I am trying to start my career in the world of web development currently I am 16 and in 2 years I have to move out (moms orders) what would be the first move into getting a job as a web developer is it best to freelance or work full time for a company and what certification's would you recommend getting I am already very good with computers both windows and Linux (windows can kiss my ass tho ) and I know html css as well as some php and jquery I even know a little MySQL (I am also very talented at cybersecurity mainly infosec and OSINT )

(I know this question probably sounds stupid but I would like some advice from people in the area recently I told my dad I want to be a web developer my dad then told me I should get a real job )

Any advice would be great

The long game: get a degree. Certs are par worthless outside of administrivia. I was a technical contributor on a number of certification exams I don't even have. Degrees will give you options, and don't expire.

If you're in the US or Canada, a majority of your competition will have a degree.

So you don't have the luxury of getting an official education like university or apprenticeship?

There are very many webdevelopers. And many will do the work for less money (for ex. India).
So i would recommend to find a career path were demand is high and pay is too. Google "Median income [your dream job] [your country]"

Specialize. So It security sounds like a good idea... however without a university degree you won't get far there.

What do you think of becoming a data analyst? Or learning Machine Learning? There is a programm by google and udemy that offers so called Nanodegrees. https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree

And here some good learning websites.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/
https://scrimba.com/
https://www.codecademy.com/

And learn about how business is conducted. Go to your local library and find about that.

Just saw that as of September 1. there is a live streamed computer science class from codecademy on learning python. An easy to use programming language that is widely used in machine learning and Data Science. Maybe something for you.

https://news.codecademy.com/cs101

where are you from @butwhytho ? 🙂

@heyheni well I'm from a shithole town in Indiana the only thing we're really known for is RV factories and opioids my parents have discouraged me from Getting into cybersecurity as a career as they say there is no such thing as ethical hacking that those words don't go together I'm already fairly good at python tried to make an simple ai chatbot once but the online IDE I was using error' data the package import so I just kind said screw it after that ( I dream of being able to setup my own development environment unfortunately I can not afford a vps and my parents will not let me have a pc as they think "I will bring the FBI down on them" (funny story about that too) Anyways I will look into those classes (I hope 124 kB/s internet can handle streaming it lol )

@butwhytho sad story, so here are two ways to get a proper education as an american without having money.

1. The Obama administration copied the dual education system of Germany and Switzerland in 2014. In this programm you work and study at the same time. And you get paid learning a vocation.
Check out https://www.apprenticeship.gov

2. If you're up to an adventure and want to leave that "shithole town in indiana" and gain a broader view on life than that America has to offer there is maybe a way.
Taiwan the Island situated next to China offers a free college education for foreigners. They pay the flight to Taiwan and a schoolarship of usd 450 per month (a good salery in tw is usd 1100) and you get to work for 15 hours a week on the student visa. You'll learn mandarin free of charge, a language that will be increasingly important.
Google "study in taiwan" and here are some infos about the MOE Schoolarship program.
https://roc-taiwan.org/sa_en/post/...

@butwhytho Cybersecurity engineer/ethical hacker here!

Firstly, don't have degrees in this, I'm just fucking technical and have the right mindset but I'm about 90% self taught.

Ethical hacking definitely exists and for a good reason. It makes that you can find vulnerabilities in software/networks/infrastructure in a controlled manner and before possibly malicious actors find and exploit them for whatever reason (fun, trolling, financial gain, destruction, terrorism, you name it).

But, it's also very important just to know the status of your cyber resilience. How can you properly defend your organization when you don't know where all the holes are? You can't.

It's also just very much fun! The hackers mindset is awesome. It's about thinking out of the box, creativity, seeing every computer'ish device as possible entry point, using stuff in ways it wasn't meant for to figure out what happens or make new things.... yeah, it's great!

Also, how are you going to ensure your software is secure without pentesting it? I write tons of software and API's and do pentests regularly to keep checking if I introduced security vulnerabilities by accident 😅