Hey, I've got a bit of first hand experience here. Been doing professional work since ~15ish and had a handful of friends in similar situations. 1. Use your ag

Hey, I've got a bit of first hand experience here. Been doing professional work since ~15ish and had a handful of friends in similar situations. 1. Use your age as a strategic advantage not a limiting factor. Seriously, I wish I'd appreciated this a little more because it changes the day you graduate high school and become a college student. You have a unique ability to talk to just about anyone right now as a virtue of being young and curious. Reach out to people you admire, not specifically asking for work, but for mentorship and advice. The returns will be high. People in this industry love young ambitious developers. 2. Get involved in the community. All the work I got before college was through personal connections. Show up at hackathons (big one), go to technical meetups if there are ones in your area, get to know people on a personal level. Forget "networking" start making friends with other people in the field, you'll start getting calls about work. 3. Code a ton Seriously, open source, personal projects, whatever. Just improve as a developer. My first steady contributions were doing volunteer web development for a local non-profit and that kickstarted all the professional stuff I was able to do pre-college. 4. Understand your value Unless you're truly an outlier - you aren't going to be getting paid what a CS grad with 10 years experience is. That's just a reality of your experience level. That said I see way too many younger developers accept gross underpayment. Do not work for someone paying you $10/hour. Your time would be much better spent contributing to meaningful open source work. 5. Get into the best school you can A good CS program will be a game changer for you, or at least it was for me. Get the grades and exam scores you need to do that. A resume of relevant experience is also massively helpful. Companies are much more interested in your skills than your age. Startups in particular are very willing to hire teenagers if they can see that you will provide value. Keep learning. If you want to chat more email me (in bio).