Minimum wage in 1982 was not $4/hr. It was around $3.25/hr. You were making above minimum wage. I graduated high school in 1987. I finished working at a local radio station at $3.35/hr and no it wasn't the luxury of getting paid to advance my knowledge of programming languages. It was soliciting the general public to determine how the radio station would best serve it's listening audience by pretending to be an impartial service unaffiliated to the station I was working for, all to boost their market share. In short, we were lying and violating FCC rules while getting paid shit to do it.
After doing a Mechanical Engineering B.S. at WSU and later a CS bachelor's my first job was a 9 week contract at NeXT Software Inc for $19/hr. The year is 1996, I'm way overly educated and in the bay area it's a shit wage. God has not a fucking thing to do with being on Earth and Greed has everything to do with cluster bombing the economy into a global shit storm. You got way overpaid in 1998 at $140k plus stock options. I know a ton of folks like you that continue to get way overpaid creating nothing and getting paid a shitload for it. One clue, you're reading resumes. Top Engineers aren't reading resumes, they are in R&D creating projects to help drive a company forward to pay for managers making $140k/year plus benefits to micromanage their staff, none of which wanted the job so you as a fellow engineer stepped up to take it.
Reality: 99% of IT is a me too world which follows and never leads, and is filled with overly paid data entry personnel who with engineering, physics and other hard science degrees slowly move into positions that they do for 20 years and then if they are lucky retire and never look back. Apple, and a handful of other companies drive the entire industry vision which kickstarts the entire Semiconductor industry to create products that these visionaries foresee the world will eventually need. Whether it is CAD, CGI, Applied Engineering, Gaming, you name it, the ones with the imagination challenge those with the scientific pragmatism what is or is not possible to make the impossible. Without them, the Semiconductor industry is stagnant and full of 30 year veterans bored to death but afraid to retire due to the loss of salary and too much free time. They can problem solve like nobody's business, but they sure as hell can't seem to figure out what problems to solve without those creative thinkers. The industry constantly turns to the youth knowing they have no experience and thus too stupid to realize all their bright ideas will be flushed but with a few exceptions, and those most often by pure chance end of succeeding with you most likely never enjoying the spoils of said idea(s).
It's the reason Bushnell talks about some of the greatest ideas come from people who look at the IT Industry and this massive system of me toos cloning and doing repetitive work like drones as wrong, and who carve their own paths to break the monotony by doing the next big idea(s).
Whether it happens to be a Ph.D. or a dude newly released from prison, great ideas come around rarely and when they do don't be afraid to grab onto them and nuture them with the mind that espoused the idea(s) first. If you don't, you'll most likely fuck it up and it'll never become the next insanely great product and/or service(s).
My 22 year since deceased Grandfather and former Vice President of West Coast Credit for Intermediate Credit Federal Bank for the USDA told me when I was young,
``Man will always place a high value of his self worth to society no matter the job, experience or skills. None of this I have ever understood as his worth never matches his self appraisal.''
I think he was conservative in that observation, and far too kind.
