I've noticed people in this industry who took the typical high school -> college -> professional job route with no time in their life spent struggling at all or

I've noticed people in this industry who took the typical high school -> college -> professional job route with no time in their life spent struggling at all or doing manual labor have some kind of weird romantic notion about it. Working manual labor sucks. It destroys your body, forces you to work terrible hours and often in brutal conditions, and pays awful. I spent years of my life being homeless and working menial labor jobs for years before getting into software development. You guys have absolutely no clue how insanely privileged we are. I think about it every single day.