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Comment by vallas | Hacker News Reader

> It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.

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> The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance.

As it turns out, being unable to get a job (at least one that pays a reasonable wage) is a common cause of "struggling with personal finance".

Quit two jobs at 18 because of "low pay" (what 18 year is well paid?). Doesn't say what happened with the Amazon job but $15/hr is about $30k/yr which is about 80-82% of the median individual - not household - income in the US. It's absolutely a "reasonable wage" for a help desk associate. It seems like they've pointed out issues to management which were fixed. That sort of thing gets noticed, in a good way if your employer isn't totally toxic.

Less than a year of school, even 100% paid with loans, can easily be paid off on $30k/yr.

> (what 18 year is well paid?)

Plenty in our industry if they have the right set of skills (including soft skills). It might be unreasonable for OP to expect more but lets not pretend that there are no very highly paid young people in the software industry.

"Plenty" in absolute numbers maybe but let's not pretend highly paid teenagers aren't an outlier. The vast majority are graduating HS or college freshman at that age and have zero or very negative income.

It looks like OP could get jobs, the challenge was not quitting them.

Maybe he should do contract work if he can get jobs

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