Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting a degree in a field that has jobs helps too.
Doesn’t help when you don’t have the foot in the door because your family is not traditionally professional. I had to ask one of my old graduate project partners for a referral to my current (and first, at 27) tech job and I still feel dirty and guilty that I got it so easily and managed to escape the trap of being extremely qualified while making min wage in a dusty shithole of a warehouse. “It’s not what you know,…
It was always a phrase of derision for the naivete of those who think it has ever been different, because it has always been how the world works.
You just didn't understand it until it bit you, and then you mistook it for some recent change, even though you apparently grew up with people telling you how it is.