I'm in a pretty similar situation as the submitter, I just have taken a different path that's worked well for me. I started coding in PHP about 5 years ago as a recreational thing, for small projects I was interested in creating.
Eventually, I realized the money in freelance, and spent junior and senior year of high school doing freelance for hire. I didn't have any bills, so working on projects with a $200-300 payout, and at times larger projects near $1000, it was good money. I learned how to be self-sufficient and not need others to solve issues that arose in the course of programming.
I eventually wanted to move out of freelance to something more steady, and finally got hired doing basic development work for a small firm (4 people) of young developers. The pay was terrible, but it was a great environment and let me get some in-house positions on my resume rather than all freelance.
While working there, I started part-time at an internet startup I found on oDesk.com . Online freelance sites aren't great, but oDesk seems to have a pretty high percentage of North American employers willing to pay North American wages to North American developers, and it's worked out for me. At this job, I was slightly overpaid for my position, got great experience in a large scale website. They over time moved me to one of two remaining developers, with higher wages, until they self-destructed about a month ago.
I'm currently looking for a job that lets me work around my school schedule which is proving difficult, but I think I'm about to start ANOTHER long-term position working at home from oDesk, with a more established company. While I'm working towards my Bachelor's degree, I'm making more money than the average developer a year or two out of college with a Bachelor's degree, working at home, without any degree. The primary reason is that I have a body of freelance and in-house work on a variety of websites that I can showcase to new employers, along with some rock solid references from successful people running their own businesses from home, in most cases.
The bottom line is that to get hired, you have to prove you know what you're doing. Internet entrepreneurs have slightly more lax requirements than your typical in house position, but both value results, and seeing that you can do what you say you can do. A degree doesn't always show that; a portfolio does. Obviously I'm a bit biased and jaded because that kind of experience is more critical and easy to showcase in a web development background, as opposed to desktop development.
Even so, many of the same principles ring true. Work on open source projects or freelance projects. Take work in technologies you aren't terribly familiar with, strive to learn new technologies and master more areas of your language(s) of choice. Stick with a scale of project that you feel you can comfortably handle, but don't sell yourself short or convince yourself you can't do a given job. I got an early start and the return on investment has come a bit earlier in my case, but it's not too late now. Immerse yourself in the code and technology you love, firstly for the personal accomplishments that probably drove you to a development career to begin with, but then also for the personal gain of wealth for using that knowledge for someone else's pet project. It works.
As a college student majoring in Nuclear Engineering, the possibilities in the near future for innovation in the nuclear field are astounding. The joint effort between Japan, France, the USA, and a few others I believe, to design the first working fusion reactor, could be our first major step into higher level energy generation. It's quite amazing to learn about these new types of reactors, stuff that I could be designing or operating within a few short years. Anyone who is still so fearful of a nuclear reactor in their backyard is not aware of the innnovations in the nuclear field, and how much safer they are as opposed to previous years.
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Scientists being required as part of the proof to earn the payout that God exists? Damn, bookies sure do know how to make it a safe bet.
I'm in a pretty similar situation as the submitter, I just have taken a different path that's worked well for me. I started coding in PHP about 5 years ago as a recreational thing, for small projects I was interested in creating.
Eventually, I realized the money in freelance, and spent junior and senior year of high school doing freelance for hire. I didn't have any bills, so working on projects with a $200-300 payout, and at times larger projects near $1000, it was good money. I learned how to be self-sufficient and not need others to solve issues that arose in the course of programming.
I eventually wanted to move out of freelance to something more steady, and finally got hired doing basic development work for a small firm (4 people) of young developers. The pay was terrible, but it was a great environment and let me get some in-house positions on my resume rather than all freelance.
While working there, I started part-time at an internet startup I found on oDesk.com . Online freelance sites aren't great, but oDesk seems to have a pretty high percentage of North American employers willing to pay North American wages to North American developers, and it's worked out for me. At this job, I was slightly overpaid for my position, got great experience in a large scale website. They over time moved me to one of two remaining developers, with higher wages, until they self-destructed about a month ago.
I'm currently looking for a job that lets me work around my school schedule which is proving difficult, but I think I'm about to start ANOTHER long-term position working at home from oDesk, with a more established company. While I'm working towards my Bachelor's degree, I'm making more money than the average developer a year or two out of college with a Bachelor's degree, working at home, without any degree. The primary reason is that I have a body of freelance and in-house work on a variety of websites that I can showcase to new employers, along with some rock solid references from successful people running their own businesses from home, in most cases.
The bottom line is that to get hired, you have to prove you know what you're doing. Internet entrepreneurs have slightly more lax requirements than your typical in house position, but both value results, and seeing that you can do what you say you can do. A degree doesn't always show that; a portfolio does. Obviously I'm a bit biased and jaded because that kind of experience is more critical and easy to showcase in a web development background, as opposed to desktop development.
Even so, many of the same principles ring true. Work on open source projects or freelance projects. Take work in technologies you aren't terribly familiar with, strive to learn new technologies and master more areas of your language(s) of choice. Stick with a scale of project that you feel you can comfortably handle, but don't sell yourself short or convince yourself you can't do a given job. I got an early start and the return on investment has come a bit earlier in my case, but it's not too late now. Immerse yourself in the code and technology you love, firstly for the personal accomplishments that probably drove you to a development career to begin with, but then also for the personal gain of wealth for using that knowledge for someone else's pet project. It works.
As a college student majoring in Nuclear Engineering, the possibilities in the near future for innovation in the nuclear field are astounding. The joint effort between Japan, France, the USA, and a few others I believe, to design the first working fusion reactor, could be our first major step into higher level energy generation. It's quite amazing to learn about these new types of reactors, stuff that I could be designing or operating within a few short years. Anyone who is still so fearful of a nuclear reactor in their backyard is not aware of the innnovations in the nuclear field, and how much safer they are as opposed to previous years.