And yeah, I'm one of those who had to play catch up later and learn all that stuff the hard(er) way.
I don't like the idea of taking credit for the work of your staff; but if your team (run by you) gets credit for a job of work, some of that should absolutely be rubbing off on you.
I've always had better things to do than scheming and game-playing. "Life" is about playing games for one's own benefit; I managed fine, without knocking too many other people down. But some people treat Life as zero-sum. That's fine too - but watch as other people steer clear of you.
The job was a crap job, but that job taught me a LOT about being a software developer.
It's the same reason a few years apprenticed to a plumber or carpenter is better than a few years in retail. At least you'll have come out the other end with something more applicable to a career, if you decide to pursue it.
They were using me for cheap labour, I was using them to get a CV that allowed me to get a real salary somewhere else later.
I literally said this to the director who hired me (a few months in, in his office with nobody else around) and was rewarded with a huge grin because I'd guessed correctly that he'd prefer cheap labour who -understood- that was the deal and wasn't afraid to own their half of it.
Worked out fine for me, and I did duly leave to take a much better paid job after about a year.
As much as I hate to admit it: I'm all for abandoning friends at 18-20 for the career focus. Then bring back the handful of them that stuck by you.
Plus being cheap meant my management were pretty open to "I don't know how to do that -yet-, but I think I have an idea what I'd need, can I have a few days to research it and get back to you?" which was -very- helpful to my learning process.
Looking back, I don't regret the choice at all.
Though you might also want to consider Germany - a lot of bits are liveable primarily speaking english and they're not currently suffering from the "fun" of brexit.
You're as smart as you are today BECAUSE you made those mistakes. You've gotten the painful part out of the way.
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.
This was a small business with a late product. Probably circling the drain, and not much cash flow to play with.
The only way an owner would approve a rewrite suggested by his most junior dev with only a few weeks on the job, is out of pure desperation.
He got in because no one cared about anything other than someone willing to push through boring contract design work for low AF pay. He seems to still believe his lying(skill?) is what got him the job. It sort of was in the sense they wanted someone young dumb delusional and enthusiastic to work for next to nothing on what was essentially boring boilerplate work. In a system that even at the time he could see was a disaster to work in. Then used him as a negotiating tool to lay off other decently paid workers after he "proved" that what they did to him could be done. He calls them "expert manipulators" but there is nothing expert here, this is ham-fisted pointed haired boss 101.
TL;DR the company wanted a useful idiot with enthusiasm to push through a broken system to do a mind numbing job for next to no pay. The author still doesn't seem to get this.