This person got in somewhere good early on and rode that career train. These opportunities rarely exist today unless you arre a charismatic super talented genius.

Not really true. It takes a bit of knowing your worth, advocating for yourself in interviews, and job hopping as needed for pay raises every year or two while continuing to build your skills both on the job and outside of it. IT isn't an industry that lends itself to job stability and high pay if you stay in a role long term, and stagnation can certainly be a factor if you decide to stop learning things.

Also. it's still very possible to get in, but focus these days is DevOps, automation, virtualization, and more recently, AI. You won't make bank in some shitty low tier helpdesk role.

A good start would be certification path to pick up some straightforward "guaranteed to get you work" kind of certs like:

• Linux+
• Network+
• VMware VCP-DCV (and later with experience maybe VCP-CMA)
• Any Redhat cert
• Security+ if you're interested in cybersecurity and/or federal work (USA, not sure about other places)

Alternately, getting a few programming languages under your belt is totally doable for free with Youtube and other online courses and then doing your own projects with public repositories on Github for prospective employers to see. Getting a foot in the door with dev is gonna be very luck of the draw though.

You definitely wont' start out making a wage that high on the Ops side, but finding a foot in the door at between $25 and $30 an hour shouldn't be hard once you get some bare minimum experience under your belt.

College grads may have an easier time, but I wouldn't know, I dropped out and went the certification/experience route some 15+ years ago.