Self taught programmers are more discriminated against these days than women, in my opinion. A lot of companies _say_ they don't care if you don't have a degree, but my experience is that the programmer with a degree from Stanford but a blank github account will get the job over a self-taught developer with dozens of shipped projects under their belt.
hm. as a self-taught sysadmin, this hasn't been my experience.
I mean, a degree from Stanford is something that is worth a whole hell of a lot more than your average degree... so yeah, maybe someone from Stanford would have a significant advantage over someone self-taught... but someone from an average university? maybe some advantage, but yeah, I don't think it's as big of a deal as being a woman, or being foreign or what have you.
Of course, if you are self taught and have no experience? sure, you have it really rough. Much more so than a person who has a degree and no experience. You need the experience. but after ten years? (remember, you should have /at least/ 4 years more experience than the kid with the degree, if you are self-taught.) From what I've seen? I can be pretty competitive.
But women? Nobody has ever rejected /me/ from a job with:
"I'm sorry, but we don't have any diversity positions at this time."
The mind reels. I have had a job, before, when I was much younger, where I thought I was hired for altruistic reasons. It was soul-crushing. Imagine that rattling around the back of your head for the rest of your career.
I have never had the slightest indication that anyone actually looked at my Github account listed at the top of the resume, let alone that this ever helped me get any job I've had. So I'm inclined to treat this as an urban legend.
