That high school drop out story hits close to home. My advice is to get a low level job at a smaller company that has a department which does interesting or hi

That high school drop out story hits close to home. My advice is to get a low level job at a smaller company that has a department which does interesting or highly technical work. Start talking to their IT/Technical/Whatever staff and let them know you work on x/y/z in your free time. In my case I did a good deal of free work after hours (100+ hour weeks) before actually moving to a full time programming position (50 hour weeks), but it was worth it considering it completely turned my career prospects around. Being on the other side of things now, most companies are starving for good people.