I'm currently 26, lately it's been really hard to find IT/Programming jobs in my area and the ones I find the positions are so underpaid it makes you wonder if they are publicly announcing they want to exploit you. Maybe it's just me, it's been pretty harsh to get an stable job. I do want to get more programming and business experience, yet I'm met with the usual "experience required". I do have experience in web development, but when I want to try a different position let's say C# or microsoft technologies, then it becomes harder. I'm tired of the web, simply put I want something different. Whether it'll be good or bad is hard to say. The job market here sucks. I'm not exactly from the U.S but I can get there and I have all the papers to live/work there. It just... I don't know, disheartening that it's been a really pain to get a stable job. So yea, as of late I've been thinking of just jumping ship to another career.
When I started reading I thought "Sounds like you are in America" but looks like the economy isn't doing much better where you are at. There are lots of jobs here, but there is still a LOT of competition. Either you have to "suck-it-up" and keep doing the same old thing you have been, or learn something new and spend lots of extra hours doing it. To be honest, the only way I got my job in IT is by playing with computers at home and some part-time IT work at my last job. I have 8 years of AutoCAD drafting and design experience and I was totally underpaid because of the housing market crash in 2008. I was barely making $11 an hour and stressed out all the time on deadlines. Now I'm making $19 an hour and my job is rarely stressful. I support about 200 users across 5 sites and we rarely have serious problems. So I'm doing normal 8 hour a day 7 days a week and rarely working weekends. I love it! I have always wanted to get into game design, but the opportunities are even smaller in that industry. Most developers are either making mods, small projects or trying to do Kickstarters. I can't pay the bills with that. So for now I'm sticking with IT and continue to do game testing in Linux and playing around with Linux. Programming is always in demand. Specially for web and phone apps... but chances are if you come here, there are only small to mid-sized companies willing to spend money on in-house programming. Seems like most companies are out-sourcing just about everything.
There are places where you can get work online, like here for example: https://www.freelancer.com/job/ The downside is that you're competing with people who are willing and able to work for peanuts.
I used to freelance a lot a few years ago, it used to be known as getafreelancer (GAF). Ultimately what really drove me off was all the stuff I had to put up with clients and some freelancers (especially from third world places) who would disturb the market and make a $200-$300 gig into a $30. It really left a bad bad taste. And the ability for the client to start adding things up and expecting the additional stuff to be for free, if you added the extra fees they would flip and say "hey, X guy did it for free, why don't you do it too?" That said, being a freelancer isn't bad per se if you are proactive and search for clients, etc. Honestly I want to establish a software development company myself in the future in the hopes of bringing more linux goodies to the table (commercially, of course).
I'm not really from U.S. If you've seen some of my post, most of them contains some grammar errors to some degree. Nah, if you look a little bit in the web development job sections in monster.com and indeed.com there are a lot of positions out there. I don't really see myself making it into places like google or facebook. I would like to make it into Microsoft at least if possible, I've heard great many things about the working environments. Of course, I've also heard bad things about management. Yea, I'm just trying to find my place, you know. Once I find something stable, then maybe settle down and start saving up money for retirement, etc etc. (Yea, I know, it's too early to think about retirement at my age but uh gotta plan ahead while you can. Although, sometimes things don't go the way you want it to.)
GOG Careers Once a programmer always a programmer. You should be able to learn stuff like Python and languages. Then help port games to Linux. How cool would that be?
I know plenty python (although I need to get more advanced in some areas) same with PHP, JavaScript and Java. I'm currently learning Haskell at the moment and I was planning to pick up C++ this year but uh... I don't feel that motivated to go for it. Haskell being a functional programming language just feels refreshing and a bit crazy.
