How do you find work?
palish: I found my first job by going to my highschool job fair and begging a guy from Boeing to let me work as a programmer.  He told me I was too young (just turned 17 at the time) but since I was "highly motivated" he would call some friends on my behalf.  He referred me to a local business that develops frimware.  After I explained that I had been developing game development skills for years using C++, they said I'd probably be a better fit at Ageia (a St Louis company that developed physics middleware called PhysX, and was recently acquired by nVidia).I thought, "How am I going to get the attention of the executives?  I'm 17, there's no way I can just submit a resume and get hired."  So I scoured the internet for any Ageia phone numbers I could find.  I called one of them, and a guy who spoke Chinese picked up.  "Um... hello?" and he hung up.  But I noticed a pattern in all of the numbers I found.  They all started with the same 5 digits (for example, 555-1212, 555-1286, etc).  So I changed the last two digits to 01 and tried, and nobody picked up.  Then I tried 02 and got one of the top execs on the phone.  I convinced him to let me show him some of my gamedev demos the following day.  After that, he told me that he was impressed, but to prove my skills, I had two weeks to create a demo using PhysX.  Two weeks later, I had created three simple but effective demos.He seemed pretty impressed at that point, and even told me "you definitely have a job here".  Then I didn't.  He couldn't get special permission to hire a 17-year old, because I couldn't sign the NDA.  But he asked John Ratcliff (who worked at Ageia at the time) if he knew of any local companies I'd be a good fit at.  He did, and it turned out that there was a gamedev studio about 30 minutes away from where I lived.  I was really excited, and they invited me to take their programmer test.The guy who handed me the test said "I hope you know your C++"... he wasn't exactly confident in me, apparently.  (I don't blame him, most candidates suck.)  But I took the test and got a decent score.  Up next was the interview phase, where around 8 programmers came in and sat at a large table in the conference room.  I presented my demos to them (including my three previous Ageia demos).I dropped out of high school and worked there as an unpaid intern for about 8 months, at which point I was hired and worked there for three years.  Also, the time between the job fair and my first day on the job was several months, so the whole process took a lot of effort.So my advice is, demos are key; talk to the decision-makers, not the middlemen; and demonstrate your skill in every other possible way (but mostly shut up and let other people talk, because you don't know 1/10th of what you think you know).Also, be genuinely interested in other people.  Almost everyone likes the idea of being a mentor.