Why It Took Me 5 Years To Get A Coding Job (The Truth No One Tells You) #53
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[00:00:00] Hi there. Welcome to the Easiest Said Than Done podcast. I wanted to just let you know that this is a repurposed episode from a conversation I had with Brian Jenny, my partner on his excellent podcast. Develop Yourself. You guys gotta check it out. So yeah, I repurposed this few annotations, a little bit more context here and there so that you can listen to it in this channel as well.
[00:00:19] And I hope you enjoy it. This is a really good episode.
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[00:00:22] Zubin x Brian: Today on the Develop Yourself podcast, I got my buddy the other half of Parity, Zubin on the show, ex Google engineer, ex lawyer. Wisdom and bumper sticker creator perhaps in another lifetime. Today we're gonna talk about something interesting that affects our business and maybe you,
[00:00:40] if you're learning to code "the three month to job" myth.
[00:00:45] Do you remember like 2013 explosion of bootcamps? In fact, I don't think I've ever told you this story. I went to a coding bootcamp and I was hired within eight weeks. Right. And I became one of their big success stories and and they were like, yeah, he got hired in like in eight weeks. This is like, what a crazy story.
[00:01:02] Right? And this was like a common thing you'd see online or maybe even read now at some bootcamp, say, Hey, three months is all it takes to get hired. That's not reality anymore. So something's happened between now and then. I think people can kind of guess all the different things that have happened. But what's the reality now?
[00:01:18] Like, what is going on now? What is the realistic timeline for somebody, do you think? To go from zero? It's a software engineer. And is it, is it still possible? Yeah. So, it, it's absolutely still possible. It happens every day. But, you know, there was a time and again, I'm, I'm just gonna go back a little bit in history here because it's interesting 'cause I've always assumed that what happens in other industries will happen in, in software engineering because mm-hmm.
[00:01:43] Ultimately it's, it's a, it's a, it's a creature of the market, right? So, there was a time when lawyers didn't need a license to practice. Right. And that was how it was, there was a time when, you know in American history when somebody could teach themselves the law, practice law and then become the president of the United States, namely Abraham Lincoln.
[00:02:01] Right. But it, that isn't the case anymore. And that happens mm-hmm. In every single industry. So, for example, just a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to a partner at a law firm who's an old friend of mine. He's actually one of my first bosses. And he said the, the industry of law has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
[00:02:16] Why? When there was strong demand in the nineties. Mm-hmm. Huge demand, which is when I became a lawyer in response to that cultural phenomenon over the next 10 years, colleges started to ramp up their legal studies curriculum and their, you know, their jds and stuff. And so they started producing more lawyers and they produced more at the rate the companies can absorb or the law firms can absorb.
[00:02:38] Mm-hmm. And so you have simple economics 1 0 1 demand. Is growing, but supply is outstripping demand, right? So what people don't forget is that the concept of the startup, as we now know it is almost 30 years old, right?
[00:02:55] So Google, for example, started in 96, 97. Okay, let's take that as you know, well Apple will start in the seventies and all that, but you know, the modern startup with where, you know, code is everything, 30 years old. Okay. That's a long time. That is, yeah. And so the market has started to mature. So going back to your question then, Brian, yes. Anyone can do it. Three months is possibly still possible depending on the market you're in. But you know, when I spoke to algo experts, Clement, several years ago when I joined Google on his podcast, we talked about this. He said, look, even I did it in six months.
[00:03:29] But and I said, yeah, I did it at about eight, but on my fourth effort. So really it took me five years, but when I knew what I was doing, it took me eight months. Right? It's like that Chinese bamboo tree takes, it takes five years to sprout out of the ground and grow 20 feet, but it doesn't sprout out of the ground for the first three years or something.
[00:03:47] So how long did it actually take to grow? Did it take two years to grow or did it take five? It depends on how you wanna look at it, right? Yeah. 'cause if you dig the speed out of the ground, it may never grow. So it's the same thing with this. And so Clement and I were talking about, well, for, you know, if you do.
[00:03:59] 15 hours a day, or 12 hours a day. Mm-hmm. For six months. Yeah. You'll get it. Because that's the intensity of that you're doing it. Yeah. Most people think, it doesn't matter how many hours I do, they just think, oh, if I do three months you, so it's possible a dead clock will show the right time. Twice a day.
[00:04:14] Twice a day, yeah. Correct. But the market has changed and because there's so much information available and, and so many people are interested in this space, and it's one of the few spaces that still allow you to get six figure incomes very consistently. Mm-hmm. It's driven a whole lot of people into the market.
