Guidance on the next step (18 yo)

Sorry for the essay.
My name is Joao I recently became 18 and will be graduating high school this year. I’m currently sharing a bunk bed with my 14-year-old sister. I’m severely anxious/doubtful of my ability to get a job in this field. I’ve been juggling my senior year of high school and Colt Steele’s course for a couple of months now. I’m 45% done with the Udemy course and around 50% done with the freecodecamp.org (Responsive Web Design) course.
I would appreciate some guidance on what to do next.
Questions:

  1. Do I swallow the student loan and go to some college for a bachelor’s in Computer Science, go to a coding boot camp, continue the lonely road of self-taught, or join the military?
  2. Are certifications from platforms like Udemy and FreeCodeCamp useful when looking for a job?

Ps: I do have some general knowledge about approaching the job search. I recommend DThompsonDev on youtube.
-A good LinkedIn profile. (To do)
-Volunteer Service.
-A few projects: currently working on a dog grooming website for my aunt with bootstrap 5. Not sure what other projects I should work on… (To do)
-A portfolio website showcasing my projects and skills. (To do)

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If you can get into college, it is the most reliable way to get a job as a programmer.

Becoming a self taught developer is possible, but it is harder than getting a job out of college.

Joining the military isn’t going to help you be a programmer (probably), but it will give you a job for a while.

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To expand on this, there are some more obvious reasons why it’s easier to get a job as a programmer with a degree, and some that aren’t as obvious but just as useful:

  1. You get past job filters with your degree
  2. You show you’ve learned at least something while goin[quote=“JeremyLT, post:2, topic:460664”]
    If you can get into college, it is the most reliable way to get a job as a programmer.
    [/quote]

To expand on this, there are some more obvious reasons why it’s easier to get a job as a programmer with a degree, and some that aren’t as obvious but just as useful:

  1. You get past job filters with your degree
  2. You show you’ve learned at least something while going to college, as you learn their curriculum.
  3. You get exposed to other fields/industries/concepts beyond what you usually only focus on, giving you more context to the world as whole.
  4. You will be with peers doing the same thing as you, opening you up to networking opportunities
  5. You can leverage school facilitiesg to college
  6. You get exposed to other fields/industries/concepts beyond what you usually only focus on, giving you more context to the world as whole.
  7. You will be with peers doing the same thing as you, opening you up to networking opportunities
  8. You can leverage school facilities, such as professors, graduate students, faculty, clubs, job fairs, etc

The first 2 are the more obvious reasons and what most people think about when weighing the choice to go to college, however it’s all the other points that are the main selling points. However you could ignore them and not take advantage of them as no one forces you to do anything for college.

Its true college can get expensive (really really expensive, depending on where you are going), but its still is the best path if you can find a way to pay for it. Luckily Software Development pays well in most places, which can help you handle loans once you graduate. Along with the fact just an undergrad CS degree is enough to be very competitive in the job market, compared to other majors+fields where you might need even more schooling.

“Flying solo” as a self taught is probably the next best bet, but it also means you have the most responsibility, as essentially all the things college would set up for you, you will have to do yourself.

Bootcamps are somewhat of the middle ground, but can vary in quality dramatically making it much more risky. Sure they are “faster” than college, but you can only learn so much in a given time. Bootcamps also tend to be more expensive for a given timeframe than going to college, so if you do decide to attend a bootcamp do your research before hand before putting down $.

Regardless of what you do, goodluck keep learning, keep growing :+1:

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I’d add that whatever route you pick, look at the kind of jobs you are interested in and what skills the employers are asking for. Makes no sense to put a lot of time studying X when most employers are looking for Y.

College degrees are very often used to weed out candidates without degrees as was said in previous replies.

I wonder how much weight bootcamps actually hold. I remember the late 90’s/early 2000’s when you could get high paying jobs with just a certification when IT was the hot field but a lot of companies were just getting on the web and embracing certain technologies, so they were desperate for talent. Then later after much experience, their hiring standards became more stringent and they started to want people with degrees. (I am speaking in generalities here though there are exceptions in both cases).

