The Worst Learning to Code Advice You’re Following | Ep #52
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[00:00:00] if you are trying to learn to code right now, stop what ,you're doing. I want to tell you, you've been gaslit by
[00:00:04] the coding influencer industry.
[00:00:06] And by the way, I fell for this myself, and this made me get stuck in learning to code mode, the perpetual beginner mode for.
[00:00:13] Five years, half a decade. Okay. That entire time I was doing what you're probably doing following the advice that sounds reasonable from people who say they've done things, that sounds supportive. Maybe even inspiring. Okay. Things like, you know, skip tutorials. Just build projects and portfolios. Just push through that imposter syndrome
[00:00:30] everyone's journey is different
[00:00:31] that kind of advice. Meanwhile, 25 year olds with half your knowledge and experience are, are getting hired every day while you are stuck because you are, you know, in your thirties with a different career and you're not actually able to make any progress. So today I'm gonna expose for you the eight pieces, not three, not five, not 10.
[00:00:46] It's not a listical, but there are eight things that I've observed just in the last month, month and a half online, right? Eight pieces of helpful coding advice that are actually, I believe, keeping you unemployed or at least keeping you from making that transition from whatever career you're in right now to professional coder.
[00:01:01] And I'm going to include the most dangerous ones that sound the most supportive. And I think they're number four and five from memory, right? Because once you see what's actually going on and how attention and how social media works and influences your choices, trust me, everything's gonna change.
[00:01:16] So with that said, let's talk about the eight pieces of advice, eight horrible pieces of coding advice that you are probably following.
INTRO
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[00:01:22] Welcome to Easier Said Than Done with me, Zubin Pratap, where I share with you my journey from 37 year old lawyer to professional software engineer.
TUTORIAL TRAP
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[00:01:31] Number one is the tutorial trap, right? I call this the confidence crusher because the entire coding influencer industry is telling you that, you know, yeah, you just keep tutorials, just start building projects, you know, don't get stuck in tutorial hell, et cetera. And frankly, I think you've been gaslit, because that sounds empowering.
[00:01:46] It sounds like it's something you relate to, but honestly, telling people to just skip the tutorials and go straight into building projects that's a big jump. Okay. It, it's a, it's a huge jump. So telling people to skip tutorials and get to that phase when they've never done it before and have no background is a little bit like telling someone stop playing the video game.
[00:02:06] Just go and start racing the Formula One car right now. It's ridiculous. All right. And typically, unfortunately, the hidden truth of this is that this advice comes from people who kind of forgot what it's like to be a beginner, or more often than not, and this happened to me a lot, it comes from people who did computer science in university.
[00:02:21] And the problem is people who did computer science in university where at a different stage in their life, they had a structured curriculum, they. Teachers, they had to attend a university, they had attend classes. It's totally different as a learning experience and pathway from someone who's working full time, possibly got a family and has to do this on nights and weekends.
[00:02:37] Okay. And they learned at a time when they had given the textbooks, they were given the answers, they were given the solutions on the chalkboard. They were given all the information. Stack overflow was a completely different thing. It had fewer answers. There were fewer complexities. Things weren't moving that fast, and they weren't figuring out.
[00:02:52] You are figuring it out. Completely different experience. Okay? So that advice doesn't really work for people in your situation. And the real damage this cause is that every time you guys try and do something and you try and build something on your own, and you. You, you can't, you don't succeed because you don't yet know how to, and you've skipped this really important learning stage, and then every failed project for you becomes some sort of proof that you're not cut out for this, that you're not smart enough for this.
[00:03:18] That these coders are some sort of genius. They're not a genius. They just know things you don't because someone else. Them. You are different if you are trying to do this in your own, like I did. If you're trying to learn on your own and you're in your thirties and you've got other responsibilities, it's not the same as having learned in computer science school.
[00:03:32] Okay? And let me tell you this,
[00:03:34] this is the way to think about it. This is what was the unlock for me several years ago, right? Because for five to five years of struggling, I was 39 and I made my first dev role. And then a year after that I was in Google as an engineer. These are the big unlocks for me. So for this one on the tutorial, hell, one, the unlock is. Tutorial hell really isn't the problem. Random tutorial hell is,
[00:03:52] and it's a big, big difference. Okay.
[00:03:54] Tutorials aren't the problem if they're helping you get to your goal. It's not a trap when you're learning. It's a trap when you're not learning and you're stuck
[00:04:02] and you don't know how to do the next step or what the next step is. The solution isn't then jumping straight into projects.
