[Anonymouse]

Alas, no. I did have a job as a programmer...for a week. I was told something which I'm still sure was wrong, viz. conditional statements didn't take up as much CPU time. This contradicted what I'd been taught. At processor level decisions take more time than any other operation. This, I learned, was why you set default values, to be changed IF required, but this wasn't done at Riva (even though they were using COBOL, i.e.:
Their way:

IF B MOD 2 = 0
A = 2
ELSE
A = 1
ENDIF

Sensible (the way all sensible programmers do it):

A = 1 - (B MOD 2) - the condition is -1, i.e. TRUE, if and ONLY if B is an even number. Thus 1 - (-1) = 1 + 1 = 2. Otherwise, A = 1 - 0, i.e. 1. Mathematical operations require less CPU time than pure logical comparisons. Plus the code is shorter, which in a large program can really add up.

I did that for many years afterward...at least partly as rebellion.

Long story I don't want to tell. With hindsight I was lucky to get out/be tossed out. I wonder if they're still around. Frankly, I doubt it.

Got 'em back, though. My contract stated clearly that a month's notice had to be given...in either direction. I took it up with ACAS, and I damn well got those 3 weeks - open-and-shut case, I had it in black and white. Taxed, which I still think was unjust, but it paid for a new printer.

I did try to get a programming job. I really tried. What I didn't know - and no-one at the Jobcentre knew, either, clueless as they were and still are - was that I was applying in the wrong part of the country, i.e. the North West and not the South. In 6 months I sent a thousand applications.
Nothing. A very few interviews.

Catch-22: I couldn't get the job because of lack of experience, but I couldn't get experience if I couldn't get the job. This was despite the fact that the HND was designed with industry in mind. You learned standard industry practices.
(BTW, on one interview I attended, I asked if they used JSP, and was told, "A modified form".
Yeah. The whole point of JSP was to standardise programming. Says it all, really.)

Now all my knowledge is out of date; the languages I learned were procedural, and it's all object-oriented these days. And I never did understand OO anyway.
One thing I still regret: in 1985 I got an unsolicited offer from Sheffield Polytechnic. 3-year HND, 4 with industrial placement. It covered hardware, right down to chip level, telecommunications, holography, computers - in short, everything I found fascinating. It sounded terrific.

BUT.

My Mum got some benefit or other, I forget what, whilst I was at South Bolton 6th Form College (huge mistake, trust me!). But because of what my Dad earned (which, frankly, wasn't much), she didn't get the full amount. So we talked about it, and decided I probably wouldn't get a full grant for this either, plus I'd be living away from home.

We now take you to 4 years later, when employers in IT are screaming for HNDs. I applied as a mature student...and found it didn't make any difference - because HND grants were mandatory. I would have got the full amount, plus extra for living away from home. For me, that would've been plenty.

I have been kicking myself since 1989. If I'd just thought to ask at the local LEA...but I didn't.

I did the HND...to find they'd moved the goalposts. I needed a B.Sc.

Two years later I had one (a 2:II, alas). Now they wanted M.Sc...which I wasn't funded for and couldn't afford.

I took a manual labour job (the very thing I swore as a kid to avoid) to tide me over while I tried for a programming job; this was in 1999, after 6 years of getting nowhere.

10 years later I was still there.

It may be true that we have to have such prat falls to become who we are. But does it have to be so painful?

I can just picture it:

Inquisitor (appearing): Anonymouse. You have been found unworthy of having existed. You had so much potential as a programmer, skilled with real-time systems...wasted as a warehouse worker.
Me: Hardly my fault, was it? The gits wouldn't take me on!
Inquisitor: Nevertheless, you have failed to become that which you might so easily have been. (He wipes me from history, replaces me with a much more successful bloke who did think to ask at the LEA, and deletes me) May you spend your time more wisely.

Yes, yes, as Susan saw in Soul Music, maybe there were other possibilities in which the coach didn't crash. But those realities could only exist if this one did. So if there are realities where things went my way, they can only exist if this reality does.

This is, however, no comfort to me whatsoever.