I’m Black. I’m 46 years old. I won’t discount your experience, but let me tell you mine.

I started programming in assembly in middle school in the mid 80s. I graduated from an unknown state school - an HBCU with a degree in CS in the mid 90s.

I muddled my way between two jobs until 2008 when I started taking my career seriously.

Over the last 12 years, I’ve had plenty of interviews and I am on my 6th job since 2008. I have had very few rejections. I think maybe three. I always use local recruiters so my resume has never disappeared down a black hole.

I have had the Dev lead position at $1 Billion revenue (non software) company, then a back end “cloud architect”, and now I work as a consultant at AWS. I have never once gone into a job interview with a doubt that I was qualified or that I would get the job.

I don’t hide my color on the Internet. In the appropriate threads, I always say that I am Black.