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Tech Jobs For a Student? 399

Posted by Zonk from the live-and-learn dept.
Nick Manley writes "I turned 17 back in August and have been fascinated with technology my entire life. I have a special interest in software and computer programming. I am really hoping to find a job, or at least an internship, where I can learn more about my field and expand my knowledge of software development. Does anyone have recommendations for someone like myself, without any college education, for ways to get a head start on my career? Preferably, one that doesn't include selling iPods to kids at Best Buy."
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Tech Jobs For a Student? More

Tech Jobs For a Student?

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  • Incorrect Title (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quobobo ( 709437 ) on Saturday November 04, 2006 @09:42PM (#16720915)
    ...Shouldn't this be "Tech Jobs for a Non-student"?
    • I don't see where he said that he wasn't going to college. He probably wants to find a part-time job to go alongside it.

      My advice is to look for a tech job on-campus. Most companies won't touch you unless you have the right piece of paper, but once you do, experience helps. Also, prepare to be frustrated as hell; I certainly was.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shmlco ( 594907 )
        Actually, I didn't see anything in the post that indicated the OP even had any technical skills. Lot's of people are "interested in" and "fascinated by" many subjects. Doesn't mean they can get a job doing them.
    • No, it should be "Tech Jobs for High School Student". I'd say he has a choice between Best Buy and his dad's software corporation (if that doesn't exist, he doesn't really have a choice).
  • See if you can do some coding for an open source project.

  • College research projects! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Czyl ( 696277 ) on Saturday November 04, 2006 @09:45PM (#16720929)
    Have you considered contacting professors at your local university? Plenty of research groups can use someone with coding skills, and you'll have a great experience. It might not be paid, but you're likely to find someone who'll take you and you'll be able to pick up letters of recommendation for future work.

    You might also get to learn something about actual computer science (rather than simply programming or IT), and better yet, you might get to contribute to the development of cutting-edge technology.

    As a warning, you may have to knock on a lot of doors before you find someone who thinks a high school student knows enough to contribute usefully to a project (many academics might just ask you to read a stack of books and come back in a few years), but there are those of us willing to take on a high school intern -- you'll just have to be persistent.

    • Re:College research projects! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by juushin ( 632556 ) on Saturday November 04, 2006 @09:58PM (#16721025)
      I am a professor at a large highly ranked national university and I hire students that can code (high school or whatever). I have tons of projects I would like to work on that require programming (typically in Matlab but also in other programs), I don't have time to do it all myself, and I am in a department in the life sciences where we don't necessarily get students who can program. I agree with Czyl. Contact a professor at a local college/university and I think that you will find an opportunity. Make sure you come across as being motivated, smart, and dependable.
    • I quite agree. Also, don't just ask in the Comp Sci department. Talk to the physicists, the biologists, the chemists, the engineers, even some you might not expect, like the linguists (especially if you're around Ohio State U; they have an extensive Computational Linguistics program). In fact, oftentimes, the most interesting and useful in the future projects will not come from the comp sci people.

      If you find that there are a lot of people interested in you, don't be afraid to be picky. OTOH, if you d

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jakoz ( 696484 )
        maek shure you're English is good when u right emails

        That is possibly the funniest passage I've ever seen here. ;)

  • My advice? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drdanny_orig ( 585847 ) * on Saturday November 04, 2006 @09:47PM (#16720935)
    Go to college, take neat classes, be well rounded. Learn to read, learn to think, learn to write (English first, then C++/Python/Java, what-have you). All of that, plus enjoying these next few years of life is way way more important than an internship or being some Google-head's code slave for a summer. Plenty of time for work after you've had some fun. And yes, I'm completely serious about this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rhinoX ( 7448 )
      I agree with this completely. I got into computers at 10, started working at 16, and was a paid PC tech by 17. I worked in various tech positions until I got into software at 20. I spent 6 years in school, working full-time doing development for four of them. I am now 27 years old, and have been employed in technology full-time for almost 9 years. I have been doing software exclusively for seven of those years, and now have my own software business.

      I had fun in school, but I often look back and regret not h
    • College is important. It will teach and educate you on many skills you will need in life.

