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Graduating highschool and wanting to work as a programmer, advice? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by randomname@sh.itjust.works to c/programming@programming.dev

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I'm a junior in highschool and will be graduating next year, and the degree that makes the most sense to me is computer science. I've always loved using and tinkering with technology, and learning about it when I can.

I've taken the CS50p course as an introduction to coding, and have really enjoyed the problem solving nature of programming. I just don't know what the industry is like, and people keep saying the job market for CS majors is terrible. so I'm not 100% sure that a computer science degree would be right for me. any advice?

update: I've gotten a lot of good advice from comments and have decided to start a personal project of some sort, to test the waters and see if this is something I can do and enjoy as a hobby outside the CS50p course. thanks to everyone who responded!

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[–] Mniot@programming.dev 9 points 1 week ago

The job market is not terrible. But there is a frustrating thing where a "senior" developer with 3 years of experience will get tons of recruiter-spam offering them $200k+ positions, while a junior developer (your position) will get ghosted when you apply for a job that's offering to pay $50k. So it can feel demoralizing because people you see as your peers are having a very different experience. (And if you go in some circles the FOMO just never stops; people telling you you're wasting your life not being a Meta dev getting $800k TComp or founding a unicorn start-up...)

You say you enjoyed programming, which sure sounds to me like you could enjoy getting paid to do it. But it's easy to overwork yourself because your boss says that real developers pull 80-hour weeks. Or burn out because it's so frustrating to watch bad decisions ruin your good work. If you can find the right balance of caring and not caring, you can make good money and enjoy your job.

And it only takes a year or two to get rid of the "junior developer" label and then jobs are a lot easier. (Others have said that the market is bad. And it is bad compared to how it was in, like, 2020. But it's still a very good market all things considered.)