alt Hacker NewsProbably not helpful, but as a high school dropout and self-taught developer in the industry since 2012. It seems like new grads are being stuck in a similar situation to what the self taughts had to go through to break into a job. Companies care about your work-related experience and dgaf about your college experience. The advice I have is build and contract. Focus on projects and results. If worse comes to worse just set up an LLC and say you've been employed as a developer there for the last 3+ years.
Hustle culture.
I would echo this as well. When I started, I was still in high school (mid 90s) and the only thing they cared about was “make it work”.
Post college, it was about “what have you done?” vs “where did you go?” and so I demonstrated several projects I had done for the passion. A game engine. A graphics website community. Some novel networking libraries. A MUD. Finally, a database. By the time they got to the mud and database they were ringing me non-stop.
All of these projects done over a weekend or two while working other jobs to afford rent. Call centers are a personal level of hell.