how to grow a network from scratch (especially when you're young)

before I joined Google in 2021, I was 17 years old, barely knew how to program and had no connections whatsoever in the tech industry. but early on I learned the immense value of building a strong network, especially from scratch with complete strangers. this also went hand in hand with learning that having a referral (at least in the case of the tech industry), greatly improves the chances of…