One of the things I quickly learned as I got close to graduation is that the primary problem with a math degree is that everyone thinks a math degree represents

One of the things I quickly learned as I got close to graduation is that the primary problem with a math degree is that everyone thinks a math degree represents little more than extra time doing the math that they know (or are at least aware they've encountered). There's apparently a blub paradox of education. There's a somewhat similar dynamic with PHP; when people aren't simply outright going by their own language preferences, they may assume that your caliber as a dev is roughly equivalent to the highest quality PHP codebase they've encountered & groked. And not only has there been an awful lot of low-quality PHP code written, the most commonly deployed PHP code probably doesn't fit the most common web MVCish architecture choices that've coalesced over the years. You can, of course, use both kinds of judgment in a form of reverse-discrimination. I think the other solution is to get more concrete about the kinds of problems you've studied/solved. If your Math degree brought you to lots of material about matrix & numerical analysis, hey, you studied machine learning foundations. :) PHP? Maybe you're now partly a domain expert in content management systems. (But also, probably best to add a language Java/C# folks look at with respect...)