This story has to begin with the people that came before me. My parents. Both of my parents were born in the tiny country of El Salvador in the early 1960’s during a time of relative societal calm. At least, in the parts of the country where they lived it was calm. Isolated from the major cities and mainly confined to family owned farms, they avoided encountering the political conflicts of the time.

They weren’t rich, but they also weren’t poor. Much like the majority of people in the United States, they were doing just okay and getting by.

Much…

Everyone at some point will become dissatisfied with their current jobs and careers, no matter how amazing those jobs were initially. The novelty of landing the job of your dreams begins to trickle away as soon as you sign on the dotted line. The only real question is, how long before that moment?

I’ve had plenty of what I would deem dream jobs during the course of my career. I’ve worked for small tech firms with 5 employees and a company dog with beer on tap. I’ve worked with mid-sized companies with 50 employees and daily paid for lunches. …

The typical answer to the question of “how do I become better at ‘x’?” is more often than not a blank statement that sounds good, but that doesn’t really give you any direct instructions.

For example, you want to become a senior programmer? Well then, buckle down and show up daily and do the hard work and you will get there one day.

None of that is wrong. You should do all those things and more. But more than likely you were already doing those things to some degree. …

If there is one industry currently in our society that is continuing to grow regardless of circumstance, it is the tech industry. Pretty much everyone these days owns at a minimum one computing device, a smartphone. And that device is connected to the internet serving out billions of web requests every single day.

At the source of that request being served there is almost always a web developer, a designer, a database admin or even a data scientist. …

The first job in any field is undoubtedly the most difficult one that you are going to get. There’s that weird paradox that most companies live by in which you need some level of experience in order to get the job, but you need the job first in order to get that experience. So it’s a tricky situation.

My first programming job happened over a decade ago, but I still remember that it wasn’t at all an easy task getting hired, even with a college degree. …

A common theme in self-help books and business courses is the “magic of saying no” to anything that isn’t of interest to you. Your time is important and if someone enters your field with a prospect that isn’t perfect, then they will take away from your limited pool of energy and cause you your inevitable success.

That’s the theory anyway. Aside from lacking a level of humility, this might only really apply if you are already at the higher levels of success. Yes, if you are running a 7-figure self-help coaching system on YouTube, you probably should say ‘no’ to…

There’s a good chance that if you were to start a company right now, that your business partners would be your closest and most trustworthy friends. And there’s also a good chance that your business might not might make it for the long haul and that it might leave behind some residual damage. I’ll say now, friends are great, and startups fail often times, it’s just a part of the process. The first startup that I co-founded was essentially me and my close friends, and we ran that startup for 3 years without losing a single member of the team.

…

I only recently discovered that what I had assumed to be normal every day forgetfulness, boredom and constant pen twirling is more than likely some level of ADHD. Not more than likely. It is ADHD. After much research, many online tests and talking to other’s who are officially diagnosed, I realized that I pretty much ticked ‘yes’ on the entire list of symptoms.

I never really bothered to even question that my way of thinking might not be the societal norm. Was school at a young age painful? You bet it was. I wanted to be anywhere but in that…