[akomtu]

Let me skip the psychological affirming talk that "you will be alright" and "it's just an imposter syndrome". You won't and it isn't. But unlike most people in a similar situation, you understand where you are and why you are there, and you're young, so have a few years to fix this.

Your immediate concern should be getting a software dev job. Not "support" or "tester" - that would dig you further into the hole. You need a legit job you could put on your resume, so next time you could claim "industry experience". If your experience is "customer support" you're stuck in that role for life, absent of divine intervention. When applying for a dev job, be bold and confident, because most of the devs out there are incompetent and don't know much. It's a very expensive mistake to think that you should spend another few years learning, and only then get a job. Every year halves your chances. In fact, you should use the moment to try to move to the US - 90% of outcome is determined by where you live, 9% of the rest by where you work and that remaining 1% by your skill.

While accruing that "industry experience", faking work or whatever, you should learn and you already know what to learn. Implement a basic raytracer in some popular languages and by the time you'll have completed this little project, you'll know more than 95% beginners. Implement something with databases and distributed systems: put it on AWS, document how it works, what solutions you picked and why. That would make you more competent than most devs with 10 yoe.

[nevillain]

This is quite helpful as it answers the "support role or not" question. I appreciate the forthrightness. I am applying for jobs over the next few weeks, and I will consider your take when selecting opportunities.