Indeed, small companies. I don't have the right pedigree to make it through hiring hurdles at big companies. Despite industry name recognition and 11 years of e

Indeed, small companies. I don't have the right pedigree to make it through hiring hurdles at big companies. Despite industry name recognition and 11 years of experience I get filtered out because I never went to college. HR / People Ops / Recruiters tend to not know enough about the technical roles they are hiring for to gauge skill, so they go the lazy route and use college degrees or BigCo work history as a proxy. If you don't have a degree you can't get BigCo, so you fail on both fronts. Department heads and small company founders can tell if you know your stuff or not with a simple conversation. So that's what I've optimized for when looking for work. Routes to those people and around normal hiring filters.