Quote Originally Posted by 'bryce',index.php?page=Thread&postID=170924#post17 0924
Why hire someone that would probably have less real world experience but has a piece of paper then someone who does have real world experience? I don't get that. I know for a fact, if I was hired for my skills and not a paper saying I know what I'm doing I'd do fine, but employers won't even take a look at me unless I have that piece of paper. Am I right?
[...] and some of them are able to get by charging $300+/hour on some projects. Yes, they've got a LOT more skill than me[...]
I think that you've answered your own question yourself:
If you don't have a degree, you need to excel and have proven to be on par with someone that has a degree. If you are on the same level as an average person with a degree, then it's very natural that the person with the degree gets picked if there are a lot of candidates for the job. Unfortunately for you, there are a lot of web developers.


(I'm speaking out of experience; I got hired at the age of 21 - without a degree higher than highschool - as a programmer for a big development studio)
I've even been approached by several web development companies that asked if I could work for them ... and PHP/XHTML/CSS is only something I used for my personal websites.