      However, internships and other summer jobs are the best networking opportunities that exist. They will help you get job when college is done. Please don't write them off. If you intern wisely (on your summers off), with the right people, you can walk right out of college into a nice job or have a resume that has an excellent combination of experience and education (and quite possibly earn a fair amount of money).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jamesh ( 87723 )
        I second that bit. There's a few subjects at Uni (and School even) that I would have paid more attention to had I had some real world experience. The same end could have been accomplished if i had actually listening when someone told me that this stuff is important, even though I couldn't see the value of learning it at the time :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      Go to college, take neat classes, be well rounded.

      Start early. See if your high school offers programs for high-school students to take post-secondary courses (in Minnesota we call it PSEO - Post Secondary Enrollment Option). You get to take college credit for free. You should be able to get a couple classes in for the second semester.

      When you actually go to college, visit your advisor and meet with professors, frequently. While the advisor could be worthless (mine were) there are some exceptions. Ther

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noz ( 253073 )
      Ok, so you've got advice going to both directions: work-work-work vs. play-play-play. A truth: if you're not working, and you're not playing, then you're wasting time.

      From my experience in the great down under, web development work is probably the only (decent) computer work with public advertisments for part-time placements. Everything else is very formal, very full-time, very BSc/BE/equiv. exp.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LauraW ( 662560 )
      or being some Google-head's code slave for a summer

      But I want a code slave. How can I be an evil overlord if I don't have minions? :-)

      Seriously, Google does have an internship program, but I haven't heard of us or any other big companies in the valley accepting high school students as interns. A company I worked for several jobs ago did have one employee who had just a high school diploma and was taking classes at a local college. He was very good, but I don't know if they would have hired him if he h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )
      Agreed. Take classes in business, accounting, marketing, science, design, and/or whatever else interests you. Take English and writing classes so you can communicate your ideas.

      Companies want developers who understand something more than PHP. If you can think in their problem domain you're a dozen times more valuable than the average I-only-know-code computer geek.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) *
      If one goes to college, than one should make every attempt to achieve a well rounded education. If one does not go to college, one should do ones best to achieve the best rounded education as is possible. College is cool because it is full of 'well' educated people who like to prove they are well educated. OTOH, real life has a lot to teach us, and we should all face life head on eventually. So spending a few more years in the leisurely pursuit of knowledge, in effect extending adolescence into young adu
    • If he doesn't get a job, how is he supposed to pay for rent, food, tuition etc?
    • I don't agree with you. A job besides the study where you can learn something technical is good. But what's most important, is to get to know the working environment. This is a great opportunity to make social mistakes, insult colleagues, come late to work and be fired.

      I'm joking, but there's a grain of truth in it. When I started working, we started with a group (12 graduates). Several complained to me how the work cost them so much time. One even said it in front of the managers. I think this is childi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sorak ( 246725 )

      Go to college, take neat classes, be well rounded. Learn to read, learn to think, learn to write (English first, then C++/Python/Java, what-have you). All of that, plus enjoying these next few years of life is way way more important than an internship or being some Google-head's code slave for a summer. Plenty of time for work after you've had some fun. And yes, I'm completely serious about this.

      I couldn't disagree with you more. As a recent graduate who had difficulty finding a job, I can tell you that

  • It's exactly like becoming an author:

    Write Something.

    Download Ruby, download eclipse, download visual studio express- they're all free. Play. Pick your favorite. Buy a few books. Spend some time each day doing it, pick the part that interests you, and do more of it.

    When you've got some experience, volunteer for an open source project and keep learning- or find a job that offers training, and go to town. There's a million ways to do it...

    but you have to start with step 1:

    Write Something.
  • The place I work at is great at hiring interns and putting them to solving real problems instead of seeking out coffee. Seven months ago I started there as an intern, and now I'm managing the Systems Department. Get an internship at a good, fast moving company, and don't look back.
  • Can you get involved in a degree program somewhere? That's usually the most certain path. (You might also learn a few interesting and valuable things while you're there, too -- it's not a complete waste of time.)

    Consider the situation from your potential employers perspective: how do they know whether you're any good? There are lots of people out there who think they are great programmers, but can't actually program their way out of a wet paper bag.

