I myself suffer from severe SAD and find it difficult to leave the house let alone go to school or interact with peers. I'm 17 currently, but I'm afraid it's too late and that I will never get my dream job as a programmer, without school, and this leads me further into depression and isolation. Therapists haven't helped and I'm not sure who or even whether anyone can help me. I don't know what to do HN, help me...
I suffer from severe anxiety that is nearly crippling, it basically rules my life. Disclaimer, it's not social anxiety, more of a general crushing anxiety a majority of the time. But I wanted to write to offer some reassurance.
You are young, and with that is great and abundant hope for you; it may not seem so now, but your future could be very bright. When I was young, I felt that I would never be strong enough to make it past all of the sociological hurdles necessary to move in and up in this field. Like you, I do not feel that therapists have helped at all - honestly, for me I feel talking about things sends me into a tail spin of much deeper anxiety. It can be difficult making clinicians aware, but there are pharmacological solutions that do help - you need to be a team with your doctor, rather than letting them simply run the show (not to be presumptuous, you may already have this sort of relationship).
I managed to break into my field by doing a project on my own and showing what I was made of, then presenting it to the group I was displacing with the internal hope of selling it. Instead it landed me my first job - wherein I was initially underpaid, but it was still more money than I dreamed of making at that age (I was in my early twenties). I was quickly identified as a passionate (and opinionated) expert and received very large raises over the next several years with them. When I did finally leave, the experience I gained there, made bargaining a lot easier. It's important at that stage not to be manipulated, you still may find yourself too-fresh in areas of negotiation and end up going backwards in your career. So perhaps aim for folks who aren't used to hiring software engineers, so you both have some equal footing on the negotiating experience. After one or two jobs, your experience will speak for itself, and any "quirks" people may see with you, will be dismissed as "everyone is different" and you can be accepted for the brilliance you provide rather than the image you worry your anxiety elicits.
TL;DR, aim for small non-IT shops (eg. state & local government, factories that need programming, companies breaking the small to mid-size barrier that now need programmers), do projects to show your worth (maybe even work that would benefit them). Make a name for yourself and show your true brilliance.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 16.1 ms ] threadYou are young, and with that is great and abundant hope for you; it may not seem so now, but your future could be very bright. When I was young, I felt that I would never be strong enough to make it past all of the sociological hurdles necessary to move in and up in this field. Like you, I do not feel that therapists have helped at all - honestly, for me I feel talking about things sends me into a tail spin of much deeper anxiety. It can be difficult making clinicians aware, but there are pharmacological solutions that do help - you need to be a team with your doctor, rather than letting them simply run the show (not to be presumptuous, you may already have this sort of relationship).
I managed to break into my field by doing a project on my own and showing what I was made of, then presenting it to the group I was displacing with the internal hope of selling it. Instead it landed me my first job - wherein I was initially underpaid, but it was still more money than I dreamed of making at that age (I was in my early twenties). I was quickly identified as a passionate (and opinionated) expert and received very large raises over the next several years with them. When I did finally leave, the experience I gained there, made bargaining a lot easier. It's important at that stage not to be manipulated, you still may find yourself too-fresh in areas of negotiation and end up going backwards in your career. So perhaps aim for folks who aren't used to hiring software engineers, so you both have some equal footing on the negotiating experience. After one or two jobs, your experience will speak for itself, and any "quirks" people may see with you, will be dismissed as "everyone is different" and you can be accepted for the brilliance you provide rather than the image you worry your anxiety elicits.
TL;DR, aim for small non-IT shops (eg. state & local government, factories that need programming, companies breaking the small to mid-size barrier that now need programmers), do projects to show your worth (maybe even work that would benefit them). Make a name for yourself and show your true brilliance.