That’s awesome! You do have a good point

[high moss]

Moving my reply so I don't spam up the channel!

I'm probably a bad person to answer as I've spent most of my life competing and came from an extremely stressful job directly before pivoting as well. The founder and I met at a hackathon I won; at first I volunteered to help fix a couple of things (I'm paid now; have been for a while). We work well together, and he's a friend now so it's been pretty smooth but that's probably luck on my part.

I think volunteering is a good way to prove yourself, but you have to be careful you don't get mistreated. Note I was picky; originally I offered to help three people... Grace (owner of this server), a Google coach and who I work with (very impressive developer; ex EA Sports game dev etc.) all stood out in some way e.g. Grace was a competitive runner, and had to stop because of injury, worked at a decent company etc. in other words, not just someone with a domain name.

And I don't like recommending free work, so you be the judge there I think. Outside of that, I contributed a lot to open source and have been offered decently paying jobs from networking in that... But I put in a LOT of hours, even just chatting in discord to get my name out there takes a lot of time. It helped to show people what I was working on, asking for help in efficient ways, and helping others as much as possible too.

All that said, my skill isn't where I want it to be, and it's not been as easy as I expected. I thought by now I'd be further. Sorry this is so long! Trying to give a realistic picture. I got lucky I think

[dreamy musk]

I understand what you’re saying, I don’t have a ton of experience as I’m just starting out on my path of pursuing graphic design as a career. Or even just something within that field of work.
I was looking into trying to do possible internships for different company’s as maybe a means to get me started, I’m not sure that be the same as volunteering my work but I appreciate the advice! I’ll definitely have to look into what I can do.

[high moss]

Internships sounds less risky! I got lucky but there's a lot of stories where companies just used someone's time and they didn't get as much out of it. So definitely do what's right for you I think

Networking can help but I also think just getting better than everyone around you helps, it's hard though obviously

[hot fractal]

If you have zero experience yet.
Internship and volunteering opportunities would help you alot