How much education do you even need for a job?

depends on the job.

>How much education do you even need for a job?
The more, the better
>Do you need a university degree?
Yes. Associate is an unspoken required minimum nowadays
>Do you need to even finish high school?
Yes. Isn't it obvious enough?
>Or is your portfolio most important?
It is extremely important, but it's almost impossible to build a decent looking portfolio without a degree. It is a vicious cycle - you can't get a job without portfolio and you can't get a portfolio without getting at least a few jobs.
>I'm selftaught, but nearing burnout, so I want to know what I even need.
Relax, fap and nap. You're not gonna make it anyway, so what's the purpose of this struggle. Watch some anime, read some books, listen to some kpop/synthwave/whatever genre you like. Your life is too precious to spend it on some stupid shit like CS or programming. I guess you have parents, at least one of them, it's their responsibility to take care of their progeny. You didn't ask them to be born, but they still made you, now it's their time to pay for that.

Apparently you need a PhD because I have a bach and that doesn't seem to mean jackshit, I've applied to hundreds of companies and i'm getting maybe my second interview

My first one was a few weeks ago and I'm just waiting on the assessment results, waited a week before following up. Meanwhile my car payments and general bills are getting ready to pile up, I've had to give up on food and I'm thinking of falling back to bartending because while I can wait on red tape, my bank is not as willing to wait and my life has to move with or without this job.

To get a recruiter to reply you need to hit X Y Z technology on your CV.

Obviously this part includes having a decent CV and cover letter. If you don't have XP, put courses you're taking in the "education" part, if you don't have anything worth putting there - start working on it, like CS50. The name alone makes the recruiters think you're hot shit seeing Harvard, holds a lot more weight than "Udemy course on Python". Same goes for like any Microsoft certs or AWS certs or whatever is relative.

This is good because you can at very least get to the initial phone call without listing your lack of education, when asked about your education you can use whatever excuse you have. At this point they've already decided you're a good fit anyway.

Then they'll ring you up and say they liked your CV etc and ask basic questions just to check you're not insane.
Maybe they'll want to meet up, this is to vouch for you as a person, again to make sure you're not insane, and discuss how things will work with them.

After that, you'll have the interview. As long as you didn't lie to hit those buzzwords previously and you do indeed know your shit, at least a little, you're good.

It's really not that hard, you applying for jobs starts the second you open your github account, make that shit light up green, make your portfolio presentable, make all your projects public.

Pro tips:
>Apply to everything, even if you don't hit any of the reqs except for one. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take
>Send a cover letter to everything that you can, direct it at them and show you're ready to learn their stack
>Be honest, don't lie on your CV
>Don't use meme languages like Haskell, Go, Crystal, Elixir, Rust etc. Nobody cares about your transgender discord "muh bloat" mindset shaving 0.001 second on your fizzbuzz
>Don't make anything illegal/stupid
>Be willing to take some hits on pay, travel or maybe both to get your first job

That piece of paper is proof of commitment.

How is your contact rate so low?
Are you getting through to the phone screen twice, or do you get past that and not get the interview?

>How much education do you even need for a job?
Depends on the position. The higher you education, the higher your starting salary AND higher you can climb the ladder. There are exceptions of course but not many. I'd say
>Do you need a university degree?
Associate's Degree as a good minimum
>Do you need to even finish high school?
Of course or equivalent. I dropped out of high school and got my GED at 15 because I felt like I wasn't being challenged in my classes even though I was in Advanced Placement courses.
>Or is your portfolio most important?
This is also important however not the end all be all. I got my Bachelor's degree by 18 years old and I had employers glance right over me for someone less qualified because I was young and inexperienced compared to the guy who was 42 with 10 years in the field, but less college knowledge.

Personality comes into play as well. If you're a self taught high school graduate with an upbeat confident pep in your step, people take notice. It says you have faith in your own skill. But if you do this, there is no "fake it till you make it". Either you have the ability to back up your boasts or you look like an asshole.

>TL;DR
Get your GED if you haven't already and then apply to community college for an Associate's.

I wish I knew, I have a direct link to my github, I can send a transcript on request, I even have experience in tech support.

And even worse I'm like 20 minutes outside fucking atlanta, which (to my knowledge) is considered a pretty progressive city that would have the money and resources to require a technology center, and yet nothing.

I mean aside from the scam companies like Revature and cybercoders where recruiters will scalp me, push me back to minimum wage while they "look" for a job and suddenly I'll owe them $30,000 for not working despite signing an NCC

Got a job without a degree because I included my garbage github projects as experience and passed their coding assessment and now I'm working two programming jobs at once.

You don't need a uni degree, you need competence which most college graduates don't have.

How active is your github? Any major projects? Anything with stars at all? if not post your stuff online, even if it gets like just a few stars it'll look way better than an empty repo.

Got a portfolio site that displays what you've made? Especially images are good, people are fucking lazy and having images that do all the work for them is huge, especially if you put them all into one easy to browse place.

Plus really with your kinda contact rate you should really have your CV / Resume looked at online, maybe there's a huge flaw you didn't notice or something

scratch that, a headhunter just grabbed me after half a year of searching, I'll let him scalp my paycheck for the experience, but hopefully this is the end.