Finding a job that pays above minimum wage in high school is hard. Finding a job in the tech industry is even harder. Working at a startup is an invaluable experience; it has taught me how to manage my time, put forth my best, and work well with other people. But, who would hire a junior in high school as a web developer?

What do employers look for in a high school student?

I have never thought of having good grades as something extraordinary, I feel that it’s my responsibility as a student to do my best, teachers spend their time making sure that I learn, so by acing exams, I show my gratitude towards their efforts. So do employers look for good grades when hiring students? Maybe. Get good grades just to be safe.

After about two years of reading /r/learnprogramming and /r/cscareerquestions almost daily, I concluded that employers value determination, hard work, drive, and autodidacticism above, say, an Ivy League education.

Here’s a clip from the movie Good Will Hunting, where Will tells an arrogant MIT student the following:

You blew $150,000 on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late fees from the library.

The point is not to dismiss the value of university, I still got a couple of years before I even apply to colleges, but I want to establish the fact that there’s nothing like being an autodidact, i.e., a self-taught individual. What if everyone became an autodidact? I asked this question last year at the What If…? Las Vegas conference.

Employers in CS-related fields want to see a high school student’s desire to work. Why do you want to work in the first place? Money? Experience? Build up your resume for college?