MyGiftedLife.org

I think some branches of Google are still like that. Might as well try seeing if they'll give you the time of day, especially if you're willing to relocate. They've never given me an interview but I haven't tried very hard to get one, because I know I'd have to relocate in order to work in one of the Google facilities where they do what I'm good at doing. I'm not free to move at this time.

My university hired me initially on the basis of certain achievement-oriented qualifications that clearly showed I had to be way bright, but also because I had some experience with doing stuff (tech writing) that they needed right away. To start with, I got an interview at all because several of my friends kept telling their boss they wanted him to hire me. Eventually he told them to get him my resume, and a month later I had a job there. So it was a combination of personal connections, some unusual qualifications and being in the right place at the right time.

However--I went there straight from a job in retail, where I'd landed after leaving my first try at graduate school. And I had a (very good) liberal-arts degree and no direct experience with a computing research environment. So there was some open-mindedness involved on the part of my boss. I was a tech writer for only two months; after that I was a researcher.

I was able to stay there and hang onto employment (soft money--grants run out after a year or two so a project is always chasing the next grant) after that, because of what I'd shown I could do. That was fairly gratifying. Had I not been useful and able to work well in a team I'd have been out at the end of a funding cycle, probably within a year or two. I lasted over 14 years and left voluntarily.

The (Western) world is largely run by and for bright normals (I know I've said that before) and much of it is run by corporate normals. They do power, they do status, they don't easily do creativity and they tend to signal their comfort zones via a high degree of conformity. I think of it as a foreign culture, but the conformity means there are actual rules and they can be learned, at least enough to enable reasonable self-defense. There are even people who make their living helping other people learn the rules (career coaches.) Still, it's hard for somebody who isn't naturally inclined to these practices to stick with them; it can be stifling and create a lot of inner conflict.

Internet-dependent business in general is maturing, and mature corporations tend to move to more-conforming internal practices over time, simply because they get too big to be nimble. But nerd-founded companies tend to have more gifted-friendly working environments.

Another effect of fields maturing is the sort of professionalism you refer to, where the official credential is the sine qua non. Colleges survive (some thrive) on providing the credentials; gangs of like professionals form and erect protectionistic barriers to entry into their profession. Companies use this as a kind of first-pass quality assurance--cheap for them since they don't have to maintain the barriers themselves, and because those who make it past the gate are guaranteed to be able to tolerate some meaningful level of conformity. Whether or not a given individual can do the job falls far down the list. Rightly or not, that's the way it tends to work.

If there's any subtext to my ramblings here, I guess it could be that it might pay to find an enjoyable field of endeavor that's still in flux and see whether you like it. Good luck, in any case.

My husband is an Engineer. He truely likes designing things even though the most lucrative pay is in sales. My husband is keenly aware that a degree in any field is not a promise of talent or ability and he ends up preferring the non-degreed engineer for a number of reasons:

They don't expect automatically to start out owning the company because they have a degree (and debt).

The fun fizzles after the person who chose engineering in college realizes they don't actually like engineering but they have that degree so they are committed.

A self directed learner usually sustains eagerness because they spring from their true desire to want to be doing what it is they are doing.

On the job training is far more valuable than a degree from any college. At least, that is what my husband says. After years of hiring he is pretty certain that those with degrees tend to have a sense of entitlement based soley in the degree they hold and not the contribution they make. When he is hiring he doesn't look for a degree but he doesn't disqualify it. I think with the economy more companies are open to hiring people who are underqualified on paper but make up for it in work ethic and desire to know.