Hmm, this sounds a bit like "how to get an internship if you have friends/family with great connections". Not really a scaleable solution.
However when you are young you have lots of free time and very low overheads. If you have decent tech skills there are plenty of things you can do to kickstart your career.
I was around 16 during the first dotcom boom, pretty much every business wanted a "website" but had no idea how to go about it. Even building simple HTML websites and uploading them to free hosts could earn you a hundred $ or so, which definitely beat working in the local deli with the other kids.
This was also the era of Windows 98, so everyone had PC problems, if you could pretty much guarantee a fix (usually just backup everything+reformat) every time and charged callouts at minimum wage you would get plenty of business.
This helped a lot with university applications too, as the professor dealing with admissions was impressed enough to drop the grade requirements (the only person they had dropped them for that year IIRC).
Not sure what the equivalent would be nowadays, but you could probably get a decent portfolio or a few $ doing work on freelance sites.
"Hmm, this sounds a bit like "how to get an internship if you have friends/family with great connections". Not really a scaleable solution."
Actually very scalable. Social networks grow faster the further you reach. I got my first 'serious' internship thanks to my friend's girlfriend's dad. I'm from a small town and I worked at a place 2000 km away from home.
However when you are young you have lots of free time and very low overheads. If you have decent tech skills there are plenty of things you can do to kickstart your career.
I was around 16 during the first dotcom boom, pretty much every business wanted a "website" but had no idea how to go about it. Even building simple HTML websites and uploading them to free hosts could earn you a hundred $ or so, which definitely beat working in the local deli with the other kids.
This was also the era of Windows 98, so everyone had PC problems, if you could pretty much guarantee a fix (usually just backup everything+reformat) every time and charged callouts at minimum wage you would get plenty of business.
This helped a lot with university applications too, as the professor dealing with admissions was impressed enough to drop the grade requirements (the only person they had dropped them for that year IIRC).
Not sure what the equivalent would be nowadays, but you could probably get a decent portfolio or a few $ doing work on freelance sites.