In parts of this field what you can show outranks what you can prove you attended. That route is real and it is how some of the best people in the work got in. It is also the route with no structure, no cohort and no one checking on you, which is why it has the highest drop-off. If you take it, find other people taking it.
For this occupation specifically
2,254,000 people do this work. 20.3% are women and 6.1% are Hispanic, so roughly 27,911 are Latina. BLS describes the usual way in as apprenticeship, bootcamp, CS associate degree, self-taught with portfolio.
Sources. Employment totals and the share of each
occupation that is women and that is Hispanic: US Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Current Population Survey annual
averages, reproduced as published. The Latina share is an estimate: BLS publishes the two shares
separately and not their intersection, so the two are multiplied and labelled as such everywhere it
appears. County economic type: USDA Economic Research Service County Typology Codes; labour markets:
2020 Commuting Zones. Funded training routes: WIOA through local workforce boards, registered
apprenticeships via apprenticeship.gov, and federal student aid via studentaid.gov. We publish the
source so the arithmetic can be checked rather than trusted.