[00:04:32] Even though demand is huge. And so now employers can get to choose and be a bit more picky.
[00:04:39] Yeah. I, I like your bamboo analogy because even though at that bootcamp that I was speaking about, where I got hired, hired in quotes, in eight weeks, I had spent a year before that learning on my own. Right. So even this time, this was 2013, this was like the height, right? Yeah. And I'd spent basically a full year teaching myself until I went to this bootcamp, and they kind of got me the last step of the way and filled in some, some core gaps that I was missing mostly around what we would call market development.
[00:05:04] Yeah. That was actually where they, in the, had the most help for me especially. And I think that kind of rings true for what we, what we see with students in Inner Circle as well. Totally. And you, you're saying this is 2013. Yeah. 20 13, 20 14, something like that. In context, 2013 was a, a. Age ago in software, so I know it's only 13 years ago.
[00:05:24] That's crazy. Yeah. You know, 12 years ago for us mathematically, but that was, I think when the iPhone three was at. I think that was when apps store two was at. I think that was when Instagram was starting out. I think that was when Uber was starting to take off. Yep. Airbnb was just about starting. I think that that was their second year and they just about hit, you know, 10 paying customers, some rubbishly, small number like that.
[00:05:42] Wow. Wow. Like 2013. Was the start. Right? So me ask you this, if you did exactly that, now you're hiring manager and stuff. Mm-hmm. And if you today were to see a student or a candidate who had your level of skill in 2013, would they be your only applicant or would you be likely to find many more people better?
[00:06:05] Oh, I mean, I joke about this, but I tell people in parity inner circle all the time, you're, by the end of this program, you're gonna be much more capable. Than I was at the same stage. You're gonna know hundred percent, three times more than what I knew. You're just gonna be a much better software engineer than I was when I first started off.
[00:06:21] It took me, you know, another year on the job learning with a team of people, like kind of, you know, sitting with me physically there in an office. Just, it was like, you're right. It was a whole other lifetime. It could, feels like a whole other world back then. That just does, that world does not exist anymore.
[00:06:34] And this is the Bay Area, right? And like, it's even more shocking that in this, that market I was able to sneak in through the back door essentially. There was so much demand at that point in time. Yeah. Like so much demand. Right. And, and let's not forget, that was also the time when the IT outsourcing thing was starting to really take off.
[00:06:49] So people were outsourcing to different countries and labor market. Mm-hmm. Like it was huge and it just wasn't enough people to do it. And also Netflix wasn't really a thing in 2013. It was still a video rental store transitioning to digital. You know, it was still, I remember still getting the ones in the mail.
[00:07:04] Honestly that that's how, wow, I'm really dating myself here. And I, and I'm sure people are hearing this like, and, and the funny thing is I know people will hear this and think, oh, it was so much easier back then. And you're right, it was easier. It was not easy. I had a computer science grad also in the same program I was in.
[00:07:20] It took him a full year to get hired. In fact, most of the people in that bootcamp never got the result they wanted. Yeah. And and I think it's honestly the, the marketing was really good, right? And we, and we didn't have the data to understand right. There, there wasn't so much social media or articles and news articles.
[00:07:36] Like three months get a job. You're like, okay, I'm in. Right? Yeah. And then some people did, and you'd be the success story and most people didn't. Right? No. And then and then they'd be left with this idea like, wow, I, I guess it's just not cut out for me. Yeah. And that, that was really sad to see too. It happened to me so many times, Brian, the reason I get so angry, and I sound like a bitter old man about the three months, five months, six months thing is it cost me five years of my life.
[00:08:01] Like I'm not joking. It cost me half a decade. Okay. At that point in time, it was one seventh of my life that it cost me because of the bad marketing. Right. I was 35 at the time and I, I think that was my second or third offense. I success, I succeeded only when I was 38 and for those five years it was nasty because I just thought I was not smart enough.
[00:08:24] I was not. I was. Not capable enough. I could never do this. It was too far outta reach. Why? Yeah, because the marketing produced bad expectations, right? Mm-hmm. The marketing had made me believe, Hey, other people are doing this in three months. That's just not true. And they were making me do that. You know, and so they were like.
