after seeing posts on here yall wont proll believe me but who cares
im 18, a highschool dropout who’s been working at startups since 2022
started out in crypto infra companies as a backend dev and now building in ai/crypto.
started out as an intern during 11th/12th grade at an agency then went on to work at crypto infra for ~year
then took a break to finish highschool, then working at another us based startup now
this is how my comp progressed
15$ / hr at first agency job ( did like 20-30 hrs a week since had school going on asw )
promoted to 20$ / hr after 2 months, left shortly after cuz boring work
friend from twitter referred me to this crypto infra company and i had 0 knowledge in crypto, but still started working with them as an intern
was doing 450$ a month for 3 months then we raised a small check from an angel then did 2500$/month for the rest of my time before quitting to finish school
then after school got over was finally able to start working again, again through a referral and through twitter reachouts, multiple crypto founders dmmed me, trialed at some places didnt like many, then chose a fully remote, async, lean team building an amazing product
started out at 4k$ a month during trial
then when i switched fulltime negotiated to 9k$ a month
worked for a few months then left cuz thought since i was on a gap year might as well do my own thing than work for someone
then was building my own shit in crypto for a few months, then decided college is useless for me then joined them again as a blockchain researcher at 12k$ a month
so i’ll specify some nuances
i have twitter reach and everytime i tweet something related to me being unemployed i get like 4-5 dms with offers
most of them are founders reaching out at series a-c companies
i dont like most because shitty structure
im super spoiled in the terms of remote async and full leadership end to end
im pretty dumb tbh, just did the right thing at the right time but still learning on the daily!