I was planning on going back to school to study data science, but everyone online is making it out like the tech field is dead and people are getting laid off and now you need eight year experience just to get an entry level gig. Worried I missed the boat on being able to get a good job in the field, should I just accept I'm stuck in retail?
Hey I can see a lot of people are recommending sysadmin roles, but reading your comments you seem like you're more interested in software development. They're two very different fields and software Dev pays a lot more on average.
It's hard to transition from sysadmin to dev, I've worked in IT as a system administrator for over a decade and I don't know anyone personally whose done it. I wouldn't count on moving into software development from IT.
Either of these positions are immeasurably better than retail :)
Source: former systems admin, now a software engineer. I went back into education for a degree in CS.