Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?

First, any HR department will toss your resume without a second's thought. You need to find a business small enough that resumes and applications go to the appropriate manager. Second, your resume needs to interest the manager. It's very easy to see no high school diploma and round-file a resume, and it would feel very risky to hire such a person. Managers are interested in finding good candidates, not in giving everybody a fair shake. There may be very good reasons why you didn't graduate from high school, but those don't matter. You have to get to an interview for those to matter, and explaining why not will take time you could be using to actually impress the manager. Therefore, you have to have something on your resume that says "this guy is special". (Something that says "this guy is average" won't work, since there's likely average programmers available that don't have any obvious problems with their resumes.) About the only thing that will work here is evidence of outstanding programming work, and about the only way you'll get that is by being outstanding in an open source project, since that's about the only reputable software you can get into just by being good. You can always talk to people you personally know, who may be impressed by you, and if they have hiring authority they might be talked into giving you a shot. Of course, the jobs you're likely to get that way aren't all that impressive, and won't look all that good on the resume. You won't find them much of a steppingstone. You can go into business for yourself, but that takes a lot of work and determination and ability. You'll have a great deal of difficulty getting hired as a consultant without a high school diploma, and making and selling a product is really difficult. Everybody knows about the big winners who became billionaires, but there's a whole lot more people you never heard of because they flopped. If you're only average in ability, you're probably doomed here. So, you can devote a lot of work to an Open Source project, or start your own business and bull it through, and both of these require more than average ability. I know you said you don't want "go back to school" responses, but, really, it will take less time, ability, and energy to go back to school than to break into the field in any other way.

I didn't finish High School and used to work as a Software Engineer for a small-sized company. Now I do freelance. Like others suggested, apply at smaller shops where you can bypass those incompetent HR people. Create open source programs, and at least some sort of website for them. Stay updated in all current technologies, challenge yourself. You'll definitely need to 'prove' yourself before attempting to get hired. Beside that, I've been told I was a better developer than my fellow developers with college degrees.

Michael dell (DELL) Marc Zuckerberg (FACEBOOK) Bill Gates (MICROSOFT) Steve Jobs (APPLE) None of the above got their diploma

My impression is this: the less formal education you have, the more you have to compensate by a lot of self-education. Without those degrees, you'll need other stuff to demonstrate to potential employers that you can do the job. If you're so inclined, you can teach yourself the necessary skills. Read lots of books, join open source projects, write lots of programs on your own, figure out what skills are necessary for the jobs you want and learn them. Demonstrable passion for programming can easily trump the lack of a degree. It definitely can be done. There is a lot more acceptance of autodidacts in this profession than most others. For myself, I have a college degree, but it's in history. Everything I learned about software development, I learned on my own. And despite certain holes in my knowledge base which I'm constantly trying to fill with a steady stream of books, I've never had too much trouble finding work. Nor have I ever felt like the least talented or least knowledgeable programmer on any team I've ever worked with. I've met some unbelievably capable programmers with computer science degrees and I've met others who were agonizingly incompetent.

Many many programmers don't have college degrees or degrees in programming. But having done a lot of hiring, I would hesitate to hire anyone who couldn't complete high school. There would have to be a really good explanation for that. It is my experience that people with no high school or GED do not have the self-discipline and ability to work with others to be good employees. I wouldn't hire them for most jobs not just programming.

I think, the point is 'without degree' and 'without education' is not equivalent. I know many people with both even more CS graduates with degree and without educaction - very annoying people a lot of people with education and without degree and - last but not least - quite a lot of people without any of those two, but those guys usually go into marketing. There are places, where you have no chance of being hired. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3488/does-bad-grades-mean-you-are-ruined-for-life/3575#3575 In Germany 2-3 years of experience generally outweigh a degree. I don't have a degree but that never posed a problem for me. Also, if you freelance, your reference is much more important than any number of certificates could be. I suppose this is valid anywhere around the world. So, to put it into few words: Yes you can!