[00:04:08] You are not ready. You don't know enough. It's the solution is to follow a more systematic learning path. Exactly the kind of path these people forgot that they had in college. Okay? You need a systematic structured learning path where each piece of learning contributes to the next one and is layered. In a sequence that makes sense to you.
[00:04:26] Just like kids don't go from grade three to grade 10, right? You have to go through each of the grades and each layer adds specific, measurable, observable skills. So you start with tutorials and you stay there as long as you need to have those fundamentals. But if you don't know what that is, what the start line and the finish line of that stage is, you're going to struggle, right?
[00:04:43] You need to know when to graduate into projects and then how to know, do system design. So many of the students in the inner circle think, oh, should I be doing system design? Because that's what social media says. Probably not. Now, if you're competing with people with three plus years in the industry, then yes, because at the three year onward stage, on average, bigger companies will expect you to start thinking about design, but zero to three, no, probably not.
[00:05:03] I certainly didn't need it. I only needed it in Google when they call me back for an extra interview to up level me because they felt my level was higher than the level I was interviewing for. Then they gave me a system design interview, right? So complete digression. The point is tutorial hell is not really the problem.
[00:05:17] Being stuck in tutorials because you don't know what to do next is the problem.
[00:05:21]
IMPOSTER
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[00:05:21] Now, the next one that I want to talk to you about is imposter syndrome. Sure, the label's helpful, but here's the truth. I call this the big psychological gaslighting industrial complex. Okay? They keep telling you imposter syndrome is normal. It's just a syndrome. It's meaningless. You should ignore it, and that's partially truth, but it's not the whole truth.
[00:05:42] Okay? It is normal. You should not let it govern your life. But it's also a clue and you need to have really good reasons to ignore it. Okay? Because here's the real facts of the matter, especially for career changes. Mid-career, you've got a lot to lose, and you're trying to climb this big mountain Imposter syndrome at that point isn't a mindset issue.
[00:06:02] You, you literally are missing. Foundational knowledge that some 22-year-old computer science graduate would have. So you really do have a skills gap. So it's not a syndrome in the sense that it's not an illusion, it's so if you are saying on LinkedIn that you're already a software engineer, but no one's ever actually paid you to do this, you know, having even got freelance gigs, then of course you're gonna feel like it an imposter.
[00:06:24] You're kind of faking it. That's what an imposter does, right? So when you make claims that are inconsistent with who you know yourself to be, of course you're gonna feel imposter syndrome. That's not a syndrome, that's a fact. So the advice to push through that sense of feeling like an imposter is gaslighting you into thinking that your rational assessment.
[00:06:44] Is a social conspiracy or a psychological flaw? It's not. Guys, your assessment is correct if you're not getting the offers. If you're not getting the interviews, then. Yeah, you're not really proved that you're a software engineer. You're just claiming to be one, right? It's like the same thing about, remember the entrepreneur thing that lots of people who are genuine entrepreneurs who've got businesses that make revenue, and then there's old people who say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm doing this business, but it's never made a dollar in revenue.
[00:07:09] Not even a single paying customer. That's kind of the difference. You know, you're doing the same thing maybe, but if no one's paying you for it, then you're making a claim by saying, oh, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a business person. Well, when you haven't got anyone to pay your single dollar, are you, it's the same principle, right?
[00:07:24] Imposter syndrome is natural. It's healthy. It happens to all of us. And by the way, it never goes away, and I have an entire other podcast on how to treat it like your shadow and how to deal with it. It happens to me even now. It will continue to happen to me. Every time I level up, it's going to happen because it's a proof of growth, but.
[00:07:39] It's not a bad thing. It's not necessarily something that you should ignore. It's giving you a clue as to what's next. Okay? Now, you're not broken for feeling overwhelmed. You're not broken for feeling any of these things. You are. Responding quite normally to being thrown into a growth situation where who you are now is not who you need to be to overcome this challenge, right?
[00:07:58] It's like being thrown into the deep end without swimming lessons. So rather than thinking about this as just imposter syndrome, every time you feel it and you know deep in your heart, you know the truth that it's probably real. I want you to reframe it and replace imposter syndrome with a competence gap analysis.
[00:08:13] Now, this was a huge unlock for me, okay? So when you feel that familiar pit or doubt in your stomach, it's also your brain giving you a giant neon sign saying, Hey, this is the skills gap. This is what you need to learn next, and instead of focusing on what you don't know, you now have the opportunity to look at that and say, okay.
[00:08:31] I now should focus on what I need to know next to close that competency gap.
CTA
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[00:08:35] Hi, if you want a no BS insight into how to change your career, whether to code or something else and how to actually get job opportunities in tech, then please subscribe and like.
