Military veterans: Translate jargon into civilian terms. "Led a -person team under pressure" not acronyms. Your discipline and leadership are valuable. Look for veteran-friendly employers.
Self-taught developers: Your projects are your credential. Contribute to open source. Cloud certifications (AWS, Google Cloud) provide third-party validation.
For both groups: Your path shows initiative. You learned without structured support. Frame it as evidence of ability to figure things out independently.
Self-taught developers often have deeper understanding because they worked through problems alone.