[Tangaroa]

Don't forget about prior work experience. A few of my college classmates did manage to find work after graduation, but that requirement held me back for a long time. I've tried asking companies to offer internships, but most have no concept of hiring below the journeyman level.

The bar has also been rising for entry-level experience in the rare cases these jobs are offered. Back in the 1990s, entry-level programmers were not expected to know SQL, HTML+Javascript, the LAMP stack, or how TCP/IP works. Now it is quietly expected that everybody knows all this, and except for SQL these skills are not taught at university. Students who do not pick up these skills on their own time will face an especially difficult time finding work.

All of the anecdotes I've heard of someone learning one language and getting a job in it involve hard-science postgrads and professors who already had very good analytical skills and were programming something related to their field of interest. It has been at least a decade since you could get a job by "just knowing HTML" -- which was not true at the time, since you were also expected to be an excellent graphic designer -- and fifteen years since I've heard anyone say you could get a programming job by being fairly smart and "good with computers". As for the presence of job opportunities, journeyman and senior positions each easily outnumber entry-level positions. Most companies do not hire at the entry level at all, and it is getting harder to find jobs that are slightly above the entry level in requiring only 2-4 years of experience rather than 4-6. It's a sign of the times.

Employers want experienced coders, and can get them with the economy the way it is, but everybody has to start somewhere. Most people who "can code" could barely code when they got their first jobs, and they got better by facing new challenges and having their code reviewed by more experienced supervisors. The experts-only economy is going to leave a lot of people behind by failing to give them these opportunities.