[00:08:43] It's no BS because I have zero incentive to mislead you. I just want to help you and give you tons of value so that you will consider working with me to get to your next career.
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[00:09:25] Oh, and please follow me on LinkedIn too. I pretty much post there every single day. Just look for my name, Zubin Pratap. All right. So please like, and subscribe to this channel and let's get back to the episode.
COMMUNITY TRAP
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[00:09:33] Now the third one is what I call the companionship and community trap, which ends up being what, also what I call the blind leading the blind economy. Right now. It's so common to say Join this free discord group with. Free discard server. There's free community online, or you know, it used to be Facebook groups.
[00:09:49] Now obviously nobody of our age does that, but you know, it's free. You're surrounded by thousands of like-minded learners. It sounds great, right? But honestly, these communities surrounded by like-minded culture, like-minded learners is where I believe learning goes to die. Look, you've only got 24 hours in the day, and if you're watching this, you're probably a career changer.
[00:10:09] You know, you're probably really busy and you don't have the same time that as some 22-year-old college grad does. Okay, so. The uncomfortable truth is that most coding communities, not all, but most, especially the ones that you get off Udemy courses or online, you know, set of communities and Reddit groups and stuff,
[00:10:24] most coding communities are filled with other struggling beginners, all sharing their confusion and frustration and making each other feel better about being stuck.
[00:10:32] Guys, that's a support group. It's not a learning environment. Imagine if you went to a classroom where everybody else was basically saying, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to do this, and that's who you're learning from. No one would actually be in that environment. You need someone way ahead of you to teach.
[00:10:47] Okay? Now, do you really wanna be surrounded by people who are also struggling just like you, or do you wanna be surrounded by people who are getting the results that you've been dying to get? People who are ahead of you in the game? Right. Look, there's a business model to these free communities, okay?
[00:11:00] Free communities keep you engaged, keep you validated, but also keep you stuck
[00:11:05] because it's in their interest that you don't progress. Just like dating apps don't actually want you to find the love of your life
[00:11:10] because then you will stop using their app and stop paying their money. Struggling learners in the same way.
[00:11:15] Create more content, create more engagement, create more ad revenue for them or other forms of revenue. Okay? It's way better. To stop seeking community and companionship. You don't need a support group. You need one or two people who will always answer your questions. That's it. And who actually have done the thing that you're trying to do?
[00:11:33] Do not take the advice, quote unquote advice of people who just give it to you without having done the thing you've done. Okay? I would never ask someone who's never bought a house. What it, what the best strategy to buy house is. Okay. I would never ask someone who's never day traded and I don't day trade.
[00:11:49] But if I'm giving you as an example, if I wanted to day trade, I would not ask somebody who just hold a stock portfolio because that is not day trading. It's a completely different game. So when you want advice, only find people who've done exactly what you wanna do. And again, going back to the first point, I made computer science graduates who then went straight into software engineering careers.
[00:12:08] Are not the right people. I had the worst advice from them. They all told me it wasn't possible. They all told me in my late thirties, I shouldn't do it. I couldn't do it. No one was gonna gimme a job. And then when I got into Google, they were all asking me for advice. Here's why. Going to college, getting qualified, getting the job is the traditional route.
[00:12:24] Career change is a non-traditional route. Okay. It's literally like asking someone who's been to Rome. How do I get to Rome? And then somebody else has been to some other place in Italy saying, oh, this is how you do it. Or someone else has been to Europe, which is, you know, in the same region, or This is how you do it.
[00:12:38] No, it's not the same thing. If they haven't done the same thing, do not take their advice. Okay? Now, all these folks in these online communities and these free communities, they don't actually have skin in the game to help you succeed. They have skin in the game to help you stay stuck. Someone who is going to have skin in the game to actually helps you succeed is important.
[00:12:55] Someone is willing to put their reputation on it, which is actually kind of what Brian and I do in the inner circle, right, is at we tell people, Hey, we are doing this publicly in our name and. Honestly, it's just a handful of people that we do at a time and you know, we coach for 12 months. It's a long time to do a few people.
[00:13:12] We don't like the big community thing. There's too much noise we have. It's honestly, in our program, it's like a library where everyone's got the best books, but there's silence and focus because stuff is getting done. You guys don't have time. This is the most frustrating thing I keep telling you guys.
[00:13:25] You don't have enough time to waste it on things that don't work because you have less time than everybody else. So what little time you have has to be so targeted that it's going to move the needle. Okay? So that's an important reframe here. Do not go for the free community thing, you're just going to burn time, but feel okay about it, which is a terrible combination.