    Networking/nepotism is the best way to overcome th

  • If you want to learn how to program, start teaching yourself some C/C++ and Java. You might also want to look into .Net (I wouldn't but I know some of people that need to know that language). Go buy some book in one of those languages, work through it. If you know of someone that is in a job and can mentor, grab them, and learn from them. Since you don't have a formal education, it will be hard, get some basic course first though. Books and basic knowledge will help. You can also start reading some open so
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Don't overcommit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Harmonious Botch ( 921977 ) * on Saturday November 04, 2006 @09:54PM (#16720993) Homepage Journal
    You're seventeen? That's way too you to commit yourself to a career. ( Not meaning to imply that you're stupid or have poor judgement, just that you haven't had time to see a lot of the world and the different ways that it can be viewed ) If programming interests you, do it for fun.

    Speaking as an employer, technical skills - beyond a bare minimum - are seldom the most important thing that you can bring to a job interview. Being articulate both verbal and written - helps a lot. Having a history of jobs ( even flipping burgers ) in which your former boss will give you a good recommendation - showed up on time, cooperated with fellow employees, didn't steal, didn't drink or toke on the job, etc - really may be the most important thing.

    You're only seventeen and the world is your oyster. Don't commit too early. Try several jobs, try several majors, travel a bit; find out more about the world. Then choose.
  • Chances are you're going to be working retail or similar jobs until you're in your twenties. In the mean time you need to work on your own projects (and not stupid little hello world programs either) and make them resume quality. I've never gotten a programming job based on my formal education. I've been working as a programmer for most of the time I've been in college.

    Once you have a resume worth looking at then you can go to software companies looking for a job.

    It's hard to convince a company that "I l
  • If you look for a technical job at 17, you're likely to come up empty-handed. Just don't be so arrogant that you refuse to work below your technical skill level. Get some experience and some good references. 17 is young; focus on education and knowledge more than work now. You might be incredibly smart at 17, but you may not have the discipline and dependability of someone older. There's nothing wrong with selling iPods at Best Buy. I worked at a pizza place 2 years ago; now I'm an IT Coordinator at a unive
  • First, continue school. Get a good engineering degree. Don't stop school to work before you get one. Otherwise you'll be screwed into sucky jobs for the rest of your life.

    Second, get involved in Free Software (Open Source). I became a core developer of GnomeICU (the Gnome ICQ client) when I was 17 and ICQ was still synonymous with IM. It got me into the Gnome community, I'm still reaping the benefits.

    Third, when I was 17, it was the peak of the .com craze, so I managed to find a summer job as a programmer t
  • This is the reason that Google's Summer of Code exists. It's basically a summer scholarship so that Computer Science students do not have to flip burgers through the summer. There's nothing wrong with menial jobs when going through college. I worked at the University and moonlighted at various restaurants throughout my college years.

    You get a paycheck with the Summer of Code. Whether you get paid depends on if you make sufficient progress in accordance with deadlines and to the satisfaction of the spons
  • Contact your local Microsoft partners and offer your help.

    We are all listed here: http://directory.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]

    I can assure you that a lot of us have a ton of interesting projects that need a lot of research and we don't have the time to do it. You'll probably be interested in working with ISVs.
  • I came in to offer a few suggestions, but they've already been made. You can't really expect to get a programming job at your age/experience even if you know how to program. Your best bet is to do open source development, try to get on a research project if you live near a university (professors love free labor), or to get a job at a computer repair shop. If you haven't had a job yet, working a "normal" job for someone your age is actually a good social experience that I would recommend. I used to want
  • I started working pretty young, learning java and web programming. I've had a couple jobs at different departments of a state university, even while i was in highschool. There are a lot of state departments that want talented students they can pay a (relatively) small amount to learn on the job and take care of small tasks. Sometimes you can try starting out data entry and express interest in doing more interesting stuff.

    It's happened for me and a friend of mine. It may not work the same everywhere, I'm in
  • I may be comitting a major violation of the groupthink here, but if you are a U.S. citizen, the Air Force or even Air National Guard is a good way to get a jumpstart on an IT career, especially if you can get into a combat comm squadron. Our current comm suite is pretty modern, with Cisco routers and switches, Sidewinder firewalls, Red Data Modules, etc. You will also qualify for some decent educational benefits, such as the G.I. Bill, tuition assistance, and if you go Guard and depending on what state yo
    • For technical stuff, I absolutely agree. The modern military is quite computerized, and they need someone who knows how to fix it when things break. Furthermore, if you're smart enough, they'll be much less likely to send you into combat. My sister has a friend who enlisted to go to Afghanistan (whee, terrorist hunting!), but they won't send her there because she scored too high on her ASVABs.

