For me it was easy. I got my degrees in philosophy and psychology. They're much more useful in job interviews that boring old technical information. My technical knowledge came from years of DIY projects, some open source when that became cool, using skills as lame as writing excel and access projects at jobs, taking dozens of classes on my own time for a CS degree that never materialized, etc.

Seriously, the amount of technical information you have, starting out, is pretty moot. There's not a huge difference you can tell from looking at your academic list of knowledge other than a basic skillset. Most grads are the same, unless you just finished your PhD from MIT and hold 12 patents.

Psychological jokes aside, I just focus on pacing, leading, and manipulating the interviewer to wanting to hire me. How long I've been working with what tool or language is irrelevent if I can convince them I can learn anything in two weeks. I don't need to be able to write the greatest data structure in the world if I can convince them of the business reason why you would or wouldn't want one and what the affect is on the bottom line.

Of course, good or bad, none of it matter if you can't even get a technical interview with a human in the first place. I don't know if it was mentioned by others, but I went through contracting companies originally. They do all the work of getting the interview, and I just need to get the suit, tie, 37 pieces of flair, and a winning smile.

After that point, most everything is word of mouth and "social networking" whatever the hell that is. IT seems to luckily constantly churn, so I just keep in touch with those who can give me a job (or recommend me to a boss) and return the favor.

I haven't had to apply or interview for a gig in years that I didn't already have the job going in.

The problem is the mentality of wanting the government to "solve" the problems in the first place. Government can't and hasn't solved a single thing in history. They just promise you that, or try and take credit for it, so you will buy the hype that they are the solution and you should continue sending them your power.

Yeah, the Costa Rican's are really screwed, they'll have the healthiest, most attractive people on the planet with great bodies and almost no diabetes to speak of.

They should just open nude beaches and a health food paradise to make up for the "lost" expense of poisoning their own people.

This can't be right. The CHICOMs can't be trusted? I thought socialist big-government types like Hillary thought there was no possible abuse by powerful governments, that they just served the citizens and picked flowers?

Oh, right, this is a troll post. Please mod me down as appropriate.

I just always use the laser printers at work. Brings my costs down to zero.

I guess the blue screen of death will really have more context now.

"Johhny! Don't go into the blue light!! Stay with me Johnny!...NOOO!..It's the POST loading...[sob]...Oh well, he'll be on his feet in a few minutes."

I just tried that and darn it, I got an error:

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near 'TO'.

I'll never be rich.

There's no glory in IT, any more than there's glory in janitorial services.

Working on a good team, having fun, and actually delivering a product feels pretty good, and occassionally is an ego boost when things actually go well, but I don't see any "glory" in doing that.

Does anyone do anything for glory? What the hell is that anyway? At best it's a goal of narcissistic "ego inflation" or something. Those jack-nuts usually try to boss the group into becoming a VP or something.

I'd much rather work for money. You can have the glory, I'll have the cash. Slap your name and reputation all over it all you want. I don't think there are as many "IT Superstars" as there used to be because people started realizing how many false-positives you get from "glorious" self-promoting morons.

Does he work for Citibank?

As an overpaid defense contractor I can assure you that incompetence pays well and all sides are happy at the end.

Or was it I overpaid for a score of "Happy Endings" to seal the deal? I forget, it's probably illegal or something. As long as it's in the contract.