Assuming you have no experience and few connections, my advice would be to take your time, build up a resume, and get into a large city quickly. Freelance a few projects or build some personal projects that have an element of commercial relevance. If you don't have freelance projects to work on (e.g. help someone get a website up, write a backend for someone's random thing that you met on a craigslist), then make some things up and be forward to hiring managers, "I just built this to test out xyz framework/programming language and learn a bit more".
Move to a big city or apply for a bunch of jobs in a big city. Jobs to target would be marketing/creative agencies companies that don't have a core competency in software. In New York for instance, there are lots of these, and many get hired to do websites or one-off apps for well known clients and have trouble finding and keeping talent. It's not glamorous, but do this for 6 months to a year, study some stuff on the side, and it shouldn't be hard to land a job at a company that has more of a focus on engineering, can teach you more, and pay better.
Move to a big city or apply for a bunch of jobs in a big city. Jobs to target would be marketing/creative agencies companies that don't have a core competency in software. In New York for instance, there are lots of these, and many get hired to do websites or one-off apps for well known clients and have trouble finding and keeping talent. It's not glamorous, but do this for 6 months to a year, study some stuff on the side, and it shouldn't be hard to land a job at a company that has more of a focus on engineering, can teach you more, and pay better.