      Also, most employers these days like military veterans, and will be loath to turn them down for employment if you

      • About the only drawback is that you'll have to survive basic training.

        From what I've been reading, the "kinder, gentler" Basic Training has been becoming even kinder and gentler of late. Air Force Basic Training has never been known as a real ass-kicker anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cjsnell ( 5825 )
      I totally agree. I enlisted in the Army National Guard and it was probably the smartest decision that I ever made. The military will teach you IT skills, leadership skills, and most importantly, life skills. You'll learn how to take care of yourself and take care of others. You'll make best friends that you'll have for a lifetime. I'd recommend enlisting for four years and then going to college. You'll get your school paid for, plus you'll have a head start on all of the 18 year-old freshmen because o

      • If (Score:2)

        by Rix ( 54095 )
        You live that long, and they don't decide to keep you after the 4 years.

        Then you have to deal with being viewed with suspicion in some circles. I would certainly doubt the moral fiber of someone who enlisted at this point in history.

  • At 17, concentrate on college (Score:3)

    by DrDitto ( 962751 ) on Saturday November 04, 2006 @10:26PM (#16721245)
    Concentrate on getting into college and earning money if needed. Absolutely continue to dabble in programming...teach yourself Java, Python, C++, or whatever floats your boat, but only in your free time. Until you are accepted into a college that satisfies your goals, don't put a lot of time into anything that doesn't help this effort.

    Do not be tempted to bypass college. It would be a huge mistake.

    Contrary to what many people believe, a college education is not meant to teach you practical job skills. It is meant to educate you about life. It is a way for employers to weed people out and to put yourself in a better pool. If you don't have a B.S., 9/10 places will throw away your resume.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pulzar ( 81031 )

      Contrary to what many people believe, a college education is not meant to teach you practical job skills. It is meant to educate you about life.

      I disagree. Looking for a job in technical field, coming out of college with no practical job skills is going to ensure that you do not get the best jobs out there. Most new-grad interviews in the technical field concentrate on questions that try to figure out how well the candidate understands the basic concepts. It doesn't matter how well you are educated about

  • is sit down and learn all the stuff they dont teach in (most) college(s), this means assembly, low level C, learn how traditional data structures work (i.e. linked lists/queues/et cetera without things like the STL), learn how dynamic memory allocation works, and study math study math study math. If you get good at all of the above, while college is still good and it makes you more rounded, it isn't necessary.
  • I got my first gig "hacking" passswords and writing spam scripts for Pegasus mail at local college... the network admin caught me, was pissed at first and then hired me 6 weeks later. I worked there for about 2.5 years and got my next job through the work I did there.
  • If you're going to college, look around campus for a part-time coding job. Don't go to the CS department, but look at the schools of education, the humanities, etc. A lot of these schools do computer projects, but lack the skills to write their own apps or admin their own systems.

    I know one CS major who will have grad school offering all sorts of assistantships because he's gotten into coding applications for foreign language systems.

    You can also watch the local *nix Users Group lists for job offers to stud
  • See if there are any ISPs in your area that are looking for interns. You can get a lot of experience (some of it dealing with customers which can be a negative) and you can see a wide range of different roles you could step into one day. I had a lot of fun working at an ISP. The biggest bonus was working with a bunch of other geeks.

    The college professor route would also work but you might end up learning some interesting skills that only apply in that context that are fairly useless otherwise. Like some spe
  • At your education and experience level you may be hard-pressed to find a coding job that will offer you many experience points. You'll end up doing uninspiring, grinding crap with uninspiring, grinding tools for uninspiring, grinding purposes. My suggestion, therefore, is to find a job that pays something you can live with but that is mentally untaxing. Why? So that you'll have some mental energy left over between school and work to do something you enjoy and that will challenge your brain.

    Find an int

  • I got my first real job in the IT field right after I turned 17. I think you'll find that the people who climb the ladder the fastest were in similar situations. In my case, I had repaired computers for a number of the teachers at my high school, and one of them referred me to the supervisor of an IT department at a fairly large local business. I ended up getting an internship, in spite of the lack of certifications, or, for that matter, a completed high school diploma. My work for them lasted well into
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      I propose a namecombination of Manley and Unix: Manix.