You'd probably have a better chance getting hired by a small, locally owned business. They may not have an HR department so you could skip directly to the owner or a manager. Then you just have to convince them you are qualified.

Once an applicant has some experience under his belt, it doesn't really matter much about formal education. If you've worked in a respectable development environment for a few years, then great - come to an interview. I may ask about your background in your interview, but mostly to see how you handle discussing your background. But if you're at the beginning of your career, and have little-to-no experience, then you'd definitely struggle to even get considered. Think of it this way. All applicants will have an interest in and a knowledge of programming (while this is not necessarily true, it serves for the purpose of the analogy). Of those, almost all will have secondary school level qualifications (A Levels here in the UK, High School in the US). Of those, some will have a CS Degree, and of those who don't, some will have experience. Those are the ones I'd consider first. As someone with no experience and no qualifications, there'd be nothing on your CV to make you stand out as someone worth hiring for the job. From a recruiter's point of view, programming is an academic discipline, so school-level qualifications are vital in order to show that you have the discipline and ability to learn; even if your educational background is not in CS. But on the other hand, the company I work for (which I won't name, obviously) is an IT Consultancy firm who specialise in recruiting people (often graduates, but not necessarily - each applicant is assessed on an individual basis), providing ~3 months of free but unpaid training, then hiring people out to blue-chip companies for the next two years. Companies like this are becoming more popular around the world nowadays (this one is based in the UK, but has offices in the US, Germany and Hong Kong); so while you may get laughed out of the room when applying directly to big companies, there are alternatives to help kickstart a career in programming. The philosophy behind the company I work for is that for fresh graduates, it's near impossible to get a job in IT, since even the most junior positions require 2 years experience normally. So companies like this benefit young aspiring IT professionals, by getting them 2 years good work experience, and relatively up to date training; and also the companies they hire out to, by providing consultants of a known standard of quality, reliably, and without all the HR hassle of directly hiring people.

Not without an education, no. But without a formal education, yes. There is programming knowledge that is categorized horizontally (problem-solving, logic, software architecture, OOP, security, etc.) and vertically (iPhone, *NIX, CICS, bash, PERL, XML, etc). There's also industry-specific knowledge you need to familiarize yourself with. Health care. Automotive. Systems Programming. Scientific computing. ERP. Manufacturing. etc. But the key here is to realize your primary education is to acquire the skill to sell yourself. One of the first facts a salesman learns is you don't win over the person with the checkbook, you win over the person who controls the person with the checkbook. HR manages the legal and administrative details of its relationship with employees. You don't want to go through HR unless you want to write programs for HR. You've got to hit the department with the need for the type of programs you want to write. Instill in them the emotional bond that their future success requires them to get you on-board (which, once you've taken the time to learn what they do, how they do it, and their culture, won't be hard). Take the time to develop a lot of practical software that applies to the department and industry you want the job in, for the programming environment typical in that industry. Plus a few more in related departments/industries/environments. And one or two in unrelated ones. Odds are managers already know what graduates are like. You've got to be the iPhone of programmer candidates. The new, shiny that already fits into their culture and industry. For end-user application development, become acquainted with their products and learn their features and their bugs. Learn it better than their salesmen. (It's a big bonus if you're familiar with their competitor's products too.) Hang out with their customers, and see what their needs are and how they use the software. Then go to conferences, user groups, networking events where salespeople interact with potential customers. Salespeople have been known to varnish the truth. Don't call them out on it (publicly) and don't torpedo the sale. Listen to what objections prospects have about the product and how sales handles them. If you make a suggestion for a feature that the customer really wants you can ingratiate yourself to the sales department, and they can exercise their pull to get you hired. Because $$$ (or your local currency) makes the decisions. So don't torpedo the sale. Maybe you find a hole in their product that you can fill by writing and selling your own product. Then they buy your company. That's another way to end up hired by a company without having a formal education.