[00:08:42] Yeah. You know, I'm going to, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna leap into it. Other people have done it. And then every time I would go smack into a window, like face first into a window that I didn't know was there, it was humiliating. That is, that is so, that is really interesting. And, and I, and I know we, we see this so it, it shouldn't come as much of a shock, but I guess when I hear somebody like you ex-lawyer went to Google and struggling with a lot of the same things.
[00:09:07] Oh my God. What do, do you wish you had like known back then? Or what was it with it kind of like. You know, had that light bulb go off in your head that was like, oh, here's how I need to approach this. Let me try and find a way to explain it so that people understand. Right. That old thing.
[00:09:24] We always compare our day zero
[00:09:27] with somebody else's day a hundred.
[00:09:29] Mm-hmm. Is 1000% correct. Okay. Because we only see the end result, the highlight reel from other people, right? Yeah. And then we know how they appear on the outside. So, you know, before we started recording we were talking about, you know, do we ever feel, you know, complete self-doubt or like, you know, we are imposters.
[00:09:48] Yeah. And I said all the time, I feel it all the time. Not in all parts of my life, in some parts of my life. Right. And so what happens is people will see me now on the podcast, or they'll see me at, at the office or on stage or something and they'll be like, oh, you know, you don't look like you ever worry about, oh, that, that's not true.
[00:10:03] That's not true. Right? Yeah. And you're comparing your insights 'cause you know how you feel on the inside. Mm-hmm. You are comparing that with how I appear on the outside. Right. And so that's why you feel that way. And it's the same thing. I, I think you, you end up comparing with other people and you don't realize that the, the most obvious thing.
[00:10:22] Is never the only thing that's needed. Let me give you an example. How many people go to the gym because they see somebody ripped on tv, right? Oh yeah. Because everyone thinks I need to work out to look like that. The reality is, if you really want to get those kind of, that kind of definition, you don't have to work out that much.
[00:10:39] You need to change your diet, your diets so drastically. For sure. It's not the reps in the gym. Yeah. You can go to the gym twice a week mm-hmm. For 45 minutes at a time and go really hard. And not insanely hard, just hard enough to get, you know, to, to get hypertrophy to set in. And then after that it's entirely died.
[00:10:57] Yep. But it's the gyms and the supplements that get the money, because that's how they market it. Yeah. Ab rollers Crunch. Correct. Crunches. Yeah. Remember those, you know, those late night TV commercials, right? Yeah. Late night TV shows. Yep. Right. I, I, I've fallen for this because I always assumed the most obviously marketed thing was the trick and Bootcamps did the same thing because boot people will market.
[00:11:20] Anything that the consumer believes they want. They will give you what you ask for. That's what mm-hmm. That's what marketing is. Right? And what do we do with the why? Why do we call ourselves the anti bootcamp? Why do we say, Hey, you know, it's not three months, it's 12. Why do we tell people this is gonna be one of the hardest things you, you ever did?
[00:11:35] Why do I, why? Why have I been saying for five years that coding is the easy part?
[00:11:39] Because everyone's attention is on coding. The shiny thing.
[00:11:42] But the real work of climbing that damn mountain has nothing to do with coding.
[00:11:48] It has to do with this, it has to do with do you have kids? It has to do with how much time you have.
[00:11:52] It has to do with your habits, it has to do with your confidence, and so many people have life circumstances that aren't managed and they're driving the entire way with a hand brake on, and they wonder why they burnt their, their breaks out and the internet. Oof that, that's a big one. 'cause yeah, I mean, most of the people we work with and, and most people in general go to coding bootcamps aren't like 25 year olds.
[00:12:12] They're people that are a little older. They, they likely have a kid or they're starting a family and they're starting to think what's next? Right? What do I want in my career? Do I want to do this? What mean? That's what I was thinking. I was like thinking, do I wanna keep doing this for 35 more years?
[00:12:26] Because I was thinking that that's like, that's what's in front of you. Yeah. And, and I thought, I don't, and when I found coding, I'm like, if somebody paid me to do this, this is what I want to do. Now you, you and I can get pretty cerebral and I know that the people listening to are thinking, well, how long does it take?
[00:12:39] Give me a time. And, and you did, you said 12 months. And I'm sure some people are hearing that. Oh my God, that's a long time. What do you say to that person that thinks, wow, 12 months, that's, that's too long.
[00:12:51] So it's a physics problem. It's not a person problem. . How long does it take to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles?
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[00:13:54] Zubin x Brian: So it's a physics problem. It's not a person problem. . How long does it take to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles?
