My own story is pretty similar to the article's, except s/graduate school/Google/.<p>I've found that people tend to discount the past pretty heavily, at least in America.  Nobody cares if you were lazy five years ago, as long as you've worked hard in those five years and have a record of concrete accomplishments to show that.  If you went to a community college and then finished undergrad at Harvard, people will see the Harvard degree.  If you went to a state college for college and then went to MIT for grad school, people will see the MIT degree.<p>The hard part is getting into Harvard or MIT or Google with that past record.<p>I think the important part for that is to not let your current circumstances define you.  If you've been turned down for that dream job and have to work on CRUDscreen enterprise apps to pay the bills, it's really easy to sit back and get comfortable writing CRUDscreen enterprise apps.  If you want to give that dream job another try in the future, though, it's important to continue working <i>as if you got it</i>, either by doing your current job to the standards of the dream job, or by keeping your skills sharp with side projects outside of work.<p>BTW, I think you were my phone-screener for Google, so maybe the article's point about having someone on the inside pulling for you has some merit.