Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I remember sometime in the early 90s I was working at my first really huge contract -- hundreds of programmers.

One day after lunch I get off the elevator and take a look around the huge room. I could probably see 100 folks or so.

There were a dozen different nationalities, people of all ages and genders. There were extremely smart guys who didn't have a degree. There were extremely smart guys who had PhDs in things like particle physics. Here I was, a self-taught guy, leading a team of 30. I had 3 PhDs working for me. I knew more than one person with double degrees in a foreign country who came here for a better life.

And it didn't matter. All that mattered was whether you got along with people, what kind of attitude you had, and whether or not you could push through and solve problems for folks.

I think this was the moment that I decided that I love this industry.

It's the only industry in America that to me reflects the American dream. I'm a high school drop out and so far nobody has even asked about my education. They check out my portfolio of work and go on that. Results are results, everything else is just window dressing.

Same here. I was scrubbing toilets for $8/hr two years ago, and now I work with PhD's and MBA's making six figures. God bless america.

My oldest son grew up fixing computers and programming them, but he wasn't so good at structured education.

By the time he was 20, he was out of school and working fast food. Programming on various projects in his free time. Making minimum wage.

I begged him to start looking for programming work, but he always told me that he wasn't qualified. How could he compete in the job market with all those professional coders?

Finally he tried. Of course, he got a job -- at a startup. He ended up being the go-to guy for both coding and infrastructure.

He's done a lot of things since then, but I'll always remember him looking at me, rolling his eyes, and telling me that what I was saying was impossible.

Yes, there's a huge role for luck, for having good parents, for being born in the right country, and for networking skills. But this is still an industry where if you love it, you can make terrific money just by being passionate about it.

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