How I Made $100,000 as a 16-Year-Old Software Engineer
Read about how Tejas became a software engineer and landed his role at Segment, earning $100,000 at just 16.
Tejas Manohar
January 9, 2024
7 minutes
Improve your skills. There’s plenty of good content online, like Code Academy, that makes learning to be a software engineer easier. And technology like GPT provides a helping hand.
Work with others. Find a way to work with others, even if you won’t get paid. It could be an internship or helping a local business. Working with others helps you to recreate what it would be like to work on a code base with others like you would in a company. It also allows you to get your code reviewed and receive feedback so you can improve.
Contribute to open source. Being active in open-source projects can help you get noticed. For me, I feel like the fact I contributed to Segment’s open-source projects helped me land the job. They could see the code I contributed and verify that I knew what I was talking about. It also helps you to understand best practices and build a portfolio of your skills.
The reality is that too many people wait for something to happen when the truth of the matter is that nothing comes without years of hard work. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your elbows dirty. In my case, I got a little bit lucky that Segment was willing to hire a 16-year-old, but I did everything in my power to be ready when the opportunity came.
