Ask HN: How can I become a professional developer without a degree?

A few things come to mind though.

1. Don't try to overreach for a "senior" dev role or something similar. Take the jr and mid level positions and build up your skillset and validation.

2. Apply where the gate keepers are not recruiters or a large HR dept where they only know to look for certain things on your resume, one being a CS degree. So that means stick to smaller companies or early stage startups (though this can be hit or miss since a lot of startups interview horribly and for the wrong things).

3. On everything you do, underpromise and overdeliver. Don't try to be a hero and say you can do it in a day, tell them a realistic time period and then give yourself plenty of buffer. Better to be known for delivering early or being a "padder" than being chronically late and over promising. In the end, you'll still wind up being late on projects because it is the nature of our work sometimes, but at least if you aren't "known" for it as a rule which will make you more respected.

As crappy as it is, age plays a factor in a lot of peoples minds because they equate age to experience, which isn't necessarily valid. Everyone on my team right now, including the CEO is within a few years of my oldest son's age and in their 20's, if I didn't think they were capable or smart I would never have worked with them, age is not relevant to being good. Experience does come with age however, so I can't say it is never relevant in some aspects.

I do get discouraged when I see people with 3-5 years of experience calling themselves "senior engineers" as they are just barely into a mid level role in my opinion, at least in general terms. There are exceptions of course, for example, I will give more credit for 3-5 years experience in startups or small businesses, since typically they move much faster and are more dynamic, but it is very person dependent.

I fought through a lot of crap when I was young in my career, dealing with CS grads who thought they were the shit and I was scum and didn't deserve a dev role etc. I had to prove myself more, and that was ok in my opinion cause I was capable. But it did get old sometimes. Changing jobs was a little harder at first, cause you had to get past the filters more than a CS grad etc. Some of this is a lot better now for people like you, but other parts not so much. For me after I had about 5-7 years of positions on my resume I was past all the filters and had no issues.