I had two first developer jobs. I was always interested in computers. Played on Windows 3.1. In high school, I liked Photoshop. My first year at university, a friend outside school said I should take a programming class. After I did, he hired me at his start up (around 2001). A php site that was a b2b and c2b business directory to start. I made approximately minimum wage, but cut my teeth on running a web server. After the company folded, I kept up some small projects and did a few small gigs while I did a slew of other "real" jobs: insurance agent, financial services advisor, construction, and high school math teacher. After losing the teaching position, I had a minor resume of small (mostly web) projects I had done over time. I put that out and a recruiter picked me up. Sent me to a few places. Did ok on a couple interviewers, bombed a couple. Thought I did poorly at the last one, but I continued their interview track and got hired at nearly 2x my teacher pay. I've continued doing well there and it has worked out great. I'm now a principal developer and have lived going to work every day for the last 8 or so years. So, yeah, two first jobs: minimum wage code monkey followed years later by being hired as a real software developer due to hobby and a couple paid side projects.
I had an office job that involved a lot of spreadsheets and some Access databases, and I taught myself how to script a good chunk of my day-to-day responsibilities. I used the resulting spare time to learn more, automated additional tasks, and eventually found myself spending the majority of the day writing and maintaining code. When it was time to look for a new job, I was able to get a position as a software engineer based on the skills I had acquired and the programming projects I had completed and deployed.
Started a company doing development. Did that for 3 years until someone wanted to pay me more to do the same stuff.
same here, but for almost 2 years. Kept the registered company though, to be able to do freelance in spare time.