Author here. I just started blogging this year. Been really interesting to see a post get some traction and read everyone's responses. Thank you all for reading.

I left out a detail that might be relevant? Maybe not? I couldn't decide. SWE is actually a second career for me. I flunked out of college when I was 19, spent most of my 20s working as a chef, and then graduated college and started this job at 29. So I'm 31 now. So it's been funny to read things like "Congrats to this kid" haha.

If the post was about _how_ I got promoted that fast, I'm pretty sure this ^ would be the #1 reason. I'd already been programming for like 10 years when I started this job. People paid me (almost nothing) to write software that they still use today (much to my chagrin - it wasn't very good). So I felt like I had a "head start" compared to most of my intern cohort (though, to be clear, I still to this day feel very behind, in general).