Some of my fondest memories were learning programming and then infrastructure engineering in bits and pieces while so many “veterans” at the time pissed and moa

Some of my fondest memories were learning programming and then infrastructure engineering in bits and pieces while so many “veterans” at the time pissed and moaned about how the One True Way to learn was reading O’Reilly books. A decade into my career, I’m pretty sure I out-earn nearly all of them despite them having a solid decade on me. Of course, income is a fallible indicator, and to the extent that it’s accurate, I don’t think the difference is “reading books vs Googling” but rather (if I had to guess) some handicap that correlates with bitching about how other people learn on the Internet.