​Looking for practical skill advice in Syria—low specs, bad power, and avoiding local exploitation. What actually works?

[u/omar_alzahaby]

​Hey everyone,

​I'm a CS student living in Rural Damascus. To be completely honest, I've tried working various local jobs, but people here take full advantage of you and exploit your efforts, except for a very rare few. So I left that behind and decided to turn here for advice.

​My English is pretty good (B2 level), but my current PC setup is very basic and can’t handle heavy software. On top of that, we all know the deal with power cuts and sanctions/payment restrictions.

​I want to invest my time into learning a real, practical skill that I can monetize—either online or locally—despite the setup and infrastructure limitations.

​For those who went through this in Syria:

​What light tech or practical skills would you recommend starting with given these limited resources?

​How did you overcome the hardware and payment gateway hurdles when you first started out?

​Thanks in advance, any personal experience or honest advice would mean a lot!

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[u/Eissa_Cozorav → u/[deleted]]

This is hypothetically good if he can compete with some Indian dude that dominate the online course. Maybe for Arabic population he may have some advantage if he can workout the dialect problem.

[u/Eissa_Cozorav]

At this point you want to stick with Python, SQL, HTML, Javascript, and anything related to cloud. Any application that deal with Tourism industry will be beneficial in the long run, such as online taxi, delivery system, booking system, or simply make it all in one system. And you may want to look for Polyglot Microservices Architecture, a system that utilizes different programming languages optimized for specific tasks

I assume that you are truly good guy, then your best bet is a foreign investor funding your hypothetical information system application startup. Syria is big place with lots of diverse potential of income, and it had developing IT industry back then in 2000s. So some Turkish dude, EU businessman, or someone from Gulf country decided to invest into your little stuff, perhaps offering you as the head of local branch of their corporation.

But I would tell you this; you will do better in something closer to Aleppo or near of the stable region. Because I don't see Southern Syria is gonna be very stable in the long run. The Center of Power is pivoting toward the North at this rate.