Tell HN: I used to be homeless and want to work as a software developer
In my experience, in the absence of a CS degree you need a portfolio, though posting on HN may be a good shortcut.<p>While you're job hunting, if you haven't already, start building something moderately technical. You don't have to build anything that cures cancer, but if you can build a reasonably complex project consisting of at least two independent modules (say, a frontend and a backend) with a modern stack, you should have a reasonable time finding a job.<p>Tech is still the place where one may find lucrative work without a field specific degree, but the part that everyone leaves out is that you have to demonstrate above average talent in some other way first. In any case the practice and knowledge will likely be useful to you. Personally I spent some 5 years building a distributed client/server MMO in my spare time before I finally transitioned to tech and it's amazing to continue to see how much of what I practiced applies to professional development.<p>Note that my experience is with the U.S. job market so yours may differ.<p>Edit: additional advice is to leverage your past degree and target software development in the area, if it exists. Especially if it's a place where ML is still young. Programmers are a dime a dozen, but those who can understand and translate between code and applied science are hard to find and very much in demand, though generally at smaller outfits and especially startups. Further, a startup may be more willing to take a risk hiring you if you're ok with sacrificing some pay for a hot resume entry. Once you have solid professional coding experience job hopping is relatively easy, especially if you have hard science/math in your background. And the work will be substantially more interesting than pure coding, IMO.