In my country at least, having friends or family with a foot in the door is pretty essential to landing that first interview. You still need to demonstrate comp

In my country at least, having friends or family with a foot in the door is pretty essential to landing that first interview. You still need to demonstrate competence, though. I think the newness of software engineering relative to more traditional professions like medicine, law, and even other kinds of engineering is a large part of the reason why gatekeeping is less of a barrier. Given enough time, though, I'm sure this will change for the worse.