Honestly, things are so fucked up these days from just about every facet, I'm actually starting to believe - for the first time in my life - that it's not quite so simple anymore.
My dad was a computer programmer, but was a programmer for Gulf Oil then Chevron in the 80s. The 80s were as has been said awful for Oil and Gas industry. However, he was mostly secure, as recent as that time companies didn't toss away their talent like they do today. I picked up a lot of my dads work ethic and much of that helped me get wildly successful despite never bothering to go to college (by choice - I could have gotten a huge education if I wanted to). I had always dabbled in computers as my dad had one at home since he was a programmer. I knew then that's what I wanted to do - it was my passion. My work ethic I learned, specifically two key elements got me where I am today. Those two elements: Show up on time, and treat your coworkers with respect and dignity in all circumstances.
But even though at 17 I knew how to code C and limited F77, proving this in the work place was more difficult. My first job out of high school was data entry, where I worked for Manpower for a year and always performing well (They hired a lot of data entry people who were really slow). Eventually I was so reliable at data entry and actually showed up every day on time (they told me this was a constant problem - I remember this vividly as I recall looking back at what my dad ingrained in my head) at this one place that was a bulk mail house, I ended up getting hired full time by them to do data entry (into a PICK database system - talk about garbage!). I saw that a lot of our data coming in from customers was really substandard and started to write my own code in Clipper and such (most data was in foxpro and dBase III mailing databases (ew) back then) and started speeding up and automating tasks such as formatting addresses uniformly (e.g. 123 main St. sometown,tx 77000 would automatically change to 123 Main St Sometown TX 77000), and other such things. It seemed like common sense to me, but early in your career/working life you always want to push hard, at least it seemed that way to me.
Because I also knew how to take computers apart (I can't tell you how many times I took apart my old sperry 8088 computer back in the day), I also became the "go to" person for PC repair which eventually lead me to my next job which was IT specialist/L3 helpdesk. Mind you, this was in the mid-late 90s when IT specialists and help desk support was a really nice and respected job and wasn't run by a bunch of indians who get $2 an hour to remotely fix issues following a generic script. After that, I moved into hardware QA, testing hardware at Dell, then software QA at Dell then Symantec, doing more and more programming along the way, picking up things like python, etc. By the time I decided to leave Symantec in order to run my own business which I still do today, I realized that technology moves so fast today that someone like me simply cannot keep up anymore. It takes a different brain/life experience in order to consistently keep up with the times, and to be accepting of "required" technologies today (For example, to me twitter, facebook, snapchat, instagram, tumblr, and all that other shit is nothing more than a total waste of time/life, but apparently a lot of people find positive facets of it).
The requirements today - of constantly keeping on the trends of tech, keeping up with whats going on, even from a coding perspective (I remember when our company all used SVN for YEARS and then one day without warning everyone got a crash course on git and everything got switched over in 2 days). The expectations that you continue to apply your job skills to your personal life (again as a coder during the day in your real job, most also code at night their own projects), and the importance of politics of all things in order to "play a political game" being paramount to your success in a career has me wonder if I could/would want to do all this shit from 17 years old again.
I still believe that people can put themselves in a good situation in their lives as long as they make common sense choices from an early age which in most cases requires a strong family unit. If I was not ingrained into etiquette and strong work ethics from my dad who knows how it would have turned out. But don't go to college unless you need to (I don't care what other people say if you're spending $50,000+ for a "worthless" degree YOU'RE STUPID - you live in a time where you have more information and knowledge at your fingertips than any other time in human history - fucking use it.) - and if you need to make sure you get a degree that will be in some level of demand. If you're a woman (sorry ladies) close your legs or get on the pill because a child, while a wonderful thing to have, will make things more difficult when you're starting your careers. Don't do stupid shit like criminal behavior that will be on your record. Don't do drugs, including weed, and don't let a negative thing set you back to worthlessness. Be strong. Don't be ashamed to be a plumber/electrician/tradesman either. They are noble jobs just like a doctor, and require a lot of work and pay very well. Society is making a big mistake looking down on them.
