It blows my mind. I’ve skipped so many steps in life.

I’m only one month shy of 22. Out of everything, the one thing that sucks the most about being a 22 year old software engineer is being 22. Many of my colleague are around twice my age or at least in their 30s. Anyone below 25 in my field is rare professionally speaking. Many of the people I work with have kids, houses, cars, etc. I’m just a kid really. It’s so much harder when I can’t rent a car and get carded everywhere I go. Can’t get a loan because I just haven’t been around long enough to build up any credit.

I’ve been in the job market programing since I was 14 years old even while going to high school at the same time (working summers and with work study programs for half my school days). That gives me 7 1/2 years of work experience and about 10 years general programming experience (was writing BASIC applications in Quick-Basic when I was 12) which is pretty much makes me a senior level developer in many companies. I’m not in to for the money so much as I like programing in general. That is to say the money isn’t to bad.

I’m always been a little overwhelmed with everything and because of that I’ve had to grow up extremely fast but always gotten by pretty well. I’ve have never once worked in any type of job that wasn’t tech related. Never once worked at a fast food place or bagging groceries or anything like that like almost everyone of my friends my age where doing. I didn’t even start driving (legally :-) ) until I was 20. Never needed to drive anywhere. I always managed without it. I even got by with my out of state expired drivers permit instead of real driver’s license. Never had to ware a tie more then past the interview most places ethier. Just never had to do it and I’ve worked at some pretty big places.

Working on and learning new engineering practices and methodologies and how they fit into software development, figuring out the complexities of how SOX compliance plays into IT these days, constantly figuring out how things work and why they are designed the way they are, and learning how to be mature and professional on a job site. That’s my teenage years in a nut shell. A young nerd trying to make it as software engineer.

However, more recently, I took some risks and now it looks like I might have made some bad choices. Funds are running dry waiting on paychecks. So long to the end of those contracts and getting paid. Way after I really need it. These long waiting periods that wouldn’t bother most of those 25 to 40 year old colleague of mine. Waiting for checks to clear, shiping and handling, mail delays, and holidays making things move slower and slower. I don’t have the luxury of credit cards and loans here so I have few options. Makes me feel like a kid. When I’m broke, I’m totally broke. Really I’m a victim of horrible timing and not enough planning for this scenario I guess so I’m having a really tough period personally. I’m trying to pull a few rabbits out of my hat to get by this month and hoping I get lucky and I hoping I get through this bad patch. This is one of the worst though. I’m hopping it will all work out ok.

I wish signing bonuses where more common place in software engineering jobs or there were venture capitalists that invested in individuals. :-) Oh well. Live and learn. Life experiences are fun :-)