco. To give you an idea of how dense the tech scene is in SF, the headquarters of Uber, Square, and Twitter, are all within two blocks of each other. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other tech companies just a few blocks further from there.
As for companies, I have found it much easier to interview at larger companies than smaller ones. When I applied to three larger companies (Uber, Google, Dropbox) all of who were interviewed me and eventually made me an offer. I also applied to six smaller companies, of which four rejected me without interview, and the remaining two wound up making me offers.
Since I was unsure whether I would be able to get a job or not, I deferred from college for a year, so I could always go back if I couldn't find a job. Depending on your situation, this may or may not apply to you.
I think you're reading into the question a bit much - it's just asking "What's the best city for Devs without a Degree?" Granted, having a why is really nice. So here goes:
I'm not sure I agree with OP's assessment that it's be best without explanation, as a Portlander myself. There really aren't that many tech jobs here, not like SF at least, and given that it's competitive (everyone wants to live here), anyone who wants to see a C.S. degree on their resumes can discard the others until they find what they're looking for. Granted, since a lot of companies here are small and don't have the money to fly prospective hires in for a visit, living here and at least having technical skills is valuable. It also helps your case that aside from Intel we don't have much of a presence from top software giants - ya know, the kinda that can be picky about who they hire. A lot of the jobs here aren't "high tech" though - as a developer you might have a hard time finding the sweet spot of fun/interesting/world changing work you're looking for.
That said, the DIY ethos is strong here, and there really aren't that many techies, so a good history of development will get you as far here as anywhere. I think the lack of nearby schools producing C.S. grads is another factor in why most of our tech community is self-taught or imported from somewhere where C.S. is taught.
Culturally, I think casual tech people are happier here since the community is small and not as serious as in SF or other places. People who are really serious about their work are rare and talking about work makes you seem clueless in a city full of people who love to play.
Not web-dev but self-taught(did college for a few years but landed a job in industry so I didn't complete).
Your best bet is to target small companies/startups to build experience. Large corporations tend to filter out candidates without a degree and extensive experience. Prove that you can deliver and the rest will follow.
Also don't stop learning, you will have gaps and the only way to fill them out is to get off the comfortable path and dig into domains that you might not traditionally work on.
I get the impression that the Washington, D.C. area is probably good for this. There are a massive number of non-profits and other "associations" here with varying budgets and needs. Many of them will turn to larger IT consultant companies, but direct hire and contract work is probably still pretty solid in the area just because there are so very many organizations and they all want websites.
In SF, with a good portfolio and the ability to demonstrate your coding skills well in an interview, you can expect to get a job w/in about 3 months. This will cost you between $5 and $8k (cost of living) and you will be able to take home anywhere from $53 - $80k/yr (after taxes and before cost of living.) I don't know how this compares to other options, but just thought I'd give you some numbers.
53$ is shockingly low for Bay Area, after taxes. 80K is also low... Hack Reactor bootcamp grads are generally pulling 100-125 straight out, so, what, 85 after taxes?
Because it will be an entry-level position with low expectations. I'd never pay $125k to a self-taught engineer who will move at a snail's pace, and might need a lot of help from the team.
The $125k salary comes later once the engineer moves faster and doesn't need a lot of help.
I have friends who went to HR, and my personal perception is that bootcamps are a bubble bound to fall on their faces. They have been aggressively expanding for as long as they have been around, and I don't think the market is keeping pace. 100-125 is the number they advertise, but we won't know when that number has fallen until the 12 month average has fallen significantly.
Well, for reference, I graduated in September and my cohort are all pulling above 100. Hack Reactor's expansion is old news - they acquired Makersquare nearly 2 years ago, they settled on 2 floors of students earlier than that, quite early in their history really.
As long as we see 1000 unique jobs posted on LinkedIn daily, which is the case right now, Bootcamps will continue to profit off the massive lack of general web dev talent. I'd expect a crash to be more of a general economic crash than any fault of the bootcamps.
I can't speak for how other bootcamps are operating. So far the only model that I've seen make sense is HR and Makersquare, which are now the same.
There's probably a general cultural or sociological alignment to such openness you could identify in an area but the best chances are likely where the demand simply outstrips the supply enough that companies will be more flexible in their hiring.
Personally, I have zero degrees and no formal education in ANYTHING, not to mention a general distaste for traditional classroom training in general, yet starting with a graphic design job that fell in my lap in 1998 (it's who you know...), I've simply developed my skills "organically" (?) and parlayed each position into the next, having worked as a web developer (at loosely-run non-profits and for very traditionally-structured government contractors), UX architect (at a very well-known company/domain name provider), UI developer (financial institution), and now as software engineer building web apps for a very narrow vertical market.
While my first "real" office job was Southern California (in an inland bedroom community 1 hour north of San Diego), the bulk of my career has spanned 2 geographic areas: Phoenix and Denver (mostly the suburbs, at that.) Relocating to both did entail factoring in the availability of relevant jobs but was more about what I wanted for my life at the time the decision was made.
It's highly unlikely I'd ever be a strong candidate for a Silicon Valley-type company or a startup, which is fine wth me since I'm a work-to-live type temperament and have never been the "work hard, play hard" type. But I also have a seemingly natural desire to be a good employee & coworker and like to be proud of the quality of work I do. Some of that might be a result of the "leadership development" that was unofficially required in my first job.