            Why not go for Manlix. It would go down a treat (pun intended) with the female and male gay crowd... get your manlix today. Eww.
  • I had the luck to go to college near a high tech center: Northern Virginia. I won't lie, I had some connections, but I landed a job working at a DARPA spin-off. Didn't do anything interesting in particular--certainly nothing that significantly added to my skills--but I did get to sit in the same work area as about a dozen PhDs. I got to see their workspaces, watch them interact with their code and their computers, and got to chat with them in the cafeteria. Got $15/hr to boot.

    My advice is to look hard in
  • You don't specify where you live, but several very large corporations will hire highly motivated, well qualified high school students for internships. For example Intel [intel.com] will offer summer internships to high school students local to one of their major US campuses (Portland, OR; Santa Clara, CA; Chandler, AZ; Folsom, CA; etc.) If you are not local to a tech giant, you will have to beat the pavement and beg a smaller employer.

    When I was about your age I wrote an animation program in assembly on my Amiga 500 an
  • Find a part-time helpdesk position at your local ISP or IT shop. I started working both for my school (officially) and for my ISP when I was 15 and never looked back. Here I am 12 years later and I'm a network engineer for the sister company of the telco that owns the ISP and I now run the ISP. A word of advice though. If you get an IT-related job take it seriously. It's a job like any other. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Don't fuck around with the opportunity if you find a shop that's w
  • Except for the 1-in-a-1000 exceptional genius programmers, you are best off building the foundation for a career in software development by getting some formal post-secondary education.

    Personally when hiring for a developer position, normally there are so many applicants that we throw out all the no (4 year) degree resumes or non related degrees (a degree in history doesn't help). That is simply a numbers game, we receive 200 resumes per day that a given position is advertised (online only at a single job
  • In 2000 i gained a traineeship in Software Engineering. The traineeship was terminated three years later which left me with out a job and although i had completed two TAFE courses (Cert III & IV info tech) i had only a half completed three year uni course.

    I looked for work for 6 months, applying for upto 6-10 jobs a fortnight. I didn't get a job, so i went back to uni. Only a month after finishing my computer science course i was well on my way to obtaining my current job as Software Engineer with BAE S
  • Seventeen year olds, rightly or wrongly, get a bad rep: They're perceived as needing a lot of supervision and as not very hard workers.

    The question you've got to answer is why a manager would first want an intern rather than an employee (OK, the unpaid bit is nice), why they would choose a seventeen year old (when they could have a more qualified student who likely needs less supervision and gets more done) and why they'd choose you out of all the other seventeen year olds out there?

    The easiest way is to ha
  • One of the most important skills you can learn is how to sell. It doesn't matter if you're operating as an independent consultant or as a wage slave in a rat cage, you have to sell the services you offer to another. Whether to your client or to your boss, the ability to sell yourself, your services, and communicate your value effectively is critical to getting paid what you're worth.

    Yeah, it's important that you know your stuff, that you know how to write decent code, and that you continually strive to impr
    • One of the most important skills you can learn is how to sell.


      However, you have to make the choice between being a seller (which means lying to customers - no salesman ever tells the truth), and being a person who does something productive. The two things are not compatible; sales is a zero-sum activity.

  • Best place to get some experience is with a small local tech company. I am the lead programmer and PBX admin for a small consulting company, located in a small town north of Nashville, TN. We recently had a longtime (2 years, off and on) intern/employee who graduated high school and now is going to college. I trained him myself in Perl, and he worked on a project which scripted Scribus. During the summer he worked full time, and during the school year, he came in on some afternoons after school (althoug

  • I can't tell from your request on whether you're just looking for something to bide you over until college, something to do during your college career, or something that would let you completely skip the college experience.

    If the first, I have little in the way of advice aside from trying to do your own projects on the side of whatever else you do, and get noticed from there.

