> It's not about "how strong is the force in you", it's about "how much experience and wisdom do you have in real world situations". For someone without a CS d

> It's not about "how strong is the force in you", it's about "how much experience and wisdom do you have in real world situations". For someone without a CS degree, building side projects [and sharing them] speaks volumes too. This matters more at startups, small companies, or anywhere hiring is less formulaic. To OP: 3. You could try fixing a bug on an open source project of interest to you and see if your PR gets accepted. Another idea is to work on algorithmic problems in your spare time. Project Euler (https://projecteuler.net/ https://projecteuler.net/) is my current favorite site for that.