>who /probably/ would have been better trying to follow a calling of their own... If you don't know your calling, finding it can be an expensive process. You c

>who /probably/ would have been better trying to follow a calling of their own... If you don't know your calling, finding it can be an expensive process. You can spend years and years and years trying it and frankly, there's bills to pay, even if trying new callings costs $0. Housing and healthcare in the US is outpacing the lowest paying jobs. So yes, people hack their way into tech because then you can use the savings to do something else. In fact, I tried two callings and they both turned out to be expensive mistakes until I found out I happened to be useful to someone at programming. I still treat it as a career that I'm going to maximize my pay with. No one's sold me on having crazy passions in this industry because things change so rapidly. The required learning rate is also vastly oversold. Even front end development is settling into component frameworks. Plus, if one guy with a neckbeard comes along and tells you "this ain't your calling, kid", should you really believe him? Maybe he's right, but maybe the next 10 people you meet could have the opposite opinion. In my experience, few people are actually brazen enough to tell a co-worker something like this, so you're not likely to get a good sample size anyway.