If nobody will hire me, should I turn to crime to pursue a career in programming? I ask because if there's no legal entry-level jobs due to the oversaturation, I might have to go underground for it.

You asked for a formal performance review equivalent AFTER getting the letters of recommendation

If I’m not willing to hire you for my legitimate business, I sure as heck will not be willing to hire you for my criminal enterprise.

I suspect that unless your criminal activity involves something other than computers, you will have a hard time finding work as a criminal, as well.

Why did we evolve to have so many nerve endings in our anuses?

Have you considered military service?

Presumably, you have a 4 year CS degree, and not just some certificates from a certificate mill.

You realize any criminal organization you would want to go to work for as an alternative to a legitimate job, will want everything a legitimate job would want, plus some tradecraft, and an ability to not get caught on top of everything else, right?

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You now have at least a small personal business network, and a network through your academics, within your CS department, which you can leverage to find your first post-graduation job

If you don’t have all of these things set up already… why the hell not?!?

Minimally, this would mean an internship after your first, second, and third years, which is almost a years worth of job experience.

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Because you did not squander your internships, this also means that you have:

One or more letters of recommendation from one or more supervisors in each internship

You took those performance reviews to heart, and aimed some of your school curriculum at addressing any areas where your performance was less than stellar, and kept notes, so now you have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), both where you fell short in each internship,and a list of what you did to address your shortcomings

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