27. After High School, I screwed up about as bad as I could. I already wasn't doing particularly well in school, then I went to Seattle to attend a community college, with hopes of transferring to a more ideal school afterward.
But, as always, I wasn't at all comfortable with school. I hated learning at someone else's pace, by someone else's rubric. I hated never building on yesterday's learning, using what I'd discovered moving forward, but instead having just as much reason to throw it away as I did the remnants of that day's meal.
So, I failed hard, and my parents stopped giving me cash to survive. I ended up moving back home, and struggled with finding a job in the ruinous California Central Valley economy, which before the recession was already alarmingly high, and as we trended into it, would turn into a complete disaster, regularly fluctuating between 15-18% officially, with the unofficial at times being as high as 25%.
Years later, at 24, I'd get an opportunity through a friend I'd met online playing a game together. As she was off at college, her family would let me stay with them in Claremore, OK, where finding work would be much easier, and I could at least begin to build a life. Within two weeks of being there I had work(which took months to get in Fresno and would often see the company shut down weeks later) delivering auto parts.
Without the influence of my family there to discourage me("You need a degree to do that!"), I returned to programming in my evenings, where one day I would ask just the right person online a question about the Django web framework. They presented the idea of me becoming a junior developer, and from there I was granted the opportunity.
I was paid horribly, but it really was an opportunity. I had no degree, no open source, no experience, nothing. But over 11 months I built a resume to be proud of, and was able to successfully turn that into a high paying job at UnitedHealth Group.
However, neither at UHG or the following startup I worked for, Doximity, did I really find a culture I felt I could grow in. I need to focus on my work, try new things, feel like I have the freedom to make more user-facing decisions. I put time into personal projects, further developing the Ruby skills I'd begun at UHG, as well as becoming a competent Javascript developer, and figured out a whole host of automation problems through a variety of Docker, VirtualBox, and Vagrant.
Eventually, one of those would get me my current position at A10 Networks, and it's easily the best job I've ever had. The culture is amazing, the quality of work is superb, the people are kind yet passionate- it feels like a dream job.
If there's anything I'd want to say to anyone in a low point right now, it'd be "Stop listening to anyone who tells you that you can't do it." You can. Maybe you'll have to change tools or tactics, maybe it's a question of time. But never let yourself rest if you're not enjoying what you're going through, and never tell yourself that the horrible circumstance you're in now is what you must endure for years to come.
It isn't. You've just got to figure out the way forward.