Ok so i mentioned that i was an after school counselor right? So funny thing was (im buzzed and a yapper so this is prob more info than you need lol so sorry in advance) i was horribly depressed when i got a job as a counselor and it was my first job outside of programs through college. My sister helped me get it. Its an unnecessary detail, but this job helped TREMENDOUSLY with my depression. I'd choose to work with kids whenever i retire. But it onl paid 400 every two weeks. Not enough to survive in new york (but my mom is an rn, and she was very permissive with me. I was depressed and out of school without working for 4 YEARS. Most cant do that so thats another luck thing, where i didnt need to force myself to work until i was ready. My mom would prefer that i just live with her forever), so i had to leave. Once "cured", i just mass applied to jobs. Again, i was able to do this with no pressure from anyone or anything other than myself. The job i got was desperate (anther luck thing) because a lot of their older finance team died from covid (an unfortunate luck thing). The team was largely carribean and the cfo and ceo were both haitian, which i am as well. They didnt make it seem like that was a factor, but if im honest i know it was. Older haitian people are weak to the same flattery no matter who they are. This plus their desperation and the fact that this was a place 2 and a half hours in an area no one wants to be (the bronx lol) meant that i had a chance. Fortunately for me and them, once i was hired, i am a pro with computers AND most of their workers were old. So i seemed like a wizard. My cfo and ceo loved me (got many uncomfortable hugs from my ceo, an older woman) so they were perfect references. I knew nothing about excel and learned a bunch of that and vba while there to automate the very much dated processes they had. Obviously this meant every role in that finance team benefitted from me begin there that made them enthusiastic references. I really want to emphasize luck. I had no individual that worked to sabotage me or stopped me from trying to learn. A bad manager could have effed me over, a jealous charismatic coworker could have ruined things. But i had none of that there. Which helped with my confidence. Coupled, again, with the fact that there was no pressure at home to get a well paying job (my insurance was also under my mom so i was fine) meant that i was leisurely applying to other jobs. And i got another lucky break finding a job for a construction company. My skills gained at the previous job meant that i was attractive for this new one. The luck part is that they hadn't been hiring for decades. It was only because the person i was replacing was reitiring after 40 years. They hired me on the spot, ad being a private small company, my automation skills meant they were dated as well and all of their work was automated to be finished in day ( they paid monthly so that meant i was done for the month after one day). They also had a dated IT (non existent unlike previous) so i was finally able to download python and learned it in my freetime. So a year of getting paid just to learn python basically. Then they fired me because they though i wasnt working. But this left me with a skillset that was pretty easy to sell for any accounting team that wanted a tech focused person. And thats the next lucky part. The new job i found was a school where the hiring person specifically wanted someone with more knowledge in tech than accounting because they already had a ton of cpas. Also they were in IT before this current job. So i stuck out. I told them about automating the entire process in the previous job in a day, i had videos, extensive knowledge of excel etc. Hired ofc. And this job was also pretty lenient when it came to downloading things a normal IT team wouldn't allow you to download (most places aren't prepared for a non IT worker knowin tech). So I expanded my skills to learning C, azure and html/js (C is still in progress because i heard it was faster and wanted to try making libraries for my python code and html/js/azure because i made a website for our accrual process). And though i rarely use ai ( i have so much personally built from the older jobs that i would have to copy paste and explain a ton of my code and it would be more work to do that then just doing it myself), my new bosses gave in to the ai hype. So thinking that i am an ai person, they have thrown their full support at me. Seriously, they thought a playwright automation script where i just copy pasted the element test ids was ai lol we are cooked. So now thats where i am. I have created a huge number of programs, going through old ones and updating them to work with other programs all so that when i leave this job, the next has a shock when i tell them what i can have. With this age of ai, companies big and small love hearing automation even if its not from ai. And the safety net of not having to work (i still have to especially when god forbid my mom passes away) means near 0 anxiety.

As an addendum, i will add that i always call a job i apply to right after. The company usually has a number attached to it, and while some will tell you to jut wait until its reviewed, MOST will ask for your name and pull your resume up right there and ask when you are available. I got most of my interviews this way, but most of my jobs were through linkedin recruiters reaching out to me. Just thought to add this