I guess this might fall under "You need experience and you have no other option to get experience.", but I ended up on the path of working for startups because
1. I never graduated from university (life came up, and I couldn't afford to keep going); but, also,
2. I don't live in the US (I'm Canadian.)
Any of the US bigcorps that want to hire programmers, expect them to get a visa and move to the US.
You know what you need, to get a work visa as a programmer coming to the US?
A college degree!
So, my employer pool was instantly limited to non-US companies. Mostly local Canadian companies. Most of those are very conservative and also expect a college degree. The only ones that aren't, are startups. So that's what I had to do.
The really annoying thing is, I ended up doing work for these Canadian startups that would netted me a $300k USD salary if I had been doing it for a US bigcorp. But, because Canadian salaries are lower, and startup salaries are lower, I was only getting ~$60k.
After years of doing that, I'm a Canadian startup founder... and still only making (i.e. paying myself) $60k.
I guess I'm an object lesson in the value of a college degree!
Actually you dont need to have college degree. I don't have high school diploma and I got L1B visa.
In case you have enough years of experience, this experience is "translatable" to years of college/degree.
There is companies that specialize in writing letters for US Visa applications in which they are go through your experience and how it translated to visa degree requirements.
My 18 years of experience were placing me somewhere between BS and MS. Letter for visa application supporting it was 6 pages long.
1. I never graduated from university (life came up, and I couldn't afford to keep going); but, also,
2. I don't live in the US (I'm Canadian.)
Any of the US bigcorps that want to hire programmers, expect them to get a visa and move to the US.
You know what you need, to get a work visa as a programmer coming to the US?
A college degree!
So, my employer pool was instantly limited to non-US companies. Mostly local Canadian companies. Most of those are very conservative and also expect a college degree. The only ones that aren't, are startups. So that's what I had to do.
The really annoying thing is, I ended up doing work for these Canadian startups that would netted me a $300k USD salary if I had been doing it for a US bigcorp. But, because Canadian salaries are lower, and startup salaries are lower, I was only getting ~$60k.
After years of doing that, I'm a Canadian startup founder... and still only making (i.e. paying myself) $60k.
I guess I'm an object lesson in the value of a college degree!