It's not weird when you see how broken and unserious hiring is just about everywhere in the industry. On top of that the pipeline to hiring entry level/junior p

It's not weird when you see how broken and unserious hiring is just about everywhere in the industry. On top of that the pipeline to hiring entry level/junior programmers is dominated by newly graduated college students, and of those any particular large company with the best salaries is going to prioritize former positively reviewed interns. The intern path is a sweet one if you can take it but is closed to people not part of the college system (and often companies won't take interns until the student has completed their third year). I do still think it's quite possible to bootstrap a programming career without a degree or any formal certification. In some ways it's easier now than say 15 years ago, in some ways it's harder. But hustling is key. There's hustling on the material you need to learn (which is going to be off-putting to many programmers who started for the joy, not the hustle) but there's more important hustling outside of that which well-meaning advice on e.g. what programming language to learn always misses. It helps to see universities, bootcamps, contracting agencies, consulting/freelancing groups, well-connected recruiters, etc. as all being opportunities that take some of the burden of hustling off of you, deciding which ones to try and take advantage of is then partially dependent on how much you can do yourself. It's not helpful to blanket-recommend anything and even when talking to an individual they need to do their own introspection and surface results of that in order to receive useful targeted advice.