Measure to hike California's minimum wage to $15 qualifies for November ballot.

I came to live in USA in 1996 with my family when I was 11 years old and we had nothing. We were looking for a better opportunity. My dad had a business administration degree from South America which nobody in the USA recognized so both my parents had to take low wage jobs. This went on for about 3 years and we lived almost in poverty.

My parents were obviously not satisfied with our economic situation so they applied for jobs that paid more, eventually landing in a medical company as manufacturing operators. 15 years later my mom is retired and my dad is a technician in the company, working under the engineers. Do you think they got there by getting handouts or pitty? No, they didn't.

When I joined public middle school and high school in California the first thing that really shocked me was how many kids did not really care about studying and spend most of their days hanging out with friends. I mean Americans really take all the resources they have to help them succeed in life for granted. Compared to most 3rd world contries (if not all), people in USA have so many opportunities from an early age. Out of all my friends, a group of about 10 people, I was the only one to go to college right after high school and most took minimum wage jobs and kept just hanging out with each other.

Then I moved to college and started a major in computer engineering. Within the first year, half the people in my major had dropped out or moved to other majors like business. This reinforced by belief that most people are just lazy. I always heard excuses like "math is not my thing" or "programming is hard". Math was hard for me and I almost failed my first programming class, but I kept going and I kept struggling.

Then I graduated in 2009 and the recession hit. I could not find a job that would pay me the wage I thought I was going to make when I graduated. So I took an internship job that paid 15/hr while I found something better. This company wanted me to work full time with no benefits because I was an intern. After 8 months of full time work and no full time offer I told them that since I was an intern, I would only come in 3 days a weeks because I needed to go look for a real job. They gave me the option of working 5 days a week or quitting my job. I quit my job and spent my time applying for all kinds of jobs in my field. One month later I found a job making 67K/year. I would not have found this job if I had not taken the chance to quit and look for something better.

After working 3 years in the 67k/year company, my salary had been increased to 87K/year but I was done learning anything and was bored. It was a big company and most people were going to retire there since they only care about money, but not me. So what did I do? I looked for another job. This meant leaving my comfort zone. This meant losing my 5 minute commute to work. I eventually found a job that I liked and that I knew at the time would teach me more and keep me more engaged. The commute was 1.5 hours but the new job let me work from home 2 days a week and paid 105k/year. I took it.

I been in this job for 2.5 years now and I am making around 115k/year now. I can now work from home 3 days a week and have more than enough time to spend with my family and pets (love my pets to death, 2 cats and 2 dogs).

One of my favorite quotes:

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

/r/news Thread Parent Link - reuters.com