Nope. I'm self taught in the sense I never went to university but I like to think of it more as self guided. I've read thousands of blog posts and learned a to

Nope. I'm self taught in the sense I never went to university but I like to think of it more as self guided. I've read thousands of blog posts and learned a ton from other people. If you asked me to whiteboard a red-black tree on the spot I'd insta-fail but if you asked me to Google an implementation of it I'd find it and have it running in a few minutes with a few languages. I don't worry about algorithm grinding because if their interview process expects that then I won't apply. There's lots of options out there where folks will hire you based on skill sets more in line with solving problems directly related to their business. I tend to gravitate towards those which are focused on building and deploying web apps. Of course not all apps are created equal. If you plan to be operating at a super low level for critically important / number crunchy domains like a custom high frequency trading platform or you're writing Mars rover code then sure having a strong CS background seems reasonable, but you don't need to know shit about time-scale calculus or pulse-coupled neural networks to create a CI / CD pipeline to help a 100 million dollar a year business deploy their apps faster and more dependably which in turn helps them become a 110 million dollar a year business. The same goes for planning out, building and deploying a huge variety of SAAS apps.