    If the last, bad idea. You won't get very far without at least a bachelor's unless you're very lucky, very connected, or very, very go
  • Work at a computer lab. A commercial internet gaming shop is ok too. The amount of viruses and volume of stupid questions, as well as the wide range of dysfunctional to completely normal computer users will give you a good idea of what you will become if you get into "technology" (since I can't tell if you're going to be a programmer or IT consultant). If a year doing that doesn't sour you, you're a geek and we're glad to have ya.
  • Does it have to be a job? If you don't need the extra cash, you might consider exploring free software projects out there. There are many needs (and some of them require repetitive tasks). You may consider doing internationalization, documentation, and all that stuff first for a project you like. Suppose you are attracted to Wb browsing technology. Get in touch with the Firefox community! See if there are some tasks you may heko with. This will give you project skills, people skills, and what not. You will
  • Get a job somewhere where you have to sell yourself. A restaurant, a car lot, some sales job in a store (best buy pays ok and you get discounts that aren't too shabby).

    Anything you do, make your first one about selling yourself. It doesn't matter if it's relevant to your career, it only matters that you know how to get yourself out there.

    I worked at a restaurant for 2 years, and 4 years I'm working at a nice place and making good money. My belief is that the lessons I learned at the restaurant were worth fa
    • Keep in mind most kids straight out of college have a lot less skills than they think. Most good companies know this. Along with the tech foundation the education should give you (allthough I still have my doubs if I compare CS graduates to for examlpe mechanical engineers). One of the big differences is in the other areas, being able to deal with people, situations etc. This will allow you to sell yourself and to grow because you have the social skills (among others like an idea of what doing a job acuall
  • If you can get in from the very beginning, work for their Geek Squads, or the guys doing hardware installs and computer repairs. If you can't do that, get a sales job, take their training and work your way up into the Geek Squad position or become a manager. That will certainly look better on a resume for most second jobs than contributing to an open source project (not that that's not a valuable thing to do in your free time).

    Otherwise, try a temp agency or something like that with a company that could

  • What to do? read, Read, READ! (Score:4, Informative)

    by chris_sawtell ( 10326 ) on Sunday November 05, 2006 @03:22AM (#16722823) Journal
    Go the college route only IF you can afford it, and IF the college has a well developed and staffed CS/IT department. If it hasn't then you are just throwing away your money, which would be much better spent on a decent library of text-books. Assuming you decide to teach yourself then you'll need to learn a language or three. I'd suggest you learn what the OO paradigm is all about. These languages are pretty good implementations of it:- Get your head around that lot, toss in a sprinkling of accountancy, and you will be a very valuable item, but don't forget to have a bit of fun on the side.

    • Those are good recommendations, but if one's college doesn't have a good CS/IT program, the answer is to find one that does. Self-education can give the tools needed for a career, but it's hard to convince HR departments of that. Not having that piece of paper that (appropriately) says "BS" is a hurdle.

      If you can't afford what you consider to be a "good" university, maybe you're setting your sights too high. You don't need an undergrad degree from a top 10 department; a top 100 department will set you u

  • Yeah, make no excuses. Sounds like you have a reasonable idea of what you want to do, so follow the path. Need experience? Go to College. I grew up on Welfare and paid for College on my own. I worked my way through it. It's possible to put yourself through College, believe it or not. I have so far been making a good living, too. It sounds like you know what you want to do. The keyword is "want". I would not advise anyone to become a programmer unless they enjoy programming and have a curious mind
  • When I was a founder of a startup back in 1999 I had the opportunity to hire a 16 year old as an intern. (We also hired a 17 year old). Being a startup company in silicon valley we tried to get the most for our money, and these two certainly provided. I was able to lay out a very clear project description that was not too large, nor too small, along with a lot of strategy for implementation. The guy coded it up quite nicely, though I found myself lecturing him about coding style. Note that now he works
  • The kind of crap job you can get won't help you to learn anything and will just show you that coding in the real world is working in a cyber sweatshop. No one care if you have an item on your resume that says that your hacked html and javascript for some random company website. And the random company won't pay someone to be with you and teach you the important things about programming that you won't learn in school.

    Instead you should join a free software project that you like. Ideally something that you
  • Yes, doing tech support is probably ranked lower on your overall list of potential jobs than BestBuy Sales Monkey, but I think TS is an incredibly valuable and overlooked wrung on the IT ladder. But you say you want to be a coder and that helping users fix their PCs by turning the power on isn't going to get you towards that goal. It's not a direct path, no, but it will teach you essential skills you'll find very useful in your career.
    • Problem Solving
      While most problems will be simple, no-brainers, othe

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