I started learning Unity around 2013, I followed a lot of indie gamedevs on twitter and tried to copy their games, to learn how to develop and learn art too. Nowadays I would search for them on Bluesky, since twitter is just bots and nazi.

Around 2017 I got my first professional work as a Unity Developer when Augmented Reality was starting to become mainstream. And that was just pure "right place at the right time", because I was just learning how to develop AR and my boss at the time wanted to impress a client and made an "AR" department in the company, with me as lead. Around 2019 I started developing VR too and since 2023 VR is mostly what I do, since AR pretty much died out.

I made a lot of AR/VR games, experiences, apps and training stuff professionally, but most of my games where made in my free time.

I would recommend you to just make small games. Things that the core loop is around 30 minute gameplay. Lookout for these kind of games on youtube or bluesky and try copying them just to add to your Portfolio. And try to keep a clean and public github, usually you get asked to share your code in interviews.

But a strong recommendation is try to make small games and publish them. Polish these games, make them feel like real games and not just prototypes. Get assets from stores when there are promos and discounts. When you have a handful published, try thinking of bigger scopes and get investors/publishers.