[00:14:01] Like six hours. Can anyone actually answer? Yeah, but you're making an assumption there. I am. What is your assumption? Traffic that you're driving? What's that? I'm driving, you know, the speed I'm driving at. If I got my kids in the car, I might drive a little slower, you know, 70 times I wanna stop for lunch.
[00:14:17] You know, it's all sorts of things, right? But the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco doesn't change whether you're driving, whether you have kids in the car, whether you're taking a bicycle, whether you're flying, whether you're taking a train, whether you're doing it by boat. This is true. I also assumed I was driving.
[00:14:28] That's right. You also assume you're driving. This is the problem with all advice out on the internet. There is a whole bunch of assumptions that have gone into the roadmap that people see on blogs, but how can I give anyone a roadmap until I know what their starting point is, what their ending point is, how they're planning to travel, and how much time are they gonna invest in that travel?
[00:14:52] Right. Yes. It's a, the investment part. Yeah. That's a huge one. Like, how much time do you have much? Because if you're, if you're, if you are unemployed, then you have a ton of time. You can probably, you maybe can get through this in three months, right? It, it's a physics problem. So for five years I've been telling people, if you give me 20 hours a week and I remove all the decision making for you.
[00:15:14] I tell you exactly what to do in those 20 hours. Mm-hmm. And you stick to it, right? It's like I said, it's a, it's a physics problem. Speed is distance divided by time, right? Yes. Or it's a distance at a time. Yeah. So it's, it's basically, yeah. I dunno, I'll just trust you on that one. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I, I'm getting confused now.
[00:15:32] But it's a physics problem. There's a formula right? Distance. A time is equal to distance divided by speed. There you go. Speed. Yeah. Right distance divided by speed. So we know what the distance is. Now the question is how fast can you go? That's, that's, that's so practical. But that's like, it's funny 'cause that never come and I think it's because we've been conditioned, like many adults you're, you're, especially if you're a little older, you know, if you're outside of school for a few years, your last memory of learning was likely in school if you haven't educated yourself or, or read like I did.
[00:16:02] And I was in a really negative state in my life at that point, and my, my ice root was of school. And I'll never forget this. One of those like JavaScript or HTML five for Dummies book. Oh yeah. Like that. I'd actually like get something out of reading this book and I read the entire thing and I sat down on my computer with like notepad plus plus or something and I'm like, what do I do next?
[00:16:26] Yeah, no, it was, I went through the same. I, I went to the same trap, so I wanted to be, the first idea that I had, like a lot of people is I wanted to make, make a mobile app. And I was thinking, oh, Android, you know, that's much more accessible and friendly, so I'll make an Android app. I had never programmed in my life, right?
[00:16:41] And so I was like, yeah, everyone's saying, well, I built this app. I built, remember 20 13, 20 14? Oh my God. Yeah. Floating everyone. There should be an app for this. Remember that saying there should be an app for this. Mm-hmm. There should be an app for this. Yeah. So Zin was part of that hype cycle and said, oh, I'm gonna make it happen, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
[00:16:56] So I mm-hmm. Got a Java book and you know, back then, people don't realize this, but in 2013, YouTube was about six years into its maturity cycle. Like it had started in 2005, acquired by Google in 2007. It was only six years. Really old at scale at that point time, like CAD videos, you know? Yeah. Exactly.
[00:17:12] That's what it had, right? Yeah. And so, okay, so I, you know, tried to look at YouTube. I'm not a lot there, there was some stuff there. Then I did some Coursera move, blah, blah, blah. Okay? Then I realized, shoot, I cannot build on Android unless I understand what a framework is. So I got into the, what's the framework?
[00:17:26] What's the library? And I was so confused because none of the words makes sense to me. And then I'm like, I can't actually write on Android if I, until I know Java. So then I bought a Java, and what book did I buy? Learn Java in 24 hours. Now there are are two very, yeah, but this is clever marketing. This is why I keep telling you.
[00:17:43] Yeah. All the folks listening out there,
[00:17:44] marketers will tell you what you want to hear.
[00:17:46] I wanted to hear fast and learn. Mm-hmm. What I did not know is two things. One is the book assumes that you have some programming knowledge. It'll tell you you don't need to, but you do. Right, because you're learning a language and of course, yeah.
[00:18:01] Programming generally works. Mm-hmm. Others, you won't understand a lot of the words that are in there. And the second thing is it had 24 chapters, which they think should take you an hour to read. One hour each. Yep. And I fell for it. Assuming you write no code or anything like that, you don't write any code.