It’s unfortunate that the sentiment among a lot of employers is no-degree, no-hire, because almost all of learning is a “self-taught” endeavor. The college professor can’t make you listen to the lecture, read the material, do the assignments. That’s on you.

But true, often it takes more discipline to self-teach outside of college, because you don’t have the same support systems. Employers want people who can figure things out and solve problems on their own without being hand-held all the time. Seems to me a disciplined person without a degree would be very good at this, but I digress.

But employers look at it from the perspective of this person will have an expected level of knowledge if they have a degree (which to them serves as a standardization of knowledge that the candidate would/should know.) Even though there are non-degree people who are just as educated.

I think if you are still young, no children, no mortgage and all that, definitely take the loan, you have time. I wouldn’t spend $100K+ on an education only to get out and make a little more than minim wage as is the case with some less technical majors. Probably a moot point for IT/CS though.

Udemy and FreeCodeCamp are useful in that they increase your knowledge. And CS/IT workers are knowledge workers, where knowledge is a commodity, so in that sense yes. But in these fields you will be a life-long learner for sure, so learning how to learn efficiently is important and a big advantage.

There’s a lot I could get into here, but to keep this reply relevant and from getting too much longer, I’ll end here.

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well, whether or not you should go the college route depends on many different factors like:

  1. would you be able to get into a college that’s on the inexpensive side?
  2. do you think that you are committed enough to coding that you’re willing to shell out enough cash to get a degree?
    those are two of the main ones. i will say that a computer science degree certainly wouldn’t hurt. plus, degrees show employers that you can finish what you’ve started.

i decided to address this next even though it wasn’t second in your list because i think it makes sense to talk about self-taught after talking about degrees. is it possible to get a programming job without a degree? yes, it most definitely is, but it can be more difficult. if you decide to stick with the self-taught route, you need to make sure you know as much as or more than other people with degrees in the field do. you need to build stuff and do projects that show that you know how to apply your knowledge. a third grader can sit and observe someone solve a calculus problem, but that doesn’t mean they’ll learn how to do it. it also requires a little more discipline and motivation since you’re acting as both the teacher and the student rather than attending a class that’s already been structured for you. there are many successful programmers with degrees and there are many successful programmers without degrees, but which one you choose really just depends on you.

boot camps are a bit controversial within the coding community. some people love them and some people hate them, but whether or not you should go to one really just depends on you and the boot camp itself. in my mind, if i were to choose between laying money down on a boot camp or getting a college degree, i would choose the degree. boot camps are pricey (i’ve seen some that are more than getting a degree would be… yikes) but if you really want to go to one then make sure you do THOROUGH research on it. some of them are great, some of them are scams, some of them are in the middle, but none of them are necessary for getting a coding job.

if you have no other option and desperately need a job, then the military can be good for that, but i don’t know if it would really help you with coding specifically. i’ve heard of the military paying for the tuition of those who serve, but i don’t know the specifics about that so i’d recommend doing some research on that. i mean, the military provides good benefits to those who serve, but i’ve never really considered if it would benefit someone who wants to be a programmer.

yes, i’m sure they are helpful. they show employers that you are able to commit to the learning process and that you know what you’re doing. just make sure you have more than an FCC or udemy certificate to show for yourself.

the dog grooming website is a great project- especially since you’re creating it for a business and on your own (on your own as in doing it without it being assigned by FCC or something)

just make passion projects if you can’t think of anything. do you have an idol that you might want to make a tribute page for? do you want to make an article about web dev? do you want to create a drum machine site just for fun? do you want to create a chart to display data for something you’re interested in? just find something you’re interested in and make a site that’s for it or related to it. also, if you want a specific idea you could make a survey for customers of your aunt’s dog grooming business or a place for them to leave reviews or something.

at the end of the day, i can’t choose whether you should go to college or not or what projects you should make, you end up having to choose for yourself. i’m sorry my reply was so long. hopefully something in it helped you out in some way. i wish you the best of luck : )
also, i’m sorry if some of the sentences are worded weird or if there are spelling/grammar mistakes. i didn’t really proofread too much. hopefully you get the main idea of what i’m saying, though.

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