I strongly feel a lot of success is who you know, not what you know. I think this is vitally important when starting out. Hopefully later, you'll have a natural

I strongly feel a lot of success is who you know, not what you know. I think this is vitally important when starting out. Hopefully later, you'll have a natural network to fall back on. If you've been blessed to know to look to CS and had the skills to do well, and the knowledge to take that to a FAANG early in life (or similar), good on you. For everyone else, networking (including having a mentor) could ratchet up your professional/financial life. It took me _years_ (about a decade) to get to the point that some kids get right out of (or before) university. I lacked any mentor to draw experience from and I lacked a network to draw upon. I was left with the broken model of seeing the chonic failures of those around me and seeing what not to do.