TL;DR — Five stages turn a software creator into a job-ready developer: experimenting with AI, attending a beginner-friendly MLH hackathon for structured immersion, building solo projects, curating a portfolio (pinned GitHub repos, READMEs as case studies, DEV writeups, and open source contributions through programs like the MLH Fellowship ), and entering the job market with a public body of work. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects software developer employment to grow 17% from 2023 to 2033 with roughly 129,000 annual openings, but entry-level postings have dropped 40% from their 2022 peak, and Big Tech has reduced new graduate hiring by around 25% since 2023. The takeaway: the door to a developer career is still open, but the doorway is narrower — and the people who make it through treat their public work, their community participation, and their AI fluency as the second half of the strategy.…