Silicon Valley job growth has reached dot-com boom levels, report says

Build something and launch it in public (by which I mean a product). You'll prove both an aptitude and a willingness to see something to the end, which to many people will be as good as a degree, and you'll find out if you love this field or hate it.

If you start, make sure you finish. Get someone to hold you accountable to this if necessary.

They likely won't be willing to just take your word that you were a proficient self-study, but if your work is good, some people will be willing to look beyond just the education. While you are trying to teach yourself, take a bit of time to get a basic familiarity with Computer Science concepts (data structures, algorithms, common design patterns, and OO concepts if applicable, etc). These can often seem unnecessary and overly complicated to a self taught developer (speaking from experience), but they can really help with writing nicer, cleaner, more efficient code in the long run.

One thing that helped move me in the right direction for my career was starting a couple of web sites for ideas I had for various niche communities (I had dreams of grandeur and selling my websites for millions, ha). They both failed miserably, and never really generated a sustainable user base. However, I learned a ton in the process about web technologies from front end to the database side of things, and having that on my resume really helped in start-up interviews, as it was a mentality that people in those circles could relate to.

This works. Really. Block Hacker News in your hosts file until you have a job.

Don't just do it for the pay or it'll be a hard road through. But if you love technology and think you could love programming, then try it out.

Tiny little secret: once you get good enough that you can reliably [make dynamic websites with Rails / write iOS apps / insert technology you're interested in here], try freelancing on something like elance to get experience. You'll probably mess up enough that you'll be making minimum wage or less after the time spent fixing things, but you'll grow your skillset pretty quickly.

Aptitude for what kind of thing? Since this is HN, I'll guess it means becoming a programmer, but you might also mean non-technical startup partner, other entrepreneur, or something else.

If you are dreaming of being a programmer but have no programming experience, I'd have to wonder what it is you are dreaming. It's not a glamorous profession when seen from the inside, but if you've been programming for a while and love programming enough to want to do it whether you are paid or not (like me), then it makes sense to try to get paid for it. But you'd have to program for a while before you could know that.

I think someone in your position should just find a job, any job that leaves your evenings free--Home Depot is hiring--and try to teach yourself to program every evening after work. Programming is frustrating for quite a while, so don't let it make you feel stupid. Just see if it starts to grow on you eventually or you gradually lose interest. If it grows on you, then start attending in-person meetups, participating in projects online, building things of your own and (later) showing them off, and talking to people you meet about your interest in a programming job somewhere.

Continue building skills, relationships, experience, and your resume by being strategic about gaining experience. If you can live with a Home Depot-level salary, you'll probably find small companies that won't care about your lack of college if you don't care that they don't pay much. Big companies like Google or Apple probably won't even talk to someone without either an impressive degree or an impressive list of professional accomplishments. You can eventually come up with the latter if you really do come to love programming, but until then, a bootstrap strategy suggests starting with programming for free (after work), then programming for a small company (that might not pay much), then specializing your skills a bit into whatever area you do best, then working at better (but not giant) companies, then deciding what to do from there.

If you find that you hate programming, don't despair. My Silicon Valley plumber makes $140/hr and thinks my programming job sounds like having to do math homework all day long for a lifetime (as if that were a bad thing, go figure), while his is driving around saving people and socializing, running his own company, working whatever hours he feels like...and the grime washes off at the end of the day.

I'm not challenging your right to be here (I think it's cool)--I'm just curious. I think it would be interesting insight into how Hacker News grows.

I'm curious how to figure that a strong job market is hurting local residents though. If you plan on living in a place for a long time the worst thing that could happen is job loss.

Just keep waiting for someone to book it...