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Comment by throwaway5d097 | Hacker News Reader

I've been unemployed for two years after graduating, plus a short tense stint at a fast food place. It's hard to write any software. All I do is read HN and about technologies without actually doing anything. Have had several medical professionals "really think" I am autistic, but none were qualified to diagnose.

It's way too hard to find paid work. If I could earn minimum wage by coding simple, small systems, I would be so happy.

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Can you find work in a tangential field like software or systems support / troubleshooting ? It's not as sexy or well-paid as software engineering, but working tickets gives you clearly defined work accomplishments that can show off your troubleshooting skills. And I learned that talking to customers isn't actually the worst thing - you basically learn a script and stick to it. You will still burn out after a year or so, but it's an easier resume pivot to dev work than other non-industry gigs.

Maybe, thanks. I'll look into it.

I started my career writing automated tests, and have also had a development job where developers did support. If I couldn't be paid to code, I'd much much rather do manual QA than support.

My manual QA colleagues at my first job were all highly intelligent people without much formal education, and the ones interested in programming had the option to move into automated QA.

Yep, QA is a good option too. Personally, I enjoyed the heck out of my support gigs though (first IT Support for a college, then AWS engineering support) - found QA to be a pretty boring the one time I did a bit at an internship. If I'm being honest, I think I loved the urgency and feeling like a hero when I solve a customer's problem - and I liked that problems changed frequently. I tend to work pretty well under pressure though. If the commenter above is able to keep themselves motivated doing QA / is not into working under tight time/urgency pressures, I can see QA being a better fit for them. But Support can open plenty of doors, and I've known a few other autism spectrum folks who did very well at it and moved up the ladder to dev or devops roles.

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