I'm an self taught programmer from Germany and since leaving school I have been working as a free lancer. Some time ago I decided that doing the free lance is

I'm an self taught programmer from Germany and since leaving school I have been working as a free lancer. Some time ago I decided that doing the free lance is a little to stressful for me (you know, customer acquisition, taxes, business overhaed) so I talked to some friends of mine who work as "normal" office developers. They all said something like "yeah, any company should be happy to have you working for them" and so I started so send out applications. Guess what: The HR guys won't even look at my CV without any sort of official paper. Be it a CS diploma or a finished apprenticeship (yes, in Germany we have programmer apprenticeships) - without that not even an interview. So what I'm thinking now about is doing the 3 year apprenticeships. Only to get a paper that says "yeah, that guy knows how to spell Java and knows what ISO norm 23542 is" (programmer apprenticeships isn't more than that in Germany). Oh happy time - where I will spend the next 3 years and "learn" nonsense I already know or I don't want to know. And my classmates will be ~17 years old.