Comment on: Linux Outreachy Program pays women $5000 to make trivial whitespace changes
Wait until you find out that the entire industry has been doing the same for several years.
Comment on: Work as a C++ programmer
My case is similar to yours where I practiced as a long time before getting into the field, although I started when I was very young. I got a CS degree on top of that, and I'd say it was totally worth the money since it filled in many gaps, and this kind of information can take months or years to absorb, anyway. But if you are disciplined and good at retaining information on your own, it might not make a big difference. Note that even after the same number of years of self-practice and a degree, I was barely hireable and spent a few years sparsely employed.
Programming is kind of a life-long journey, and it's not for everyone. It's really competitive in the developed world thanks to the global internet, tons of mature code written by still-working skilled developers, and shitty insourcing/outsourcing policies. The outcome of years of hard work can be billions of dollars or homelessness. It all depends on you, what you ultimately want, and where you are willing to live. Programmers are hard to evaluate worth-wise - I've received offers almost $100k apart right next to each other. In general if you are willing to sacrifice a few years of your life committing to projects on GitHub, you will probably be rather employable and not run into any issues concerning your credibility and value. My first "job" came from submitting a PR. And you'll find this is one of the reasons why so many companies have open source projects. One secret in this industry is that the truly skilled programmers often don't even waste time on a resume - they are that good. So it's a bit like fishing. Think sports - companies know the right superstar can be the difference between winning and losing.
Productivity is making your project bring in money/value. If you accidentally fuck up a database from a cloud provider, and a backup takes a day or longer to get running, that might cost the company more than what they consider you worth in a year. Same goes for working at a SJW company and getting caught (((saying the wrong thing))). There's all kinds of opportunities in this industry, but many of them are like doing time in the salt mines. Boredom. Disillusion. It can really wear on someone and in some cases drive them insane.
But if you have the right ideas and get them implemented, your suffering can end overnight.
They have to go back.