I won't ever hire a developer to work for free - I remember being in this boat when I started as a self-educated programmer. The employers that you attract by s

I won't ever hire a developer to work for free - I remember being in this boat when I started as a self-educated programmer. The employers that you attract by saying you will work for free in exchange for possible future employment and experience are usually not that great. The suggestion to contribute to an open-source project is, by far, the best advice. Open-source projects tend to be (but not all) meritocracies; you will learn far more by contributing to an open-source project because of the big-team culture...