I see lot of junior, intermediate, senior positions in programming houses.
Do you have to go into junior when you have no prior working experience ?
For my case, I am not a computer science major, and have taught myself web programming for the past 4 years. I think not having a comp sci degree is a huge problem in landing interviews.
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With no working experience, yes, look for a Junior position. If you find out that you are much, much more advanced than the job requires, you can always change.
I have no degree.
I did some very interesting jobs that looked good on a Resume and ended up as a Mid-Level Software Developer.
Within a year of that, I was a Senior Level (for my company, I'd still be Mid Level comparatively at some larger companies).
You will start as a Junior, and at that point can prove your experience and skill.
Without any prior working experience it will be difficult to land anything higher than junior.
Of course, there if you can show that you have experience in the field, i.e. open source projects or your own work that shows higher level experience you may be able to go mid level or even senior.
Having a degree in Computer Science demonstrates that you have the foundation and potential to acquire domain expertise for whatever company that is interested in hiring you. Even with that, typically you would join as a junior developer. Not having a degree in CS doesn't mean you don't have potential, but it becomes much harder to demonstrate that you do without the degree.
Some of the brightest developers I've known have had no degree in computer science, or any degree whatsoever.
Some of the dumbest engineers I have ever met had degrees, hated engineering, and hated their life doing it.
The best engineers in the field are driven on passion, degree, or no degree, who truely love development. If jobs are only baseing their criteria on whether or not you have a degree then they probably don't have a very bright management staff, and you probably wouldn't want to work there anyway.
As for titles -- at the end of the day, it means pretty much squat. Every employer has a different criteria for selecting what the prefix to a developer's title is, so it would be very difficult to assign value to it across the development community.
I think the responsibilities of a junior, middle or senior software developer may depends highly on the company. I worked at a company where skill level varied widely - in many ways a Senior title was more indicative of how long you'd been at the company.
That being said, you'll probably want to seek a Junior position. It's generally considered entry-level, and Comp sci degree or not, having professional working experience is a must in most recruiter's eyes if you're interviewing for a higher level position. If you're good, and can show your employer that you've got the skills and play well with others, you might find yourself getting moved up the ladder fairly quickly.
Another option would be to get in the ground floor of a company (like a start up, or a company who only needs one or two programmers) and get some experience there, where you might have more responsibility handed to you right away.
You say "web programming". So if you haven't already, go out and get a web site of your own, and make it good. I use dreamhost.com myself.
You still need to start at Junior, but make sure you include a link to your web page wherever you apply.
Tony
I have no degree, but I have got a HND in IT so am evidence incarnate that a degree isn't the be all and end all for getting into programming. Also two of my colleges have science degrees (one physics, one chemistry). With no industry experience though you'd be looking at getting a juniour post certainly to begin with or doing some freelancing or temping though an agency.
Programming certificates and night courses may be a way to pad out a CV and show you're seriously interested in changing career and it's not just a whim if going back into full time education isn't an option.
EDIT: On the subject of freelancing, make your freelancing website (contact me!) and put this website on your CV. Every site you complete freelancing should be linked to from here. Make sure your site is awsome, and to get the ball rolling do some free stuff for people
I would extend what tony has written - go out, get a web site of your own, make it good and start monetizing it. Then, after a while maybe you can hire another programmer or artist or marketing person and do not worry about being Senio, Junior or (NULL) programmer :)
Or - try to catch some freelance jobs on sites like RentACoder, oDesk, eLance etc., build portfolio and then decide if it's worth staying freelancer or maybe you'll get hired for permanent position then.
I agree that a degree is no guarantee that someone is good, and a lack of a degree does not necessarily mean they're bad.
But at the same time most of the best developers I know did get CS or EE degrees from top schools. The remainder of the best developers I know got their first jobs because they had a portfolio of really impressive independent/open source projects. There's currently no shortage of people who have one or both, so why would interviewers waste time on an unknown quantity?
If you want a job and don't have a degree, write some good code that people can see. Better yet if it's a project people find useful. They will often seek you out to hire you.
IMHO it's better to have real world experience than a degree. Not that having a degree is a bad thing of course.
But if you have neither real world experience or a degree then what do you do? One option is to develop, possibly for free, some useful system for your current employer/college/club. Make it good and put it on your CV.
Another option, if you've got the time and the dedication, is to study part-time at your local college or even distance learning. That's hard, I got my degree that way after 5 years of night school whilst working full-time, and while I'd say it was definitely worth it, I think experience has helped me land jobs more than the qualification.
Internships may also be a possibility for a title besides junior, though another point is how much of the past 4 years was spent learning web programming? If you ate, slept and breathed web code and nothin' but web code, I could see some places possibly making you an intermediate.
While you may not have a Computer Science degree, the question is how you are applying for jobs and are you working with recruiters that may be able to help you? What was the major of your degree? Granted that it may not matter a lot but the question is whether any technical skills transfer, e.g. if you majored in Physics or Engineering these could be considered close enough to Computer Science for some employers. If you are going up to employers and asking, "Oh please sir, give me a chance," that may not go over as well as the person that has confidence they could do the job and wants a month to prove themselves.
I know many people who are employed as developers who do not have a college degree in Computer science. I think your problem is more that you are trying for the wrong jobs (ones too senior for your actual knowledge level) or you come across as not being as knowledgeable as you think you are or they don't think you would fit in with the team.
Having done a lot of hiring, I would probably not consider a self-educated person who had never held a professional position as a developer for anything except a junior programmer. You don't have a track record of meeting deadlines, working as a team member, using source control, figuring out how to implement business rules, etc. The truth is with four years of personal learning under your belt but no professional experience, you are a hobbyist not a professional programmer. There is a lot more to being a professional than learning programming languages.
And frankly there are very few developers with only 4 years of professional experience that I would consider for a senior programming position. Really it isn't much experience at all.