The big lesson is that even with a degree, there's a >=50% chance you will be forced into a hostile labor market in your 50s. High schools and universities are

The big lesson is that even with a degree, there's a >=50% chance you will be forced into a hostile labor market in your 50s. High schools and universities are all starry-eyed about the career prospects of a degree, but degrees and skills have a best before date in the labor market. Continuing in full-time employment is a coin flip past 50. Here in Canada the ProPublica data will be fuel for wrongful dismissal lawsuits - maybe even resulting in awards of half pay to retirement age. In IT, you really need to plan for a career that might terminate at 35. You win the lottery when your equity in a startup is enough to retire on. As a geek the tendency is to keep your head down developing code - and geeks tend to be low on networking skills. So you really do need to limit your coding hours and put x hours / week into networking and side projects.