Confessions of a Serial Job Hopper
#4: Ignore traditional career advice.
The fact that I’ve spent the past 31 years working on my own terms and have managed to make a good living shocks me. It’s even more surprising that I’m still going strong as a relative “dinosaur” in the tech field. In hindsight it would have been so much easier to take the traditional route: get good grades in high school, graduate from college, and settle into a cube for the next 40 years.
But that route seemed like death to me, so I did it the hard way.
I wanted to make money, and didn’t want to wait.
The average age for a CEO is 59. Who wants to wait until you’re almost old enough to collect Social Security to run the show? Why wait? I’m supposed to put in my time, pay my dues, and wait for someone to decide I’m good enough? Fuck that shit.
I was 100% bored with school and knew what it took to make it in the world: work hard and be better than everyone else. So I bought a bunch of books, hijacked time on a Unix terminal, and away I went.
I was developer without a college degree way before it was cool. The problem was no one would hire me, so I had to get pretty damn creative.
