There’s no one path in to be sure. But there’s lots of ways to educate yourself and build a “hireable” portfolio from home and without getting a typical 4-year degree. Learn to code, get some applicable certifications, start a website (as your digital portfolio), contribute to open source or spin up your own project(s), etc… The IT/software/cyber market is not at its peak (in terms of opportunity), but we’re definitely still here and there are openings. It’s still a great field with a lot of perks if you can weather the challenges of “breaking in”. It’s also not going anywhere, despite what some may lead you to believe given the advent of “AI”. For those of us in tech, we’ll be the first to tell you that our jobs are pretty safe.

If it’s infosec you might be interested in, you may find this guide I put together and typically share interesting - https://shellsharks.com/getting-into-information-security.

Good luck!

China. Also, no one is saying FB is fine, but since it’s American then gov pretty much shrugs. It was FB after all feeding the NSA yeah?

I am a pretty heavy “Fediverse user” (Mastodon + Lemmy/Kbin) and my feeds have VERY little Linux talk. There is an incredibly diverse set of folks on the ‘verse but admittedly discoverability is hard. If the only people in your circle are Linux nerds then that’s all that might be boosted into your timeline. Put some effort into finding other folks and unfollow some of the Linux-only voices :-).