MASTERY MYTH
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[00:13:42] Okay. Let's talk about the fourth one, the pursuit of mastery, which frankly I believe is, how do I put this? Bs. Okay? Because it's actually a non goal. In some sense. It's a never ending goal and therefore it's causing misery. Now, you've been told that coding takes years to master, but you should enjoy the journey, and this makes you stay patient with ineffective learning methods because you tell yourself, oh yeah, this is part of mastery.
[00:14:07] It's going to take me three years. Maybe it will. Maybe it will, but you're probably doing something wrong. Okay? Because you're probably looking at mastery now. The truth is mastery is a ridiculous goal.
[00:14:17] I mean, how do you measure it?
[00:14:19] How do you tell someone's a master
[00:14:20] usually because they're the best in the world?
[00:14:22] Do you really want to be the best in the world at coding?
[00:14:24] Is that really what your goal is? No, you don't need to be the best in the world. You can just become employable and then get paid to learn more, which is what we tell people in the inner circle to do. Do the minimum effective dose to get hired, because that's when your career change is complete.
[00:14:38] And then in that new career, just like you're doing in your current career, you climb up the ladder. Systematically, right? But when you know the right steps, then that journey gets compressed in time. You don't need to pursue mastery. In fact,
[00:14:49] mastery I would say is an anti-goal.
[00:14:51] Okay? With six to 12 months of focused, practical learning, and directionally correct efforts, you do not need to get mastery.
[00:14:58] I was not a master. I'm still far from mastery in coding, right? But I'm good enough to get the job done, and you need to be good enough to beat the competition for that job. Remember, competition is not even, it's lumpy in the market, right? When I went to Google, the competition was insane at Channel Link.
[00:15:11] Now the competition is very high, but the first startup that I went to, there was almost no competition because they were a high risk startup. I was a high risk employee. Fair deal, right? Remember, you want to find places where the competition's low for you to get your foot in the door, and then you want to compete for that job.
[00:15:26] I did have to beat other applicants, even for my first startup job, but it was like 12 or 15 of them as opposed to a
[00:15:31] few thousand at Google, like a completely different game, right? You just have to get good enough to beat the competition, not mastery.
[00:15:36] It's really, really important that you understand this
[00:15:38] because chasing mastery is like chasing the horizon.
[00:15:41] You can keep going for the rest of your life and never catch up
[00:15:44] because mastery is not a line in the sand. It's not a finish point. Mastery is a psychological notion that doesn't actually have a tangible reality to it. Okay? It's really important. Do not get sucked into the mastery trap.
[00:15:54] Also, why would you want to get mastery before you start getting paid? Like it's so much better to get paid for what you know, because it's valuable to someone. And then over the years after that, keep getting paid to achieve that mastery. That's just too smart. Okay, let's talk about the, you know.
DSA is Most Important
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[00:16:11] Alright, the fifth worst piece of advice that you're probably following, and remember I told you about this one right at the start, four and five, the one I just talked about, and this one are probably the worst ones.
[00:16:19] Okay? This one is about obsessing with DSA, the dreaded
[00:16:22] data structures and algorithms problems, right? What I call the big leet code lie. Learn leetcode, or you'll never get hired as a developer is a
[00:16:30] huge myth. Why does this work? It works because everyone's so afraid of DSA stuff that the fear drives their decision making and their choices, and so they binge watch stuff about this or they spend six to 12 months on DSA stuff.
[00:16:43] Okay? The truth is this typically comes from
[00:16:46] people obsessed with the big tech in town. Okay? We are talking about the FANG kind of companies, okay? FANG companies who convinced that Facebook style interviews are the norm, or Google style interviews are the norm.
[00:16:57] Let me tell you,
[00:16:58] 90% of actual jobs need you to integrate with APIs, build a database, write to a database, read data from a database, create some user interfaces that people can click on.
[00:17:07] Most jobs, even at the big tech companies, do not , require you to actually use that DSA stuff. It's purely an interview test at the big end of town, but
[00:17:15] if you are looking at the top 1% companies,
[00:17:17] you're ignoring 99% of the market. And that's a stupid thing to do
[00:17:20] when you're a career changer.
[00:17:22] It's kind of like saying I've only driven a car so far for fun, but I'm gonna try and be a race car driver now. And so I'm gonna try and go straight to the F1.
[00:17:30] No, it makes no sense. You've gotta build up to that. Okay. So don't waste time on DSA unless your coding interviews needed now, because the coding industry has matured in the last 20 years, and that's a long time. There are a lot of mid-size companies that now use DSA as a filter, not as hard as the DSA that the big tech guys do because they need a.
