[lunaticlabs]

This happened to me at the start of my career too. I work in video games, and started right at the end of 2d consoles (one of my first projects was a SNES game). My second job was at Sony, where I worked on the PlayStation before it’s release. The industry, all of a sudden, had a lack of programmers with skills in 3d, and so everyone was scrambling to learn it. The only people in my circle who knew 3d were ex military contractors who had worked on sims, and so there were amazing opportunities for me as a junior who had an extra year to learn the PlayStation before it was released generally, and that gave me the head start I needed to move rapidly into a senior role. When I was young, at the time, I attributed it to my good skill. Only in hindsight do I see the what amazing opportunities were brought to me by being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and have the foresight or ambition to take advantage of the opportunities as they presented themselves. It was easier to take risks then, with nothing to lose, but even now I don’t fear risk the way many people do, and that too is a blessing. It’s funny to look back and realize how lucky we are with the opportunities that show up for us, and I have since then been on a mission to give as many chances to people from diverse backgrounds and life stories as many opportunities as I had.