i mean, i never did well at hackathons, never got first prize at anything and i'm not graduated.
but, i do have real-world-experience with early/mid/late stage startups as well as corp jobs (i did a project for a local bank working with mainframes). due to that, most companies don't even care about my lack of graduation -- but they do care that i know when to cut corners, when to do crunch-time/overtime, how to take care of customers (including answering support emails!).
real world experience is always much more important.
i mean, i never did well at hackathons, never got first prize at anything and i'm not graduated.
but, i do have real-world-experience with early/mid/late stage startups as well as corp jobs (i did a project for a local bank working with mainframes). due to that, most companies don't even care about my lack of graduation -- but they do care that i know when to cut corners, when to do crunch-time/overtime, how to take care of customers (including answering support emails!).
real world experience is always much more important.