[00:17:48] Less strong filter. The big tech guys need the strongest filter. If you have 2000 applicants, you need a stronger filter than you do if you had 300 applicants. Obviously right now, if you, the smaller, the smaller the company, the less the filtering and the more important it is that they filter using. What we actually use in the job.
[00:18:05] For example, at Google, when I went to Google, I didn't know any of the languages then. It was mainly GoLine that I had to write in, but that's not what they were checking for because they're like, you're gonna have to learn so much just to use our Google technology. 'cause everything is custom made inside Google.
[00:18:17] 'cause that's how big it is. They don't care about that. That's why they use the DSNA stuff. But in every other job I've done, I've had to do a coding interview that involved the real world work. In fact. When I'm hiring, I try and give people a, an example piece of work that is very similar to what we do in real life,
[00:18:32] not so much about the DSA stuff because it's not relevant to the kind of signal I'm looking for. So you need to understand what the job market's like and you need to prepare for the interview you are going for. In the, in the Inner Circle program, I teach my students that there are somewhere between nine to 14 different types of coding interview.
[00:18:47] Okay. Some of them look similar, but they're quite different, and you need to prepare for each one differently. It's if you land up to a snooker game expecting to play billions, you're gonna be in trouble even though the table and the cues and the balls look the same, right?
[00:18:58] Different sport. So most companies care more about, Hey, can you read through code? Can you write some code? Can you add a feature without breaking things? Do you think about testing? Do you understand how to push and pull data to and from APIs and databases? Can you communicate with your team about technical problems?
[00:19:13] That's what they're looking for. They're not looking for you to reverse a binary tree that's only done as a way to filter like an examination at the interview stage at the big companies. But there are some that still follow that practice blindly. So you need to do your research, your due diligence on every interview and prepare accordingly.
[00:19:29] But don't spend months doing DSS stuff unless you're sure you're gonna need it. Okay. While you are grinding those algorithm puzzles for interviews that don't yet exist because you're thinking you're gonna need it someday, other career changes are learning the actual tools that matter. Python React, sql, A-W-S-G-C-P, whatever it is, and they're getting hired at thousands of normal, smaller companies.
[00:19:49] That just want someone who can build working software while you are sitting there worrying about DSA that you may never have to do, so please, please, please stop doing that. Be focused on what the market's telling you at that point in time, not what social media is telling you at that point in time. I.
Contribute to Open Source
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[00:20:02] Now, the number six, worst piece of advice you're probably following is open source contributions look great to employees. Yeah, probably true, especially if you're a more mid to senior level developer. Definitely it can help. I have never made open source contributions that I showed to employees.
[00:20:16] I mean, I have as part of my job, but it's not something that I'm talking to employees about. Right? Because it's kind of expected at some point in time in your career, you're gonna do it as in senior or more experienced engineer gonna do it. That's not a big deal. But the brutal truth for beginners, especially career changes, is that.
[00:20:30] Most open source projects are hostile or hostile, as you say, in America to beginners. They're poorly documented, they're very complex. They're completely different from what it looks like in due turtle land. They require you to know how to read and understand and reason about code structure. And often they use practices that were in vogue five or 10 years ago when those repos are created and not been updated.
[00:20:49] Okay, and as a beginner, when you haven't learned all the tools and the systems and the processes, and you're still thinking. That software engineering is about the code you write. If you're still in that mode, you are gonna get completely overwhelmed by open source. Now be honest and tell me, if you looked at open source, has it not been completely overwhelming?
[00:21:06] Now it is even for experienced engineers. So as an experienced engineer, if I'm gonna contribute to an open source project, I, I then need to speak to someone on the project and say, Hey, this is the piece I'm trying to solve. Tell me where I need to go or I need to spend. Time, you know, hours and hours, maybe even a few weeks digging into the project if I don't have any contact there.
[00:21:21] Right? In other words. Open source contributions, unless you're fixing a, you know, a documentation piece or fixing a spelling error or a missing link or something, that's fine. But if you're actually contributing a code, the kind that employees will care about, then it requires a level of experience that you cannot be expected to have when you are at the starting stage of learning, or even where you've learned a bit of code and you're transitioning.
[00:21:41] Okay. I would not expect most people in their zero to two years of software engineering experience, most of them I would not. Expect them to be able to contribute to mature open source project, right? So that advice about contributing to open source is probably targeted at experienced devs, I believe, who struggle to stand out among other experienced devs.
