When was your first actual job and how much did you make?

[Xithras]

108. Lol, no.

My parents had this thing about me owning performance cars. I actually had a 1971 Camaro with a factory straight 6 under the hood. It was pretty to look at, but was mellow enough to keep my parents from freaking out.

FWIW, a big reason why so many programmers were successful from the late 80's to the late 90's were the vast numbers of software niches that were just waiting for someone to exploit. Because there was no competition and buyers were too new enough to computers to lack any real expectations, software didn't have to be particularly good...it just had to work and be fairly easy to use. A LOT of low-skill VB programmers used to make a healthy living writing barely passable software to support these market niches.

It's a whole different game today. Businesses now have expectations as to the quality of their software, virtually all of the profitable niches have established players, and modern support requirements don't fit well with the "one guy in his back room" paradigm. I knew a LOT of programmers who never grasped that change and rode the old model to the poorhouse. Very few of them still program today.