You took the best option presented to you. A fresh-faced 18 year old isn't presented with much in the way of good career opportunities.
Our stories are pretty similar. My first dev job paid $9/hr! Sure, in some ways you could consider that to be "taken advantage of" but only because we were successful. Had either of us been flunkies, we would be the ones taking advantage!
When you hire an 18 year old for an important job, you know the risks and the potential payoffs.
Yup and he was smart enough to get out sooner rather than later, and got a lot of hardcore experience along the way. Landing that first tech job is the hardest, after that, it's pretty gravy.
Our stories are pretty similar. My first dev job paid $9/hr! Sure, in some ways you could consider that to be "taken advantage of" but only because we were successful. Had either of us been flunkies, we would be the ones taking advantage!
When you hire an 18 year old for an important job, you know the risks and the potential payoffs.