[00:22:00] And that's an important point for experienced devs who do not actually stand out against when they're competing with other experienced developers. For them, open source contributions make a lot of sense, but for a beginner, probably not because as a beginner, unless. And I'll qualify this actually, unless you've been coding for a long enough time, or you've been part of that project from the beginning, for example, like at a hackathon and then in matured, that does make sense because technically that code is open source, but you were part of the foundational creation of that completely different situation.
[00:22:29] But most people say, Hey, just pick up some random thing and, and contribute to it. It's not that easy. Now if you find a bug while they're using a package or library and you know enough to fix it. Absolutely fix it because you know enough to fix it. But you're in that rare situation where you actually know how to work your way through that program or through that open source repo.
[00:22:48] And you will find that when you do, there's a ton of repo specific practice and tooling that you may need to learn and understand how they do it, how they merge, what rules they have for review, what, you know, checks have to pass, et cetera. So. Most people when they're still learning, especially at the tutorial stage, for example, or the, I'm building my first one to three apps, you know, stage.
[00:23:07] You're gonna get stuck for weeks just trying to set up the development environment for some open source project that you know very nothing about. And then you're gonna hate yourself for not knowing what someone with five years experience knows. But that's not a fair comparison. Imagine if every 5-year-old kid got really mad at every adult who went to the gym because they could lift more weight.
[00:23:24] It's ridiculous, right? No one. Okay, here's another thing. Especially when recruiters are looking at stuff, they're not actually gonna read your code. A lot of them aren't coders, so they're not gonna understand whether your code works or not. They're gonna look at your code and there isn't enough time to read and understand your code.
[00:23:40] So it's better to not show them code. It's better to show them the end result of that code working, which means a working demo or product that's proof that you built that end product. They don't need to know the code to see it works. They just see something that works well and that makes a lot of sense and that is far better proof and that proof will deliver instant value rather than giving someone examples of code you've written in somebody else's repo.
[00:24:04] Now they need to read your code. They need to read the other reaper because they have no way to judge your code really, when they're just looking at roll lines of code. It's much better to give them a working demo that you believe in. Okay?
Bootcamps Are Scams
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[00:24:14] Okay. Number seven, and I know you guys are gonna make fun of me for saying this, but this is the number seven piece of advice that actually may be holding some of you back. Okay. The advice is that all coding bootcamps or computer science degrees are a scam, maybe most likely not Now. I believe that computer that, now, I personally believe that bootcamps aren't a scam. They will help you learn to code because that's what they say they'll do. But most bootcamps do not say, we are gonna actually tell you exactly what needs to happen to get into the job. They will say it on that brochure that they will help you be job ready, but that's basically saying you will learn what you need to learn.
[00:24:50] Actually going from knowing to code, to getting interviewed is a big jump that most people struggle with. How do I know this? Because more than 40% of the people in the Inner Circle program are ex bootcamp graduates, not from the inner know short two, three month programs.
[00:25:03] We know people, we have people from 10 month programs, okay? Because all they focused on was learning to code. Now the truth is. Yes. People will say, Hey, everything you learned in a bootcamp, you can learn for free online. That is true. That is 1000% true. You can learn to grow food online. You can learn to stitch clothes online.
[00:25:20] You can learn to build a computer online. But are you going to, should you like, that's the big question. Should you, the fact that it can be done, you do not need to go to college because all textbooks are in public libraries. If you live in some countries like, you know, the US and Australia and England and stuff, okay.
[00:25:36] You do not need to do any of these things, but does that mean you should build your own car because eventually you can figure it out? Is that actually a good use of your time? This advice about, oh, it's all a scam, is from people who've never tried to change career in their thirties, right? When they have a mortgage, they may have kids, and where time is the constraint, guys, you're going to spend time and money no matter what you do.
[00:26:00] Pick any activity in your life and tell me whether you spent both time and money on it. Yes, you have to. It's an unavoidable input to get an output. Okay. Bootcamps have that place. They provide structure, they provide accountability. They may provide some career services, but unfortunately, in my observation, and this is why I quit the bootcamp that I went to in 2018 just before I actually learned to code, I quit after just one week because the entire career services people were not actually people who changed their career.
[00:26:26] They were just people who are professionally in career services who studied blogs and regurgitated blog information on how to change a career. Right? To actually know how to tell someone to change their career means that they need to have done it themselves. And remember what I said earlier, it's not advice if the advisor has never done it themselves.
[00:26:40] That's just an opinion. So most career services are by people who never actually changed their career. Ask them, ask the bootcamp folk. Ask the ask the bootcamp career services person. A, have you actually learned to code? And B, if you have, have you actually been hired as a dev? If they have, then maybe you'll listen to them, but the vast majority of them haven't for them is just another job.
