I'm also a self-taught developer and contributing full-stack and with devops, and I've got a year to go to that 5 years XP mark. I'd say I'm pretty productive o

I'm also a self-taught developer and contributing full-stack and with devops, and I've got a year to go to that 5 years XP mark. I'd say I'm pretty productive on a day to day basis, but I do lack certain skillsets that are "required" in some interviews but don't effect my day-to-day (I learn things as a need arises): Low level considerations: Its extremely rare with todays tools and libraries especially to have to dive super deep into compilers or engines. I have to do it once or twice a year to fix some terrible bug, so spending years learning about the intricacies of building my own compiler isn't that useful for me to actually get work done. Granted I"m not doing groundbreaking computer science work but I AM getting a full stack of performant secure and load-balanced services and servers up and running to perform core business work. You can hire Jr. people absolutely - just make sure that whatever they have grown in first is something that you use a lot, while they grow into other areas. If you don't have the budget for super senior do it all people, or if you are on a large team or company where a super senior do it all person would be slowed down there's no issue with hiring B-level or Jr. people - in fact, you'll probably get a lot of good work done out of them. If nobody took a chance on me then I'd be nowhere now.