[00:18:16] You just literally read the words on and you understand everything. Right? Yeah. So cool. They're not wrong. You can learn Java in 24 hours if you did that, but that's not how learning works. Yeah, right. And so Zubin gave up. That was I think, experience number two, the first time CI found it too hard.
[00:18:32] You know, all that. Anyway, so all this to say that it's a physics problem that. If people ask me today, how long will it take me? I ask two questions. Where do you wanna go? Exactly. Define to me, and most people don't know, most people are like, oh, I want a developer role. I want a quota role. I, when I was at Google, I counted 42 different types of technical roles.
[00:18:51] Yeah. So I like, that's like saying I wanna go to Canada, Brian. Okay, great. I, I'm willing to bet you don't want to go to most of Canada. I'm willing to bet you wanna go to few places in Canada, maybe seven, you know, but most of Canada you wanna miss, right? So you have the wrong goal. Yeah, you have the wrong destination, so you can't tell me that.
[00:19:09] Okay. And the num number three thing is saying how fast are you gonna travel, which is how many hours per week if I took away all decisions. And I give you the roadmap, you still have to drive that distance or fly that distance or some walk, whatever. I don't care what's your speed? If you can't do the 20 hours per week, you're not going to get to the about 800 to 1200 hours, depending on the person and the starting point and their goal, right?
[00:19:33] I've calculated this for years now why do I say that? Because you can learn to code in about 200 hours. Maybe two 50 you can learn. Seems, seems reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And then you have another problem. You have to get good enough to be professional at it. Yes, I can learn to play tennis in a weekend.
[00:19:53] I am not gonna be playing as a pro athlete, even locally for at least seven months, maybe 12. And at my age, probably never. Right. Yeah. I, I think that's a big, and, and people don't realize this I spoke with a person you also interviewed on your podcast Alene Lerner. Oh, Alene Learn interviewing io.
[00:20:11] Yeah. Amazing. I can't wait to release that, but she has, she has
[00:20:15] cold, hard data on this. Interviews have
[00:20:17] gotten more difficult. Anybody that's done a coding interview in the last five, 10 years can tell you, if you did a coding interview 10 years ago and you did one last week, you know that they've significantly increased in difficulty.
[00:20:29] Hundred percent. Right? And then, like, equipping people now, like through, through our program or through any program, you're, you're going to have to compete on this market. And, and I think that's the, the tough love people need. That's like, yes, maybe it'll take you 12 months, maybe it'll take you six months, but putting in this number of hours is gonna be necessary for you just to be competitive or else you've just wasted your money.
[00:20:49] If I'm just being honest. Yeah, completely. And, and this is the thing, like I Ilene's got the data because she was, you know, an ex engineer turned to recruiter and all that. Yeah. So she's got a, and, and the reality is this has been known for decades because I think it was in the eighties, a study came out that showed clearly how the average fifth grader in the eighties was about 20 times smarter on paper than a person of the same age, 80 years prior.
[00:21:18] Oh my God. Which makes sense. It makes, I mean, it makes sense. It's kind of crazy to think, but I mean, dude, yeah, yeah, it makes sense though, right? It makes sense. And so, and, and then in the nineties and, you know, the early two thousands, again, it came out that, oh, I actually, that theme 2012 or something, and I was reading in one of the books on, on, on poker psychology and it talks about the top 20 poker players on average in 2015 were way better than the top 20 poker players on average in the nineties.
[00:21:47] Oh wow. Okay. But this is true in sports. You look at the kind of, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Skateboard do. Now you look at the kind of things people can do in extreme sports, things that were impossible 40 years ago and now mainstream. I see myself on his bike and I'm like, what? How are you doing this? Like it would've blown everybody's minds 30 years ago when I was riding a bike and watching him do this stuff.
[00:22:04] I'm like, this is nuts. And all his friends do it too. It's like, yeah, the bar just gets risen. It just keeps ri, it just keeps rising exponentially higher. Correct, because knowledge is much more of fluid. So if you want it, it's always been there. And now that somebody else has set the bar, you know what's possible.
[00:22:17] This is what I call in the program, the Banister Effect, right? People thought it was medically impossible to run the four minute mile. They thought your heart rate explode. Roger Banister was a doctor, he was a medical person, and he said, oh, I'm not so sure about that. And he's going against the medical orthodoxy of his day where they said, you're crazy.
