I’m glad I had a real progression unlike most people who do a CS degree and then get a high paying job. I did manual min wage labor as a teen, then min wage IT

I’m glad I had a real progression unlike most people who do a CS degree and then get a high paying job. I did manual min wage labor as a teen, then min wage IT work, then barely above that “programming” work in my small city, then finally my first real programming job and now I’m in the mid-echelons of software in a big tech city. Life is good! I still think work philosophically sucks for me (FIRE one day..) but I wouldn’t trade this job for any of the earlier ones - doubly so now that I get paid 20-30x more.