>>17272625
25 year old NEET, former web dev here. I did web dev for 1.5 years. I have now been NEET for 10 months...

How long have you been NEET for? I'm guessing a lot less time than me.

>I am a temporary NEET. I am 24 and have 1-2 years working in a service/IT environment in regards to fixing customer PCs, order/ticket management, sales, team leading/department supervision, etc. from a certain large office supplies company and many, many years of pre-college schoolwork and personal work involving fixing, building, and refurbishing PCs with some [stale] electronics engineering experience fixing game systems, audio products, cellphones, etc.
>I'm trying to find a help desk job, albeit I'd rather it be internal IT work than customer focused; I am GREAT with customers and communicating with them even in stressful scenarios, but it's really tiring. I hope I can get a job where it isn't overworked anxiety hell like my previous dead end endeavors...
That all sounds like fantastic experience, in fact the first part could be the opening to your CV / cover letter.

>Is learning how to program worth it? Is web development a nice joke to milk? I feel I can definitely learn, but I want to learn what will PAY and commonly so with lesser effort.
It depends if you want to do it man. I quit because it was getting to me, but also because I'm a very stupid person and I didn't deal with office politics properly (I should have stood up for myself when people were adding to my workload. I didn't because I'm a pathetic sack of shit.)

As for pay, I was on £25k/yr ($36k/yr but I think American wages are higher so just using the exchange rate like I have probably isn't accurate). The average UK salary is £26.5k/yr so I was only just under that. So it was pretty good pay in my eyes. I started on £17k/yr though ($24k/yr), then I shortly went up to £18k, then after 10 months of time there, £25k.

Hang on I'll continue this in another post...

>>17272625
>>17272651
Continued:

>Should I get into networking? Databases? Maybe just focus on IT? What certifications/paths are the best balance of easily milked/good pay/easy to find a job with?
Networking stuff is completely different. I've never learned anything about that. I assume you mean as like a network engineer, which is obviously a hardware role rather than a software role. You probably know much more about networking than I do to be honest. I think things like CompTIA are popular for networking jobs, but I have no idea. I've just seen it mentioned on /g/ quite a lot.

>I'm considering making a LinkedIn and posting my virtual course progress on it as I go through them
Do you mean like your progress on Codecademy and things like that? You could do that. I would recommend making a LinkedIn anyway because it's a great tool for selling yourself.

>Anyways, let's say I want to avoid college but want to carve out a path in something like IT or programming/web development, but I currently lack certifications and my 3 USD checking/savings balance isn't making it easy to get more immediately
Right I'm going to come back to this bit. What you could do with savings is go to one of these coding bootcamp things. Bear in mind, I have no experience of them. You could say they're a rip off. I don't know. But they will teach you what you need to know for modern web development. It will look good to employers, probably better than just teaching yourself. And I honestly believe that being taught is better than teaching yourself. Others will disagree and there is certainly a lot you can teach yourself, for sure.

(Gonna continue again in another post...)

Three fields:

Development
Admin
Support

Pick one. You don't need to program for a helpdesk role.

>>17272625
>>17272651
>>17272686
Just a paragraph to add to that last point:

This is my background, and how I learned web development: I did a philosophy degree, and all of my web development knowledge comes from four computer science modules I took in the first year of that degree (one of them was specifically a web development module. Of the others, one was programming in C, one was programming in Java, and the other was Assembly type stuff). This experience is what got me my web dev job. As you can see it's not like I did a CS degree. I just have those four modules, and I did them all in 1st year (so they're all 1st year level modules, nothing too advanced). But it was enough to get a web dev job.

That's why I think a coding bootcamp could work. I know that people do get jobs after having done them. But as I say I can't personally vouch for them, because I've not used one, and they could be utter shit. It's just an idea. The alternative of course would be teaching web dev yourself, or maybe see if you can take some courses in web dev at your local college or university.

I suppose actually the key thing to remember about web dev is that the most important thing is what you PRODUCE. So if you do teach yourself (perhaps that is the best option), then here is how you get a job: make projects, put them online, put the code on your GitHub so employers can see it. THAT'S what will really make you stand out. I didn't really have any of this when I got my job, but I had my uni experience, and I had done a website project for that. But yeah, if you can make a little project with a modern stack, host it on something like Heroku, and put the code on your GitHub, then you will be taken very seriously by employers for web dev jobs.

Sorry I've rambled FAR too much. Apologies for that.

>>17272651

My 2 weeks noticed ended in early January due to anxiety issues. Essentially, I was expected to do the work of 4 people and was trained to be a supervisor, but they suddenly decided such a position was not available and they weren't hiring anyone else in the blank spots. I was the only person on the bench side of my department. I was still expected to train and supervise the tech sales people in sales and intakes and make crazy sales myself while working on 5-12 computers at once alone 'part time' with no raise from 9 dollars an hour and no title change with a hilarious amount of responsibility.

No.

The store demoted a tier after I left.

I saved up enough to buy my own piece of shit used car (HUGE progress, holy shit, although I need new brakes already) and float up to this point.

>It depends if you want to do it man.
It's not about a want in this case. I can worry about 'wants' when I have savings, capital, and the tools necessary to actually propel myself safely. I'd prefer it not being painful, though... preferably easy and cushy with the occasional challenge to keep my feet from falling asleep.

I can produce a portfolio if I must. I can consider a camp or paid education in the future; I'm looking for direction and those may be a decent choice. I'm fine with software OR hardware and want to pick based on flexibility, demand, easiness, and efficiency.

Thanks for the writeup. I'd rather you be too verbose in this case, honestly.

>>17272700

Alright, I'll see what those entail.
It's not that I WANT to work helpdesk, rather that based on my [lack of] education and experience, it seems like what I have to do at the moment; It's also the closest to my previous job, for better or worse.

>>17272700
>Pick one. You don't need to program for a helpdesk role.

You do nowadays. I'm knee deep in PowerShell scripts to automate shit so I can just sit at my desk all day.