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I don't know how much emphasis there is on college degrees in the UK, but in the US you can definitely get good work in this industry without formal education.

I don't know how much emphasis there is on college degrees in the UK, but in the US you can definitely get good work in this industry without formal education. You have to be willing to put in serious effort to get up to speed. For example, you'll need to spend your free time doing MOOCs and side projects until you have a sufficient amount of knowledge + experience to be attractive to potential employers. Go to meetups, keep up to date by reading. Also, at first you'll likely need to take jobs with companies that aren't necessarily "sexy," but you can hone your skills and continue with those side projects. Before long, you'll notice that you can get interviews at better and better companies (better=according to your preferences).

Acidpunk 14y ago
Yeah putting the serious effort in isn't a problem, my love of all things computing attests to that. Spent the weekend installing arch and tweaking the hell out of it for no reason other than I found it the most fun I'd had in months. I've looked into Codecademy for HTMl5+CSS+Javascript + Jquery and http://eloquentjavascript.net/index.html http://eloquentjavascript.net/index.html I'm just afraid that I'll be looked down on with nothing but knowledge and lack of degrees I've always been told no degree = no job by parents / family / friends etc. As for the companies that aren't sexy, honestly I couldn't care less what kind of company I worked for or for what salary at this point all I want is the practical experience to have something on my CV to say hey look I did this !