[00:22:33] Your heart's gonna explode in your chest. And he's like, not so sure. I think I'll try it out anyway. And he did it. And when he did it. So a, a barrier that had not been broken in humanities history before that got broken more than 10,000 times in the next five years, including the high school kids. Oh my God.
[00:22:48] The only thing that's changed is people realize it's possible. So yeah, a hundred percent. It's possible. You just need the plan. And Roger Banister didn't just say, I'm gonna break the barrier and run out of his dorm room and start running. He trained for three years and kept failing, and then he done did it and then he killed it.
[00:23:06] Oh, he believed it. Yeah. That's a really cool story that that's, that is nuts. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm a bit of a runner, a four minute mile. It's crazy to think that, that, that psychological effect of just knowing that it's possible and then saying, boom, I can do it now. And I, I hope people take away an ideally and optimistic look, I tend to be pretty optimistic, and I know you do too.
[00:23:24] Practically optimistic. I'm not one of those like, all roses, like, oh yeah, you know, it's just gonna, you, you can absolutely do it, but I'm like. You, this is a possible path to do. It's just that your expectations need to be aligned with reality at this point. And so what do you see some of the biggest difference, maybe like technically with the expectations now?
[00:23:46] I mean, I can speak on this too, but like what are you seeing the technical expectations that have increased or are different now in 2025 than even like, just, just say pre ai. Like, there's like a clear divide now. It's like, oh, that's a big deal. Pre AI and ai, like what's, what's the difference? What do developers need to know now?
[00:24:03] So I think more than ever what I'm seeing is what people think is that, oh,
[00:24:08] "AI makes me better and faster".
[00:24:10] What they don't realize is it makes everybody better and faster
[00:24:14] at some things, right? Mm-hmm. So it's not really a competitive advantage because it's, the playing field is completely flat when it comes to that.
[00:24:22] The people who have the advantage are the people who know enough. To really get phenomenal use cases about ai, out of ai right. Or phenomenal functionality out of ai. So just yesterday I had lunch with my ex-colleague from Google and he told me how he's building this thing and it's, you know, made him like six times faster.
[00:24:39] But I said, tell me about your prompts. And he's like, mm-hmm. Oh my God. They are so targeted. They're so controlled, okay? Because I'm in control. I'm not delegating, I'm not delegating decisions, I'm not delegating design. I'm not, none of that. I'm using it in a very controlled fashion. So what's changed now is that because the overall standard of the market has improved, and don't forget, most people who are making hiring decisions now are, let's say in their mid thirties in tech.
[00:25:09] It's a very young industry, right? Yeah, for sure. Those folks grew up in tech without ai. And they grew up really cutting their teeth on the old school way of doing it. So their fundamentals are very solid. And I can say this also, some of them, their fundamentals are weak compared to the engineers who grew up in the nineties, because I seen these guys at Google, right?
[00:25:30] Yep. They cannot use a VS. Code ID because they're like, it's too busy. I just want my Vim text editor. Right? Yep. But they know how everything works at the bite level, like it's incredible. Right? Yeah. So every generation gets a little bit softer with the tools. Mm-hmm. But more productive. Way more productive.
[00:25:47] Mm-hmm. And that's okay. Now, so what's changed now for, for aspiring developers is because hiring managers are much more sophisticated, like you said, than they were 15 years ago. Simply because the industry has matured best hiring practices, so. 15 years ago, no one was talking about the big tech hiring practices.
[00:26:05] Now all companies try to hire the big adopt the big tech hiring, adopt this practice's crazy. Even if they don't need it, they unfortunately adopt it. Yeah. What does that do? It makes, we've gone from interviews in smaller companies being two runs. Do we like it takes six in your code to six? Yeah. Okay.
[00:26:20] That's a 300% jump right there. I mean, you know a factor right there. Right. Okay. So all of that has changed. People can't actually get by with doing less. They need to do a lot more because like we said, just five minutes ago, on average, people today are better than they were 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. And that has always been the history of humanity in every field.
[00:26:41] Right? And so you can't be less than how people were 10 years ago. You have to be better. And to be better with the human brain, you need to invest a bit more time in a proper plan. That's, that's the big one too. 'cause I think that people don't realize, like, I met a really great guy. I don't wanna say his name because I hope I'm not being critical at all.
[00:27:01] But and I've met a few people like this self-taught and I respect anybody that's fully self-taught. I mean, I used to claim self-teach. I mean, I went to a coding boot camp and I've gone to other programs. Anyway, anyway self-taught dude finally got hired and took him three years. Now to me that was.
