Self taught gen-xers with senior dev/pm exp. Where's my imposter syndrome team?
tldr: it's been a few years since I've run into anyone in the pool without a degree.
quixotic history aside, how rare is it to get contract work as sendev, devops(sysop ftw) or mid-pm at some F50 houses? My offers are usually about 60% of CS holders... but I'd rather do than don't. Could just be the market in Vancouver, probably a skill issue.
I have a CS degree and they taught class with Pascal, not exactly a marketable skill so I did tech support at first. Every day I still feel stupid about something, I think that just goes with the industry we're in. There is too much going on to be an expert in everything.
I also worked at a couple of F500 companies, they typically want people with Bachelors degrees at a minimum, mostly as a check-mark on their hiring list. If you're contracting with an agency/headhunter house then they may be the ones shortchanging you, not the company doing the contracting.
You're right agents always short-change the no-paper-crew around here, but I always thought this was just a Vancouver thing. My contracts are in the f50 range for mag7 teams.
Just last night an analyst came into my little startup/store. Asked him to take a look at my latest scratch build. Told me to just get a degree from a cert-farm and go for Bay-Area-level work. But, maybe I need therapy instead, because I just don't know a single colleague at the F50s in this city that say the same thing.
I don't have a CS degree. I was born in 1982. Work at Google now as a L5 SWE.