Teaching myself to program. Nothing caused such a hockey stick in opportuinities. I was able to make way more money in a very short time period and work in much more interesting companies.

I never took anything so seriously in my life as when I decided to become a programmer. I bought dozens of used textbooks, read and meticulously underlined them, relentlessly wrote code and read all the programming interview books, made guides for myself to study, said yes to every contract and bug I could help with regardless of the tech stack. I refused to be anal about picking one programming language over another.

I have a marketing degree from a not good school. If I could do it again I would (a) drop out and move to a major tech metro and (b) identify a high growth tech stack and study it intensively. Never should have wasted time getting a useless degree.

The best thing learning to program taught me was how to read books properly - Write in the margins, take extensive notes, phrase and rephrase the lessons, write my own articles and guides to solidify the learnings.

This year I mad $350,000 and got promoted to manage five people. I couldn’t have gotten here without learning to code.