Once you actually work in the industry for a while, you realize that most newbie side projects are incredibly small and distressingly unimpressive. Since you've never worked in a production codebase, your internal metric of difficulty and value is WAY off. You might think you have a really great Github, but I suspect that you need samples at least 4x as complex as what you've already done.
Remember that "CS Degree" is simply a indicator that you are solid hire. Hiring managers are looking to maximize the chance that you're worth the effort, so without the CS degree you'll need to work much much harder to prove your worth. Definitely possible! But not easy.
Oh, and don't lie. If you claim experience and interview with me, I'll drill you in detail about your claimed experience and what you learned. I'll figure out you were lying, and that's not a good hiring signal.
These are important questions to answer because you have to be able to crisply articulate them otherwise there are much more qualified candidates to choose from (depending on the hiring market).
Also what gives you the impression that lying is normal? There is a difference between lying and casting your past experience in the most favorable light possible (take this too far and you can cross over into the realm of lies). Lying is a great way to start off in this industry on the wrong foot - it's a smaller world than you think and the cost of lying is higher than you think.
What exactly does this mean? Do you have a bunch of repos that are tutorial projects or did you create something yourself? Are they deployed? What state is the code in, does it look prod ready? Are there tests?
When an artist applies for a position they bring a prepared portfolio not a bunch of sketchbooks. Is your Github a portfolio or a sketchbook?
It's doesn't have to be a Killer App - it's OK if that appeal is popular only among a certain demographic.
I got my break as a coder by applying for a QA job that expected me only to execute scripts that someone else wrote.
But one day my manager walked into my cube to find it completely wallpapered with what looked like flowcharts.
"Those are actually dataflow diagrams," I explained. "I can't quality MacTCP 1.0.1 because the test tool always crashes."
"I know how to code on the Macintosh. Any chance you could get approval to have me fix all the bugs in strm_echo?"
I knew and he knew and my manager's manager all knew that I was offering to do software engineering for the pay I received as a script monkey.
I fixed strm_echo, qualified 1.0.1, 1.1 and wrote a new tool and a test plan for 1.2. In the process I got really good at debugging with the MacsBug machine debugger.
My next job I was the Product Development Manager for a company whose flagship product was incompetently written by a con artists. I stayed at Working Software for 3 1/2 years, during which I learned everything else - other than MacsBug - that I needed to know to be a commercial Mac developer.
If you want a mobile app development job you have to have at least one app in either Apple's App Store or in Google Play.
If you want to be a web developer you need to create a useful website - not for other coders to look at your source, but for end-users to find useful and appealing.
Have you ever had a brutal editor (preferably someone you barely know) read over your resume and give you some feedback? You might be surprised by the results!
Offer to implement a feature for free or meaningfully contribute to one of their open source projects to demonstrate you have the technical chops to be a productive member of their team.
Also, besides technical skills, you have to be a good cultural fit. Make sure you do your homework what they are looking for in candidates more generally.
First, you should structure your resume as a "skills resume" that includes as many languages, environments and major libraries as you know how to use.
Then, include your strongest, most relevant school/personal projects and list them with action verbs, "Built XXX using YYY with these features...", "Designed ZZZ with algorithm QQQ..."
Most employers are looking for entry-level developers that have built complete solutions and not toy problems. They want to know that you can collaborate with others and contribute. Underscore any and all school/volunteer projects that show that.
BTW: I gave that same advice to my nephew who was self-taught without any college degree to get his first development job. What helped him the most, I think, was that he essentially created his own first job, so to speak, by building a basic scheduling web app for a friend's bike messenger service (for free). It filled a gap in his resume and proved that he could turn requirements into working code. That's all he needed to get a "real" job.
If you can't get a full-time job, do some contract work. Worst case, go on Upwork or whatever. If you charge low enough, then someone will take the bait. You can then describe that work in whatever misleadingly favorable terms you prefer.
For a while I had the idea that I would only charge the rate that I actually required to cover my modest expenses.
I got no offers for any kind of work. Not perm, not contract.
Now that I charge obscene hourly rates I'm getting lots of work.
If you don't charge enough for contract coding potential clients will assume that you are so inexperienced that you are completely unaware of what other contractors are charging.
Use http://salary.com to guide your bid. If you _do_ choose to pursue contract programming, add one-half of your IRS 1040 Schedule SE Self Employment Tax to salary.com's salary then convert it to hourly rates.
But you will also want to pay for your own vacations, medical insurance and the like. Do some research on what kind of benefits your kind of coder receives than add at least that much to salary.com's salary and one-half of your self-employment tax.
(The self employment tax is equal to the sum of the employer and employee contributes to FICA - the social security tax.)
Also take into account the cost of providing your own software and equipment, your advertising and other legitimate business expenses.
All this has the result that contractors appear to be far better paid than are perm employees. If you only charge what I advise above then your take-home pay will be no more than that of the perms.
Aside: Not a great sign that the answer that most strongly advises honesty is the lowest-rated...
Also, if you're trying to work for a big tech name or some hip startup, go for the enterprise IT shop instead. A bank, insurance company, hospital system, grocery store chain, etc. Because working in those places is considered unsexy, and they know it, they have to be more flexible than the places that are flooded with resumes from hotshot coders. Again, that's how I got my foot in the door. Work there for a year or two, do well, learn as much as you possibly can, and you'll be firmly established on the career ladder.
If you're not getting the sort of work you want, maybe adjust your expectations.
https://www.besanttechnologies.com/training-courses/amazon-w...
Everybody exaggerates on their resume - the line between that and lying is up to you and your own personal ethics.
You 100% wouldn't be the first person to land your job (first or not) based on a lie. Make sure you can back the lie up though, and try to make it a small enough lie that the next resume doesn't need to perpetuate it (you don't want to be the CTO trying to explain away why the company about us page lists you as graduating from Harvard...).
