My first summer job was doing manual labor in a _tiny_ CNC / small scale manufacturing shop in some guy's garage. It was hard work but I learned a lot and ended

My first summer job was doing manual labor in a _tiny_ CNC / small scale manufacturing shop in some guy's garage. It was hard work but I learned a lot and ended up contributing beyond what was expected (e.g. adjusting g-code to account for the age of the machines we were using). My boss was extremely happy with my work and wrote a glowing recommendation. That recommendation resonated with the next small business owner I applied to and he gave me (a freshman Math major with one programming class) a chance at a web development internship (which led to the series of progressively better jobs I've had in the last decade -- now Senior Dev at a Fintech startup). Not sure I'd recommend the exact path, but I think core lesson is: convince someone to give you a chance (no matter how small) and then make them very happy that they did. Another lesson is that recommendations can be very powerful, yet they are severely underutilized from what I've observed. Just take a chance and ask, most people don't mind and the few rejections are never too painful.