The foundations for my career are only based in teenage dabbling in software (coding BASIC on a TRS-80 in the early 90s, reverse engineering the HTML in webpages to build my own in the mid-90s) and a general technical bent overlaid with creative tendencies. Having a nearly insatiable thirst for knowledge probably helps too...
I think San Francisco is definitely among the top cities.
You don't need a degree. It's all about what you can do. What have you done? What skills do you have?
When I was looking, I researched a lot of the job openings and looked at the skills they were hiring for. Then I taught myself the skills and technologies I didn't know.
It also helps to know what the most in demand jobs are. I'm not sure if it's the same, but last year the top jobs were front-end engineers and dev ops.
When I was ready I went out to apply for jobs and pretty much had the exact resume jobs were looking for. Then the bidding war starts as everyone wants you to work for their company!
Self-taught web dev here. Just have a solid portfolio and solid github account. Focus on small and medium sized companies which will care less. Should not matter where you are. Two Lead guys at a former startup I was at, did not have degree. Chops matter.
I'm german so can't answer your question directly. But what worked for me to maintain a career after quitting university to pursue my own startup was to work as a subcontractor for larger agencies. You get these types of jobs mostly through your network, have to do some hustling and accepting a low "first project" rate, but if you leave a good enough impression that leaves you as a "safe choice" you'll quickly get projects of ever increasing importance. After a while of this your resume should include big enough projects and brand names that your lack of degree is only a footnote compared to the experience obviously on display.
My friend in Houston is trying this right now but it's incredibly stressful. A lot of companies aren't interested because he's unsure whether he's even coming to their city, some are turned off because they assume he'll want relocation, not to mention it's emotionally trying for him to hop from city to city for interviews and not even know where he wants to settle.
I would imagine any city that's leaning more towards demand than supply is going to make it easy for a self-taught developer to get hired. (Assuming that developer is good. A bad developer with a degree will have an easier time getting hired than a bad developer without a degree.)
And I think most if not all of the larger cities are like this. I have personal experience with Boston, SF, San Diego. In 20 years I've never seen a market that wasn't good for developers.
I'm not really self taught as I did go to college but I didn't finish my degree. I managed to get my first job after a few months in the Silicon Valley (San Jose, not SF).
I don't know how much my not having a degree really mattered after that but my last 4 jobs were in Seattle. I suspect I may have been "leveled" at one of my jobs based on my not having a degree though, but I can't say for sure.
I'll throw Austin out there as the place where I met the most self-taught web developers, even with a pretty good computer science department at UT. The startup culture there is a bit more laid-back and open-minded, in my opinion, and I think this translates into giving anyone who wants to break into the industry more of a chance so long as they can exhibit competency.
Don't focus on location. College is a way to shortcut the "I have training/experience and/or am able to learn" requirement, so without that you're going to need to prove that you have the skills, experience or ability to learn.
Mucking about with location is going to turn into a side quest that will just distract you from the important things.
London is good. I'm a self-taught dev who moved from tech support to QA to engineering. There's a lot of work here and quite a bit of competition, but I wouldn't say not having a degree has been a problem.
I moved to SF from Houston, began self learning, and joined a bootcamp. It was financially stressful and terrifying and I'm still paying off personal debts accrued, but I believe I would have had a much harder time in a different city. I was a recruiter before, and I say, go where the jobs are.
If you hop on linkedin and search "front end" and filter to Bay Area, posted last 24hrs, you should see ~1000 jobs (maybe not this month). Per Day. Every day there are thousands of jobs opened up that are very open to the idea of a self taught or bootcamp educated person. Basically, this city seems much more of a meritocratic system than Houston or Austin, other cities I'm familiar with. Also, the pay is excellent out here.
I second what others are saying about portfolios. I always say, if I asked you to make pong in your given language, you should be able to do so in a couple of hours from scratch and be able to send it to me to run on my computer/phone. That's the level you want to be at and that's the kind of apps that should be on your portfolio.
I have gone into more detail of my experience at my blog: blog.calebjay.com, and the archive section links to my older blog with some other details about my transition. I'm also happy to speak with anybody here or privately through email (see my profile) that's interested in how they can make this happen for themselves.
I moved from a crap job, a crap life (financially, I'm a happy guy otherwise), and really no future to an engineer. I went from having no future to having a guaranteed career, forever, barring catastrophic global economic collapse. I really can't express the feeling of having the weight of future-worry taken off my shoulders, but I know I want as many people that were where I was at a year ago to feel it, and I will go out of my way to help any way I can.
That's the query I used in my job search, it worked quite well. Bay Area also has the highest concentration of startups and smaller companies that are notoriously open to non-traditionally educated developers. Try changing the location to Houston, Denver, Austin, Seattle, the entire state of Wisconsin, DC, etc and notice the difference. Try searching on angel.co in those cities. I think unarguably the Bay Area has the highest concentration of jobs open to self-educated developers, the question is, can you afford to live here for the several months it may take you to get a job?
This transcends geography. Show competency by building something that demonstrates your technical ability. Better yet, build 2 things.
Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them.
That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview. Unless you've taken a Data Structures & Algorithms class recently, you can forget working there.