>>11134788Not everywhere. As you said, big corporations do have an overzealous HR that could prove problematic.
Smaller companies don't. If you're applying to a web dev studio with under 50 people, they won't have any hilarious HR.
Plus, an actual body of work you can show to your employer will make you stand out head and shoulders above your run-of-the-mill bachelor's degree coder.
What plays in your cards is that there is a serious shortage of qualified labor in the western societies. My <300 people company alone would hire 30 more devs right now, if we could find them. But we're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Corporations are so desperate they ship in foreign immigrants of qualified visa, just to fill the roles.
That being said, I don't want to make this sound too easy. You coming "off the street" will raise a few red flags. But it's not something you won't overcome with a bit of persistence. We're talking 6 months to an entry level job at company you haven't heard of as of today. Not 6 months to senior dev 400k position at Google.
I'd also recommend not overlooking the social aspect of your new career. Going to public events and meeting people will go a long way for you. Once you've put up your repo on GitHub, so you have something to link to, you should see if there is any kind of event open to public in the sector you've decided to pursue. I.e. coding dojos. Industry meetups, etc. It's different sector to sector.
Make sure you've put up enough code to justify you going to those events, so people don't think you're just showing up for the free beer. Some sectors are better for this than others. So do your research.
Once you've been showing around your face long enough, you will innevitably talk to people looking for help. Did I mention the job marked is fucking starved for programmers?
The best way into any job is through personal connection, not submitting a CV to HR email address.
