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by colinb
1688 days ago
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> Success is determined by many factors, but they include Strategy, Willpower, Resourcefulness, Willingness to fail. I believe you. I think the many factors also include dumb luck, in large measure. You didn't fall and break a leg. You didn't get food poisoning. Your laptop upon which you were learning all these valuable skills didn't die. You took the risk to fail, and succeeded. I congratulate you - really. What you did isn't a trivial thing. If you had failed maybe you'd still be smoking fish. (Though smoking fish might not be such a bad life - I have no useful experience in this matter). I contend that many more people who took a path like yours are still smoking fish than are well-employed programmers. So, your grit and determination notwithstanding, do you believe we should discard those who didn't make it to the soft-handed indoor work? |
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After that trip to Alaska, where I studied some JS (ember, knockout), I went to Oregon, interviewed for frontend web dev jobs but failed, and just went back to working in corporate marketing. But I kept studying JS. I quit the job, went to grad school, graduated. Got a business analyst/programming job. Got laid off within a few months. Then, started building a full stack app.
While building it, I stopped, applied to Jobs. Failed to get one. Then traveled to california, camped on the coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz for about 3 weeks, going to cafes daily to applied to jobs. Still failed to get one (had interviews though).
Then realized "Why dont I just go rent a room in Mexico rather than camp in California?" drove to Mexico, rented a place for about 4 months, built most of web app. This, while about $15k in student debt from grad school. Luckily one of my parents gave me cash to pay off my credit card & student debt interest each month.
Then I moved to my home state and lived at friend's property (doing landscaping labor to pay my rent) for 4 more months. Published the web app. Got my first 100% programming job. Then a few months later got an even better one.
And then... burned out after about a year as a full stack dev at a digital marketing consulting agency, and went on sabbatical.
So, I definitely failed several times. But I knew that once I had demonstrable skills & showed them via a website and open source full stack app, that I would succeed in landing a SWE job.
compensation on psuedo-homeless adventure: $13/hr in Alaska, fish smokehouse, age 28. (previously made $20/hr in digital marketer, and afterwards $25/hr in general marketing management)
total compensation 5 years later at age 33: $180k/yr (includes 2/3rds salary, 1/3rd equity)
current total compensation: none. quit the above job after just 3 months b/c I didn't like the management culture. Down to about $4k to my name, uh oh! luckily doing some interviews now... And the winter is coming, so down here in the South, if I need to camp again, I know what it's like-- it ain't so bad :D