I’ve got my first programmer job a couple weeks after I turned 18. IMO before you have years of work experience, on a job, you’ll learn useful stuff much faste

I’ve got my first programmer job a couple weeks after I turned 18. IMO before you have years of work experience, on a job, you’ll learn useful stuff much faster that you’re able to do by yourself or by participating in open source projects. One reason is motivation: salary, boss, peer pressure. Another reason, as an inexperienced programmer, on your first jobs you’ll be surrounded by people with much more experienced then you have. For me, the equation has changed after a ~decade in the profession. Before I got that experience however, I was lucky to work with very nice people much smarter than I was. I have learned a lot from them, probably more than a half of what I know to do now. Select these first employers carefully. Don’t focus on salary. You don’t want to work in a large company where the software is not the core business. Prefer small to medium companies (not necessarily startups, 10-50 people are still OK). Prefer companies where the software (or hardware running that) is their core business. Prefer companies who do some R&D, not just coding. Prefer companies who do what you’d like to do. Don’t afraid to switch jobs. Especially switch into different fields/platforms/languages. Good luck. P.S. I’m much older then you are, and I’m well outside US. Because of that, take my advice with a grain of salt: I’m not sure how well that applies to your environment. But for me I think it worked more or less OK.