In a market where even people who have actual degrees struggle to overcome the experience demands, someone without even that is pretty much fucked, especially i

In a market where even people who have actual degrees struggle to overcome the experience demands, someone without even that is pretty much fucked, especially in a country like I live in where higher education is free. I have managed to be, briefly, employed on an internship basis, but that was short-lived, and once I started asking for and looking to more permanent positions suddenly the opportunities started looking more than a bit scarce. It seems like in an age of massive degree inflation, the self-taught basement hacker doesn't really have a place anymore, while a lot of those same basement hackers who actually made it and have been in the industry ten or twenty years keep giving the same bad "you don't need a degree" type advice.