Some really are. I know several who I wouldn't classify as all that skilled, but they hit the right check boxes, and they're making $160k-$350k a year a year or

Some really are. I know several who I wouldn't classify as all that skilled, but they hit the right check boxes, and they're making $160k-$350k a year a year or two out of college or even high school. The way this works is that each check box you can hit, no matter how arbitrarily increases your market value x amount. - Have a UX portfolio? $40k - Is it good and you know javascript? +$20k - Have a couple of javascript frameworks under your belt? +$50k - Show that you're language agnostic on the backend? +20k - Have you made any videogames? +$30k - Did a machine learning project once and know how to talk about the subject intelligently? +$50k. etc. The thing is that not every job will pay for every checkbox, but if you find one that does you maximize your value. It's one of those matrix things.