I've been working full time as a mobile developer for 2 years after dropping out of college nearly immediately and attending a bootcamp the subsequent summer.
There is a well-oiled machine for scooping up thousands of talented CS students and funneling them into positions at top companies, but if you are on a slightly different path it is easy to be overlooked by the recruiting machine.
What eventually worked for me was continuously trying to get into companies that were better than where I was, while working hard enough that I learned lots and impressed the people I worked with. It didn't take as many steps as I thought it would to get to Google/Facebook level, and overall it was faster and probably more interesting than going back for a CS degree.
Edit: I should elaborate. There are companies out there offering internships that I would die for. I don't mean FAANG stuff or Big 5 or whatever. I'm talking small shops like Teenage Engineering or medium sized business like Ableton or Native Instruments. I have been put in an awkward position where I have experience working full time as a developer, but I'm not necessarily learning anything or developing my skills. It sucks not being able to qualify for a certain subset of entry-level opportunities because I'm not apart of the college/university institutions. I will be keeping my head up as the position I am in may just be what forces me to be extraordinary at what I do.
Some of the best coders and ops people I've ever worked with either never went or never graduated from college.
If you've been working 2 years as a full-time mobile dev, you're qualified for a full-time role. We pay our interns industry salaries, just for 3 months instead of 12. We do take a little bit of extra care to give them a good intro to the company and make sure we take them to a factory in their first (and only) 3 months and have a few intern events over the summer, but otherwise, it's 80-90% like having a software developer job. A few places will have some HR/recruiting drone 86 your resume because of no college. Many will not and most hiring managers who are/were programmers won't care.
tl;dr: Apply anyway (for full-time).
Would it be easier if you graduated 6-3 from MIT? Sure! Would it be easier if you already had 2 years at Netflix? Sure! You have to play the cards you're holding at the moment, though.
Side note: I've also heard the complaint recently that companies and recruiters are being too selective by asking about open source or personal projects, so there are definitely some out there. We don't have a set formula; I'm happy to talk about you, your goals, your skills and abilities, and anything else that comes up. If you've got a great personal project, let's talk about it.
- You're a good writer.
- You do have two years of experience.
- "I will be keeping my head up as the position I am in may just be what forces me to be extraordinary at what I do." -> this sentence betrays a really good attitude.
I'd apply full-time if I were you. Worst case scenario, you'll be in the same place you are now. Best case scenario, I've got someone I can bitch at when Ableton Live hurts my feelings...:)