[00:26:57] Right? It's exactly like school career counselors in school too. Most of them are counseling you in careers. They've never come close to. So bootcamps may not be able to show you how to compete in different markets. Plus, because they're big organizations, they're fundamentally businesses first. They need to scale, so they'll only try and teach you stuff that they can get easily in the market.
[00:27:15] In other words, if they can't find a teacher for a topic, they're not gonna offer that topic, even if it's relevant. They will only offer topics where there are plenty of teachers available, which is why unfortunately a lot of bootcamps still teach Ruby. Even though no one actually builds anything new in Ruby anymore, there's plenty of old applications that run in Ruby and they run beautifully.
[00:27:32] Nothing wrong with them. Right? But you also gotta think about where the market's going and skate to where that puck is, right? Remember, your goal is not to learn to code. If that's your goal. Absolutely. Bootcamps in computer science code. Well, not all computer science school, not all of them.
[00:27:45] Surprisingly. A lot of CS grads don't know how to code, but that's a different thing, right? Computer science and coding is slightly different things, but.
[00:27:50] Your goal is not to learn to code. Your goal is to get hired as a coder.
[00:27:54] Big difference between learning how to play basketball and getting drafted into the NBA huge difference, right?
[00:28:00] So learning to code, anyone can do in their own, getting hired as a coder, some people can do in their own, but should you be doing that on your own right? You can climb Mount Everest without a guide. But if I went and climbed Mount Everest , I am hiring a guide.
[00:28:13] I'm sure I can do it alone. I'm sure there's, I I've seen blogs on the internet of people saying, here's how you do it.
[00:28:18] I'm not doing it alone. I am hiring a guide if I'm going up Everest. Same thing with career change.
[00:28:23] It's too important for you to just say. I'm gonna figure it out
[00:28:26] because nothing wrong, by the way, if you can't figure it out. But if you can't figure it out, you're basically taking a gamble on your future.
[00:28:32] And while everything in life is a gamble from marriage to kids to careers,
[00:28:36] you wanna reduce the risks of failure.
[00:28:38] So yes, climbing Mount Everest with a guide is also risky. But it's a darn site less risky with a guide than it is without a guide. That's the mentality to bring to it. Okay, so don't listen to that advice about their old scams. Yes. A lot of things are scams in the world, but to be honest, most of the time it's not a scam Most of the time is that the expectations went correct.
[00:28:57] If I'm being really honest with you, no one can actually force you to do the work. They can tell you what needs to be done.
[00:29:01] It's like my, my gym, my fitness instructor. He can show me every exercise there is, there are meal plans on my fridge, right? I still don't follow them.
[00:29:08] It's not his fault, it's my fault.
[00:29:11] Right. He's not a scam. I'm just not doing the work.
[00:29:14] How do you tell the difference between the two?
[00:29:15] Only the person who's not doing the work can be honest and admit. Now I could say most fitness professionals. Yeah. You know, they don't actually get results.
[00:29:21] The truth is, I'm not doing the work or all the work necessary. I'm doing some of the work. And not all of the work necessary.
Everyone's Journey Is Different
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[00:29:27] Okay. And now for the last piece of advice that you're probably following, which is terrible for you, is what I call the meta advice that ruins everything. Number eight, this is everyone's learning journey is different. Wow. Oh wow.
[00:29:40] If there was a more unhelpful comment in the world, please let me know, but of course it's different, right?
[00:29:46] But the consequence of this is people also say, well, don't compare yourself to others. Go at your own pace. Sure sounds nice, but it's not the world we live in, guys. It sounds supportive. It removes all the benchmarks for progress, but
[00:29:59] without comparison points, you can't tell if you're making progress.
[00:30:03] Progress is in comparison to a previous point, and then your next point, by definition, it needs comparison to points or other people and.
[00:30:12] Just wasting your time, feeling good about yourself without actually looking at the benchmarks is not serving your goal. Yes, it may make you feel good. Maybe it soos you, and I get it.
[00:30:19] I get the need for that.
[00:30:20] But if you are competing in the job market. You need points of comparison. Now, you should not be comparing yourself unreasonably, like a five-year-old should not compare themselves with a 15-year-old when it comes to physical strength. Of course not. But should a five yearold compare themselves with other five year olds at
[00:30:37] I know I'm gonna get flagged for this. Assume I didn't say 5-year-old.
[00:30:40] Let's just stick with the 15 year olds. Should a healthy 15-year-old be competing with other 15 year olds for things like, you know, track sports? Sure. It's good. It's important, right? It's important to know whether you are improving, not just against the competition, but also against yourself, but also against the competition.