[00:27:18] Still really cool. I mean, amazing that he did it with like zero real, like a formal traditional education. At the same time, I saw the mistakes he made because I met him and I saw, what are you learning? And it was everything. Everything. And set him on a more proper in general. But I just thought, man, imagine if you had a plan, right?
[00:27:41] Like a vetted plan from somebody that knew what they were doing. You could have reached this destination much quicker. And I think that's a lot of times when people don't get, 'cause they say, I could, I could learn all this stuff myself. I'm like, yes, you absolutely could. Yeah. And then I'd wonder, do you want to, is that a path you really want to take?
[00:27:58] You know? And, and that's, you know, it's funny you raised that. So that's kind of what I ended up putting into the Inner Circle program because I'm 100% self-taught, but mm-hmm.
[00:28:10] The person that made the difference for me was my non-technical coach.
[00:28:13] Interesting. Okay. And she was the one that got me the results in those eight months.
[00:28:16] Because she said, you're thinking about this all wrong. You're thinking about this as coding is special. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's a skill. It's not, it's a fricking skill.
[00:28:25] All skills come from the consistent application of directed effort
[00:28:31] over an unreasonable amount of time.
[00:28:33] Also known as deliberate practice.
[00:28:36] Yeah. Not practice. Deliberate practice. Yeah. Right. So she's like, what are you doing that's so narrow that you'll be excellent at it when you apply it for 30 hours? That one thing. Damn. And so that's how I've started learning. That's how I did it in eight months, is I did the opposite, which we now teach in the Inner Circle program as the minimum effective dose.
[00:29:00] That came from her. Oh, wow. That's, that is really insightful. I mean, I, I learned this by complete error and then I, but learning how to code actually kind of just taught me how to learn. Yeah. 'cause now I feel a lot more confident learning. Like it, I, I see it spilled over to other areas of my life. Maybe, I don't know if exercise or coding was the, the, like the main lever, but something, it triggered something inside of me.
[00:29:22] I'm like, okay, this is how, like doing these things, having some faith that doing, showing up every day. I'm gonna get better. 'cause even when I sucked at coding, and I did for years, actually you, I mean I still, I finally, after 11 years, I feel pretty confident as a coder, but still, you know, I mean it's long, 11 years later, but yeah.
[00:29:38] But yeah, that was the thing, just showing up every day, being consistent. I'm like, I'm like, I know that this will work if I'm consistent. And then I saw that applied to every area of my life. Then I thought, okay, well maybe I can do anything. If I'm consistent, I can probably be good at whatever if I, to some level, right?
[00:29:53] Like I might not be the best at everything at all, but I'll be decent at, at everything that I really apply myself to. And dude, this happened at every level. Let's just share with the folks, okay? Because, so Brian and I, you know, we have a coach our ourselves, like coaches have coaches. That's how it always is.
[00:30:06] Yeah. You know, we learn people better than you. And so what did. What did Oli do on our call? We had four questions that we thought, oh my God, it's so important. We need to talk to him about. Yeah. Right. We just zoned in on one. He like ignored everything else. Yep, yep. That was really interesting. What works?
[00:30:21] That's what works. And just do that one thing till you get it right. There's no point building all these castles in the air till you get each foundation eats. I mean, everybody tries to build a penthouse before they've got the ground floor. It's ridiculous. We all do it, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it is funny.
[00:30:36] And then I, and I hope people listening to this too as we, as we kind of close off is, is that yes. Like, there, this is possible. We're not, we're not talking about, you know. Even something as difficult as like losing a hundred p actually it's probably right on par with something like losing a hundred pounds or getting a six pack or something like that.
[00:30:54] This is almost that same level of effort, almost that same idea, the persistence, dedication, and the consistency, and also just knowing what to do. Like, I, I keep thinking about weight loss. I remember losing a bunch of weight a few years ago and and I had been trying for, for years. I was pretty overweight from like years of years of abuse, right.
[00:31:12] And, and I was like, what do I do? I'll try this weird fad died I saw on tv. In retrospect, it makes zero sense. Yeah. And then I met one dude. Who just told me, just do this. I paid him a bunch of money and I lost all the weight. I was like, oh, that's what, and that was the thing. Right. And it's not the thing that everyone talks about in the billboards and the pamphlets.
