Re. (1): It can really depend on what they did before and during school. While in school, one could have real internships, real personal projects, open-source contributions, working for the university, contract gigs, etc.

Personal anecdata: I was solo building software projects in highschool that earned income (real product, creating real value, some of which were acquired) and worked on the school district websites. During college I contracted with startups part time while also building projects of my own.

Author here. I worked at internships and smaller contracts in HS and college. But I've been coding since the start of highschool with coding competitions and jobs that helped my neighbors and my grandparents. Even in retrospect, even though they were small or not as full time as what I did now, I would still count them as learning career experience

And I have been hired somewhere else. I was really close just to quit early and go to contract work. But I got really lucky with an offer a few months ago. If someone's feels like they want to quit, definitely investigate the amount of work it will take to be self employed. It's a lot, but understanding your own skills and being able to market that is a great ability to learn!

My man, if some Joe went as a salesman with 20 years of experience because every summer he sold some lemonade since he was 5, people would, well, at the very best pat one with “good for you, buddy, good for you.”

Then again, “fake it till you make it” is known to work too, so you do you. Definitely wouldn’t judge you in this economy to employ every trick in the book.

Yet, still a trick

Re 2), this reminds me of those situations where people are given the opportunity to resign rather than being fired. They get to save face on their next job interview, but it does the next hiring company a disservice. It might be something that comes up later in the hiring process, but nothing that would be identifiable at the start of that process