How I Got a Job as a Self-Taught Developer without a College Degree

I am a 20yo self-taught engineer who recently retired from frontend dev (cuz' I got sick of it) and I've been working with web tech almost every day for the past 4 years.

3 years of which, I spent writing production code

so much garbage code was pushed in these years, god I wonder what an idiot my employer was.

I love solving problems (also the reason why I left frontend) and you can find me working on FOSSMeDaddy! or playing chess in my free time. (I don't have a social life, duh...)

In this post, I'm gonna use the word "I" a lot of times to indicate that these were my experiences and of course, I'm gonna be highly biased towards them, you aren't supposed to hear "you should" instead of "I" :)

I hope you enjoy reading this.

The First Gig

The spark ignited in '20 when I first watched Clever Programmer's Netflix Clone video in React.js.

He made it seem simple and I was so excited, I jumped head-first only knowing how to declare variables in JavaScript and some basic Python knowledge from high school.

Now, I know those guys aren't the best place to learn from these days mainly due to the heavy pushing of their expensive boot camp courses, but their YT tutorials really helped me at that time, and you know what they say:

you never forget your first. (mentor)

No joke, I akshually started my web dev journey by writing a useState not knowing what the hell it, or anything I was seeing, was.

I made 2 purely frontend clones while strictly following the tutorials. With every line I wrote, I learned a bit of both React and JavaScript, classifying which is React and which is JS.

After 2 projects, I lost my patience, closed YT, and continued with the 3rd one - Instagram Clone.

It felt like a freakin' battlefield... errors everywhere, the backend console, the frontend console, my life, CSS console, everywhere! but I made it through all those errors, googling my way through.

kids... ChatGPT didn't exist at that time, we used to do everything from StackOverflow and Logrocket Blogs

Fast-forward 3 months of more random projects, I started applying for internships on Internshala (the best platform to apply for internships, In India at least).

📝

The key is to get in the door somehow, Once you are in the industry, it's relatively easy to get new and slightly better opportunities while your resume fills up with experience.

I specifically applied for unpaid internships in startups. That way, it was easier for me to get in, there was no pressure to manage skill-related expectations and it was implicitly clear in everyone's mind at the company that this person was here to learn and would make tons of mistakes.

After getting in, All I had to do now was learn and shoot down prod less (ik... impossible right?!).

Learn, Learn, Learn

I never went to any Bootcamp or ever took a udemy course on the things I did but I can for sure tell now, I was better off not taking them.

📝

Yes, these bootcamps and zero-to-hero courses give you the knowledge but also give you a weird fear of leaving them, you get too comfortable in the course and forget that they are highly spoon-fed environments to make you learn things easily.

This situation is also known as The Tutorial Hell

Lucky for me, I unknowingly avoided it.

Being more hands-on and spending more Time In The Saddle, I learned stuff better, reading the docs for the APIs & libraries I was using gave me clarity on how things work.

The internship was a transformative experience in terms of my knowledge. It was the first time when I grasped basic concepts like APIs, Frontend-Backend connectivity, Authentication & Security, the Importance of efficiency, Code readability, and Communication in a professional environment.

I burned out after completing the 9-month internship, but after a week's break, I was back doing projects and applying to more opportunities.

If I was doing it just for the money's sake, with no passion, I would've never taken the unpaid internship in the first place and would've sloshed around the shallow waters doing 6-month bootcamps.

📝

You can become a good developer if you do it for the money but at some point, you just have to be passionate & curious about what you do,

That's what separates a good developer from a great developer.

-ThePrimeagen

i know i've quoted him twice... i like primeagen okay! he makes me want to be a better ma- develop- engineer!

There are now, no more takeaways left in this post.

But before you navigate away, I wanna talk about some of the pros & cons of ditching college.

Why?

More of a personal choice than a logical one.

I hated every living minute at school, well, apart from the social interactions, you know friends & stuff...

And I didn't wanna continue that life into college, I love studying Physics, I love studying CS & I love studying Math, but I never loved studying them just to clear an exam, everything is exam-oriented and I am definitely not the type of guy who likes being told by teachers "we can't study that, that's not in the syllabus"

So I struck out on my own.

Pros

Whenever I tell recruiters that I didn't go to college to pursue being a developer on my own, I usually get a positive, mildly impressed reaction from their faces. From there the conversation is only about skills.

It honestly does the filtering of bad companies for me, I don't wanna be in companies that value degrees above actual skill sets and I like being around people who were hired this way, who love what they do just as much or more than I do.

Cons

1. Zero social life.

2. No proper learning curriculum & structure.

3. Missing out on the fundamental & low-level knowledge taught in colleges.

4. Missing out on opportunities that a good college fetches for you without you having to search for everything.

5. Recruiters doubt your ability to persevere in the job.
   
   Just the fact that you went to college for several years, did what you were told to do, and achieved relatively above-average grades shows your discipline & ability to persevere.

These gaps can be filled to an extent but you really can't do about the numerous opportunities you miss out on that are CS University exclusive.

What did parents say?

I made a bargain.

after passing out from school, I had one year. if I can prove someone will hire me and I can sustain myself, they'll let me do whatever I want or else... college.

and guess what?

Comments

[thecodingman247]

I have been self taught developer as well and started my first job when i was in 12th and got into BCA afterwards.

On most of the part you haven't missed much apart from social interactions and bit of knowledge here and there. I kept BCA on side just to be safe .

[gohashira]

Hello there fellow self-taught dev!

Yeah, I could’ve kept an online degree on side but idk… there are so many things I need to learn and do, 24 hours isn’t enough let alone taking out time for that, but that’s just me…

I keep up with my friends in college to see what am I missing.

[ayusharora2212]

your story really inspires a lot to do what u love