I’m a senior in high school right now and definitely need to consider what I’m going to do in college and for work.
For a very long time I’ve been into computers, and am a developer with a few big projects under my belt (this is a burner account for privacy). So, my logical choice for a while was to become a software developer professionally.
Nowadays that plan doesn’t look too promising. AI has basically replaced junior developers (with dubious results) and the competition has gotten much fiercer. I’m not even in college yet so I have a good amount of time to potentially pivot to something else before choosing a major.
I’ve got quite a bit of experience with Linux and I manage a home server, but that probably doesn’t differentiate me much. I’m honestly interested in most things computer related, but don’t know of any specific fields to seek out. If it’s so hard for fresh CS graduates to get jobs, why would any other option be different?
Granted it’s been 30-something years since I graduated with my CS degree, but my experience might be helpful. My first job out of college ended up being in tech support for a software company, and I used that to eventually move into software development. During my 2 years in tech support I learned what I could about the source code for the companies product, and built relationships with members of the engineering team. It got to the point where I could carry on conversations with some of the software developers to identify potential causes of bugs that customers were running into.
Because of the relationships I made with the software engineers they eventually recognized my skills and one of the managers eventually helped me transition from tech support into a software developer position.