Hello, software dev. from the US, but I'm originally from E. Europe and went through Soviet Union collapse, societal disintegration,rampant crime, poverty and seen lot of very high caliber people (PhD scientists/engineers) who unfortunately were thrown into fringe of the society or life completely side-stepped them. What you can do ?
You are 19. Get physically strong (exercise), have a skill(s) to do manual job (like welding) so in case things go bad, you can fall back on it. In the meantime, work on your programming, math skills & imagination.
Good luck !
I believe getting a job "just" to get by should be easy, there are plenty of entry and manual jobs to start from, specially if you are young. Construction, farming, auto-mechanic, or even flipping burgers. The true challenge is getting a good pay, or getting social momentum to get out of the situation, there is only a few careers that allow smart people to get out of the "shithole" (pardon my french). IT, for the longest time, was one of such careers.
Surely IT is still a solid career choice for the next 10 years, probably. But if in the past I couldn't find a way on how IT could get outdated or out of fashion, with all the current instabilities, and the sheer number of people getting in the field every year, I kinda see the end of the tunnel. It might be that in the next few decades IT work will be as basic as blue collars, which is not bad per se, but very different from what most people expect.
