I went from being homeless, to a retail job, to a software engineer job within 3 years. I used to sleep under a desk many nights due to 80+ hour weeks as I obsessively tried to hold unreasonable deadlines working on all manner of tech projects alone. Imposter syndrome was real until I saw a contract showing clients were being billed at about 10x the poverty line wages I was making.

Eventually I realized they were just exploiting my poor self esteem and found the courage to quit, and found a job that paid double for half the hours.

Today I am constantly coaching people to do the same.