17yo with dev and hardware skills. How do I actually start getting freelance/remote work?
hey guys, i'm 17 from argentina and currently in an IT-focused high school. i'm really trying to start making some cash and getting actual experience, but being a minor in LATAM makes getting a standard dev job pretty much impossible right now.
i've spent a lot of time teaching myself and building things. i mostly do full-stack web dev with react, node, express, and sql, but i'm also super into linux—i daily drive mint/fedora and know my way around ubuntu servers. on top of that, i do component-level hardware repair on motherboards and laptops, like diagnosing mosfets and bios programming. i also mess around making 2d games in godot 4 on the side. my english is solid enough to work with clients globally, but the main bottleneck is freelance platforms. upwork and fiverr are a nightmare because they require ID verification and just ban you if you're under 18.
so i'm trying to figure out my best move here. does it make more sense to just build a portfolio and try to hunt for remote clients on discord, twitter, or linkedin? or should i just ask around at local hardware shops to get some real hands-on experience first? also, if anyone started freelancing early, how the hell do you handle international payments when you're underage down here?
would really appreciate any advice from people who started young or found a way to bypass the minor barrier. thanks!