Those things are going to be massively divergent based on what type of industry you're looking to go into. It's kinda too vague to say "programming".
If you're going into corporate business app programming it's more of a 9 to 5 type job, and I'd say you're in for meetings - lots of meetings, and KPIs, performance assessments and the like.
If it's games programming then it's wildly divergent, could be anything from an informal indie 2-3 person gig up to AAA studios with hundreds of team members. And it's project based, so you never know when you're going to get sacked.
Web programming is more in the middle, there are lots of smaller companies doing that for various clients. This is a good thing to aim for if you don't want to crack into corporate or don't think the high risk area of games development is your thing.
Either way, what your prospective employers want to see is evidence of your skills. e.g. rather than just say you have excellent C++ skills point to something you made in C++. Also, avoid putting things in your cover letter or resume that aren't tailored to the job. One suggestion is that you hand-craft your "skills" section of the resume to the specific job, before listing education and employment. Mass-producing your resume and sending it to everyone is basically a surefire way to get it buried in the "not interesting" pile. Recruiters see resumes all day, they can tell whether you customized your resume for their job or not. And if you didn't they will assume you're just firing hundreds of resumes off and are desperate for a job.
And you know what? You should consider going for a masters in Comp. Sci if you can. If not, you're just jumping in the queue of people who have Comp. Sci degrees and more experience than you. If you go for a job, go for any job as long as it has programming for you to do. I heard about one guy who wanted to be a programmer, couldn't get a job, but got a code QA job at the company he wanted to work in. Kept getting passed over for promotion out of QA because he wasn't gaining proper experience, and the higher ups had a low estimation of the QA people.