At my lowest, I was a working member of the homeless class. Having dropped out of college a few years previously, I had a low-paying job at a call center with a major bank, lived exclusively out of my car, showered at the gym, smoked, ate terribly, and was downright obese.
At my job, we had this terrible internal communications systems, which was a web-based tool that was built with FrontPage. It was terrible to look at. It was terrible to use.
I had previously fooled around with coding, and as a side project decided to see what I could do to make a better tool to improve my job performance. Using nothing but Notepad and IE, I determined to learn everything I could that would help make my site a success. I grew my knowledge of HTML and CSS, picking up JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL along the way.
My stats shot through the roof-- I had already been one of the best-performing reps, but now it wasn't anywhere close. My boss asked what I did different, and I showed her my site. She loved it, and after some wrangling (that actually took a couple of years as I moved up through the ranks of the call center) I got a chance to submit a proposal for a re-vamped site to our company's C-Level management. They loved it, and I was put in-charge of creating it, but at no pay increase from what I was already making.
I took the gig, and used the new job title and skills on my resume. I ended up jumping ship shortly thereafter to double my pay with a small software company.
Once again, I picked up every skill and line on my resume that I could. I learned a bunch of new skills and technologies, namely UI/UX Design, XML, XSLT, and Perl. I worked my way up from individual contributer to a senior developer and team lead over the course of a couple of years. Although my skills and responsibilities increased dramatically, my pay had not.
Once again, I jumped ship to another company on the strength of my career development and skills, landing a job that doubled what i was making previously. I start that job next week.
As I celebrate my last Friday off for what I hope will be a long time, I am tremendously thankful for what I have. I own a home, I've lost 70 pounds, I've gotten married, and most importantly, I've built a skill set and drive for self-improvement that will ensure that I never find myself out of a living wage ever again.
My story is a long one, and I've left out a lot here. I certainly got some good breaks along the way, but it was my ability and drive to teach myself new skills that allowed me to pull myself out of the quagmire. I hope that my story inspires someone to make a change in their life as well.
TL:DR I was a homeless and fat college drop-out working a dead-end job. I taught myself coding, pitched an idea to our CEO, and got promoted to web developer I jumped ship to different companies twice since then, and quadrupled my income. I am no longer homeless and fat.