| I was deemed "smart" in high school (I was regularly teased and mockingly called "Professor"), but lazy enough about things like homework that I stayed on the "B" honor roll all of the way through. I went on to do very similar in college, getting a "B" average and graduating with a "useless" BA in English. I had always enjoyed playing with computers and, in a desperate attempt to find a "real job" after I graduated, I took a job as a tech writer for $32K a year. I hated it. Thinking it was the job, I switched to another tech writing job, which I hated more than the first. Turns out, I hated the profession. At that point, I decided that what I saw the software developers doing around me was really what I wanted to do, so I spent the next couple of years working my ass off to become qualified to get hired as a software dev. I took writing gigs that were largely web-related and started building stuff in my evenings and weekends to have something to show people when applying for jobs. A year later, I was working as a web developer at a consulting company, building database-driven web apps for 3M and Wells Fargo. A year later, I quit full-time employment and became an independent software developer. I have done so for 9 years. For the last 2 years running, I made $170K (in Minneapolis, MN, equiv to $235K in San Francisco). I'm working on a product/platform to branch out from consulting revenue. Am I retiring because I built a startup that went from 0 to $50 million in a year? No. However, I do have a comfortable life, love what I do and not a single soul has asked me about my college or high school transcript in 15 years. What they HAVE asked me about is what I've built, what I've accomplished, etc. That's all stuff entirely within my control. I work hard to build stuff and, in doing so, get opportunities to build more interesting stuff. |