I’ll go first…after 10 years of speculating in the market (read: gambling in high risk assets) I realized I shouldn’t ever touch a brokerage account in my lifetime. A monkey would have made better choices than I did. Greed has altered the course of life many times over. I am at an age where I may recover from my actions over the decades, but it has taken its toll. I am frugal and have a good head on me, but having such impulsivity in financial instruments was not how I envisioned my adulthood. Its a bitter pill to swallow, since money is livelihood of my family, but I need to “invest” all I have into relationships, meaningful moments, and fulfilling hobbies.

  • Merritt@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Open source projects and/or contributions can be a good way in.

    • Work that is publicly visible to anyone, proving what you can do
    • Building a network with the people you interact with
    • Learning from open source code & the people who are parts of projects

    I didn’t know anything about coding when I decided to fix a small bug in my KDE system that was bugging me… I poked around, asked some questions, figured it out bit by bit… which led to contributing to KDE more, and now I am a paid KDE developer. I now literally get paid to do something I am passionate about, working on a project that I feel makes a very real impact on the world.

    I highly recommend open source to help break into the field. Anyone willing to learn and put some effort in can do it, no previous experience needed. :)