About this advice

Career advice aimed at graduates is a crowded and largely commercial genre. Most of it exists to sell a course, which shapes what it says: every path is open, every timeline is short, and the market is always about to reward you.

What we exclude, on purpose

Salary figures. They vary by city, company, year and negotiation, they date almost immediately, and a wrong number changes real decisions. Ask people doing the job now.

Placement rates. Where these are quoted at all they are usually unverifiable and defined to flatter.

Paid course recommendations. We take no affiliate payments and endorse no training provider. Linked resources are free or first-party documentation.

What we try to include

What the job is actually like on an ordinary day, including the parts nobody advertises. Who each path does not suit, which is usually more useful than who it does. An order to learn things in. And a specific answer to "how do I prove I can do this", because that is the question that decides whether an application goes anywhere.

Dates, not confidence

Claims about how AI is reshaping entry-level work age faster than anything else here. So every path shows when it was last reviewed, and pages older than a year say so at the top. That lets you discount the specifics yourself rather than trusting that someone remembered to update them.

Where this advice is weakest

It is general. It cannot see your degree, your city, your finances or your constraints. It is a starting map, and the most valuable thing you can do with it is take it to someone doing the job now and ask where it is wrong.