Not all of us are born knowing people who can get us jobs. Fresno had one of the densest populations of poverty in America, and as someone with no college, finding minimum-wage work was near impossible- 4,000 people show up for jobs at grocery stores. And no, that isn't an exaggeration.

Combine that with not knowing where to look or who to ask when it comes to getting remote programming work, you don't really have a lot in the way of recourse.