Ah, I miss those days...
Back in the 2000s I was "Technical Director" of a small digital agency in London and our "Chief Exec" was too cheap to pay decent salaries so when we hired people, they were on barely above minimum wage because "people with experience are more expensive". So we hired young kids and I had the task of training them up, on the job, to be able to do the DevOps stuff we did.
Twenty years later, I still occasionally look them up and feel proud of "my kids", what they've become and that I had a part to play in their journeys.