> there is this a significant intersection between career changers/developers coming from non traditional backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and minori

> there is this a significant intersection between career changers/developers coming from non traditional backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and minorities. Put your money where your fucking mouths are and hire these people. I am white, and grew up in what would best be described as a mix between military housing and a trailer park. Crime was a part of daily life, upward mobility was "join the military", and access to educational resources was a joke. I made it to software because I was incredibly lucky and ahead of the curve in the industry. Pre-internet, programming was something I found because I was bored and the one library I had access to had a computer and a few books by Peter Norton. I was programming when adults around me couldn't figure out wordperfect to type a letter (not that that was an easy task). A kind person gave me an old clunker of a machine to take home and that was enough to spark a career. (after my mother yelled at me for using so much electricity, of course) I am now in a place where I can use my experience to speak for me instead of my educational credentials, but the first half of my career I worked some abysmal tech jobs because many companies gate kept positions behind college degrees, even with relevant work experience (and compared to most unskilled jobs, even a bad tech job is a good job). Even now, among my peers the phrase "Where did you go to school?" is one I hear often, and when I say "I didn't." it gets me some strange looks and often a feeling of instantly being devalued in this person's eyes. I've done what I can to remove these hiring practices in orgs I've been a part of in the last 20 years, and I have seen positive change in general, but the system is still fundamentally biased against those with the financial means to enter it.