My last article did numbers I didn't expect. A lot of the comments landed on the same line: "okay but did it actually get you hired?" No. Not yet. And I'm going to be honest about how that's been sitting with me, because the polished "here's what I learned" version of this post was easier to write than the true one. Eight years managing a Trader Joe's floor. Two years before that answering phones and filing at a front desk. And now, at the bottom, two shipped Linux projects with real users...