[00:30:55] ' cause you have to beat them if you want that prize. That's how the world works. Now without those comparison points, you don't know Now everyone's journey is different. . This piece of advice is what people say when they don't want to admit
[00:31:06] that some approaches work better than others.
[00:31:08] That's the harsh truth. They just want you to feel that, hey, you know, this may not be something that's entirely in your control, which is also true, but putting emphasis on it takes away your power. Of course, most things in the universe aren't in your control. Of course, you don't know whether your marriage is gonna work.
[00:31:24] Of course, you don't know whether your child is gonna be healthy. Heck, you don't know if you are going to be healthy tomorrow. Okay? But there's no point focusing on that and saying, Hey, everyone's journey is different, so I'm not gonna take care of my health, or I'm not gonna take care of my relationship.
[00:31:34] No. Because it's so not in your control. You have to have a high standard of how you take care of it. You need to benchmark, am I doing a better job at my relationships? Am I be doing a better job as a parent? Am I doing a better job at my fitness, am my emotional health than I was yesterday?
[00:31:50] Because improvement is actually what makes people happy.
[00:31:52] Improvement. It's comparison can make you unhappy if you do it in stupid ways. But if you do it in an inspiring way, hey, that person can do it. Why not? I, Hey, this person is able to do amazing things. And this is what we see all the time in the inner circle. By the way, people will come and say, I'm, I'm really busy.
[00:32:06] I've got kids, I've got a, a full-time career. And yes, that's all true.
[00:32:08] 1000%. Is true, and everyone has only 24 hours a day, whether you're a parent or not, doesn't matter whether you're an executive or not, doesn't matter. Everybody gets 24 hours in a day, right? And so people come in and say, oh, you know, I'm just not able to find time.
[00:32:20] And then they'll see somebody else in the program that's made sacrifices, that's killing it, and they suddenly realize, oh, hang on, if you know Roberto could do it or if if Carly can do it, I can do it too. You know, it just suddenly becomes possible. But that happens because they're comparing and it's not a bad comparison.
[00:32:34] It's a good comparison. It's a comparison that drives learning, right? So everyone's journey is different, but using that as an excuse to say, well, therefore my results are okay, is not going to help you.
[00:32:45] It may soothe you, but it's not gonna help you.
[00:32:47] Alright, so that's it, that those are the eight pieces of really crap advice that I think a lot of people live by out there, which I actually think holds us back as career changes when we are trying to do something so hard, like career change, which is more than just learning the skill, right?
[00:33:00] For code, for example. It's more than just learning to code. You then have to get interviews. You then have to convince the interviewer that you're not as risky as the other alternative They have. You have to do well at the interview and you need to prepare for that. Interviewing is a whole different skill.
[00:33:11] Then you need to know how to negotiate. Then you need to know how to choose the right offer because you don't wanna go out of the frying pan and into the fire.
[00:33:16] It's hard, and it's so much more than just learning to code. So, and you should look at the other podcast and video on my, on my YouTube as well,
[00:33:23] on the seven Stages of Career Change, right?
[00:33:24] Learning to code is like stage two or something. Okay? There's so many pieces to this puzzle, guys. So it's really important that you have the right mindset, the right expectations, and most importantly, the right. Attitude about what is advice, what is just an opinion? What is the minimum of effort and minimum things I must do, I must do, but the minimum set, not the maximum set that I must do to, to move the needle to get closer to my goal.
[00:33:44] And once I get closer to my goal, new information will be revealed and then I can, make decisions at that point in time.
[00:33:49] It's not easy, but the more we hide behind this BS advice out there, and the more we follow it, unthinkingly.
[00:33:55] The more frustrated we get and the more disappointed we get in ourselves and the more we feel like we are losers and failures.
[00:34:00] And I know, 'cause I've been there and I've done that and I felt that way. Okay. And I felt that way. I'm not blaming other people. It's my responsibility as to what I think, but I let myself believe that stuff. That's what made me feel so bad for five years and feel like a loser, even though I had a successful track record before that.
[00:34:18] You know what I mean? So please stop that. And at the end of this video, there are gonna be I'll, I'll try and link to another video that maybe of used to you on the subject or at least related. Guys, take this seriously. It's all in your hands. It's not in your control, but every action you take is in your hands.
[00:34:30] That's your choice. And I really want you guys to take the right action because the right actions over time, lead to the right results, okay? Over night. I'll see you next time.
OUTRO
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[00:34:37] Just subscribe, you know you gotta do it.
