Nobody wanted to hire me back then either. I was a kid with no experience or education. Now I remember! I was also doing home PC repair through my parents' fri

Nobody wanted to hire me back then either. I was a kid with no experience or education. Now I remember! I was also doing home PC repair through my parents' friends for $14/hr. Put flyers in Barnes and Noble. Got hired by a friend to write some Perl scripts. Two different guys who also went to the LUG hired me to fix some Linux servers they had at their small business. I set up a website and organized marketing materials and did project management for my dad's realty business. All these little gigs I padded my resume with showed I was doing something, showed what tech I used, what I accomplished. It was a hustle for sure. But it convinced a small startup to give me a shot, and that was the gateway to a "real job". But I did start with dozens of tiny one off jobs over a couple years. For sure, nobody is going to hire you if you can't show that you can apply your skills, that other people have also given you a shot, that you are self-directed and show a willingness to work and learn. But I mean, this is Life! If you can't or won't do those things you're gonna end up a bum. Even back then I didn't imagine anyone would give me anything, I had to do the work and hustle to make it. So maybe I just assumed other people got that part of it... It's definitely work and takes time, but it's also very much something everyone can accomplish if they put a small amount of brain power and a lot of elbow grease into.