Where do I go from here?
lsc: "Credentialism, like it or not, is still a huge factor when you have no work experience."Uh, yeah.  that's what your parents always say.    I can't tell you how many people told me I'd be working at gas stations if I didn't get good grades and go to college.   By 20, my wages were competitive with my parents.If you don't have education, you need experience.  Get a job as a windows monkey/cable bitch at an office or an ISP.   Work for people who are better than you are.   Yeah, you have a few years of getting ridiculously underpaid ahead of you.   I remember getting paid $7/hr to fix computers, when customers were billed for my time at $80/hr.move up to a better job every year or two.  Linux pays better than windows, so as soon as you can make that jump, do so.That said, you are going to be working shit jobs until the recession is over.  just remember it is the experience you are after, not the money.   But as soon as the economy picks up, if you have been doing the job for peanuts, you will be able to get paid real money.But the important thing is to have jobs that count.  small companies are good, because the owner cares about money, and if you get hired on as a level 1 windows monkey, if you can, it's usually pretty easy to get them to let you take on more responsibility, work on the linux servers, etc..I started doing that at 15.  By the time I was 20, I was living in the bay area making around $60K.  Now, that was '00.  The crash wasn't too long after that so I had a few years of flat salary, but then things picked up again;  that seems to be the way it works.  learn things during the downturns, cash in when times are good.Now, I've chosen the path of bootstraping my company, because I prefer to sell to customers than to investors, which is a little different, but really,  knowing how to do something useful is a huge help in starting your company.  First, working lets you see problems people have, and second, if you know things, you can rent yourself out for venture capital.  I suck at business.  I spent four years bleeding into my current venture before I saw black ink.    (But... that was my Porsche.)   But the thing is, with what I can bill out as a contractor, I've got (what seems to me like) a massive wad of venture capital, replenished monthly.  That means I can pay for a lot of mistakes, and I'm finally at a point where it looks like I have the upper hand.   (see, this downturn I'm prepared.  During good times, nobody cares about money.  During downturns, money matters.  You should probably try to apply this to selling your labor.  Offer to be underpaid for a job you are not quite qualified for.)I don't want to discourage you from going to school, but it's not the only path.  Credentialism is dead.