I know someone that was in a similar situation. She was able to get a job via a temp agency and made herself useful/relied on. Since most companies have rules about how long they can keep a temp/contractor, they could not help but hire at the end of the contract. The downside is the lack of degree is definitely hurting upward mobility, the upside is that the company will pay for tuition so a degree is on the way!
I'll be focusing on Java for a while, since I'm comfortable building Android apps and they could potentially generate some passive income!
Do it! :)
Also don't forget, if you FI in 10 years or even less, you won't need a bachelor's degree, you only need to stay in the industry that long. (I also believe that associates degrees in lucrative fields have the highest ROI, but that's just me). But, the degree can confer a bit more pay, and it sounds like you really enjoy what you are doing so it may be worth it. I used to worry about whether I needed to go back to school for the comp sci degree, but then I discovered FI and breathed a huge sigh of relief realizing "early retirement" could be done. Programming is not a huge passion of mine - I do enjoy it, but would prefer to work on open source software or combine it with helping people in the world. Just know that an FI person has options galore and the standard programming career path is not an absolute requirement unless you plan to live a clownish middle class lifestyle with the proceeds. It is known for helping people FI very quickly :)
My plan going into the 2-year degree was getting a foot in the door, then either taking advantage of any company assistance for a Bachelor's, or just paying for the classes out-of-pocket without needing a ridiculous loan.
Since I've started reading MMM, I am a complete convert to Mustachianism! I will NOT be doing any of the stupid clownish middle-class habits that I've noticed in my parents and other friends and family. Maybe I can lead by example and help convert a few more to the cause.
My final semester was spent working with a real client to develop a database-driven MySQL/PHP webpage, using source control/issue tracking/teamwork/etc.
This should be your easy button to get that first job - the client is likely providing this internship-lite as a recruiting tool.
RANT TIME!
My tech school sent out an open call to local volunteer/non-profit organizations, or anyone that would accept free labor for a software product.
This is how my group and I got our assignment.
I only put that on my resume because it was my only "real life" experience. The client was a group very similar to the Boy Scouts, so not much in the way of jobs there. We used Agile-style 3 week sprints as a way to practice working in a corporate environment. We worked directly with an old scout (think 80+ years old) who had a grand vision - a searchable database to see every member since 19xx. He had some authority and pull, and he contacted us directly with his idea -- BEFORE TALKING WITH ANYONE ELSE IN THE ORGANIZATION. Of course AFTER we started he started to share it at the nationwide level, and apparently everyone was getting excited. Then our team learned firsthand the joys of software development in a corporate setting...
After working with his ideas for most of the semester, we finally meet the System/Website administrator that will actually supervise our website. After working for months on a hand-crafted PHP/HTML webpage, this guy lets us know that if we want to host ANYTHING on his servers it's gotta be a Joomla website (if you don't know what that is, think Wordpress drag n' drop website design)
With 4 weeks to go, our 3 man group needs to COMPLETELY REBUILD EVERYTHING but the database from scratch, in some convoluted Content Management System, which doesn't support databases or PHP code in any way. We managed, but the site was hardly worth mentioning to recruiters. The client refused to have his website look like it was from this millennium, so this website was basically unstylized HTML with solid ROYGBIV colors.
Since we hadn't learned our lesson yet, we volunteered to work with this guy after graduation, to try and polish the site to be a usable resume item. A month into summer, he started calling one member of our team at ALL HOURS, multiple times a day, with any random ideas for the website he had come up with in the last 3 minutes. When we didn't get all his ideas completed by the next time we met in person, he started complaining about our work ethic.
The final straw was when he said something along the lines of,
"I would NEVER expect this level of laziness from someone I hired to complete a simple request!"...We politely told him to F*uck off on the spot.
One teammate was a member of this guy's church, and from what I've heard it sounds like he and his children's children's children will no longer be welcome there.
Our instructors were pissed, because the client broke several different stipulations that they agreed to in contract form. One instructor in particular told us to put him as the contact for that project, and said he would explain how shitty the client was, but how we still managed to complete a deliverable website with such short notice.
Yeah, if we had a different project for a different client, we might have been able to work out a maintenance contractor for X dollars an hour. I know at least one group that was able to negotiate that. A few got jobs at a huge global company because their project taught them useful skills (C# and .NET web app design). Not us, we got stuck learning how to use some shitty CMS that no one has heard of. The webmaster removed our site about a month after we stopped working on it, since "He doesn't know HTML and sure as hell won't be maintaining it."