[00:31:30] No. And the, you know, it's not that thing. Right. But what it is depends on you. Yeah. And, and this is why. It's really important for everyone. No two people have the same problem. There are broadly five classes of problems that people have. It'll be around mindset, psychology. It'll be around time. It'll be around energy.
[00:31:44] It'll be around beliefs and values, and it'll be around knowing what to do. Like it's, it's these buckets and everybody is going to have at least two out of those five, four or five things that're going wrong. And it's not the same for, some people have all five, right? Some people have three, some people have just one.
[00:32:00] Yeah. But. We cannot know until we spend the time with you saying, okay, this is the reason why you are not likely to succeed. Why do I do? The risk factors for every student in the capacity is even with the plan when you're driving fast in the road, if you have a pothole, you will break your axle. It's not enough to know which way you're going on in a car and, and just keep driving.
[00:32:21] You need to watch out for those damn potholes and steer around them. Every student, I have to sit with them and say, these are risk factors. I've gotten to know you over the last, you know, 40, 50 hours. These are risk factors. Steer around these, right? Here's your plan, but here's your risk factors. Right? And that takes time to get to know that you have to help people steer around.
[00:32:38] It's of course everything's possible. Do the right thing at the right time, in the right way. How can you not? It's cause and effect. How can you not get the result? Yeah. And I think that's the, the really the most powerful thing that I've seen in the Inner Circle program. It's like. It's the consistency.
[00:32:55] People come out of that, that, that first eight weeks, especially like, and I don't want to, you know, sound all hokey and corny, but like people describe it as life changing. And in many ways it is. It's a pretty transformative experience. Yeah. People go deeper into their own thoughts, patterns, beliefs, fears, doubts they probably ever have.
[00:33:12] And getting it out on paper, coming up with a super solid plan. And that's why you see people in the program actually doing the work, which is honestly the secret. Like, if I think of one secret over the years, if people are like, what's, like, what separates the person that got the job from the person that didn't, I'm like.
[00:33:28] There's, it's just consistency. It sounds so corny and lame, but I'm like, that's literally it. That is literally the secret sauce. Yeah. Computer science grads fail, and I've seen French fry cooks succeed. It's like, oh, succeed. And consistency is not just just doing the thing because life is real, it'll, it will get in the way.
[00:33:47] You know? So you have to manage all these balls in the air so that you can be consistent. You have to free yourself to be consistent. And, and you know, for folks who sort of listen to us and say, oh, you know, you guys know how to do this, you know, these transformative outcomes. It took me two years of trial and error to get them.
[00:34:03] I mean, and this is, you know, 'cause I've been in the program before you and I joined up for five years, right? Mm-hmm. So the first two years I wasn't getting these outcomes. You know, I was getting similar outcomes, but it wasn't like this. I had to learn how to coach different types of people around the world in their context with their culture in, it was hard because I only knew what I knew at that point in time.
[00:34:25] You know? I mean, the program was obviously cheaper than as well, but even that to consistent, focused very, very minimalistic sets of effort. Right, and it took two years to get to that level. And then for three something years now we've been getting these sort of transformative outcomes. And if people wanna look at it, they can look at it on the Parity website.
[00:34:43] All the videos have been, you know, put up there. But people will just talk and tell you what, what they've went through and it's, you know, who is it who said that? How you do one thing is how you do everything right? The inverse of that is when you fix some of the fundamental patterns in your life, all other outcomes will improve all.
[00:35:03] Right? Mm-hmm. People in the program have had better results with their therapist. They've had better results fitness wise. They've had better sleep, they've had better relationships with their partners and their family while learning to go. Yeah, that, that's the really pretty incredible part. I think that's a, it's a, it's a really unique program in that way.
[00:35:23] I mean, I've never seen really anything like it. And the results show, I mean, it's, it's nice to see people like, that's, that's the thing. It's like that's, that solves actually the hardest problem. 'cause curriculum has never been the hardest problem. It's always been giving people like, do the thing and don't quit.
[00:35:36] Before you get the result that you want. And then we have a bunch of people who, you know, get their job offers, they win hackathons, they go and, you know, they work as, you know, tech leads in, in, in tiny startups. All of that happens too. But of course it's going to happen when you fix the cause the effects will follow.
[00:35:53] Like it's just physics, you know? Yeah, that's a good way to put it, man. A really wonderful conversation. Always enjoy speaking with you. Thanks a lot, Zubin. Any last words before we take off? No, I suppose I just tell people that, you know, don't let AI fool you into thinking that it's easier. It, it's different.
[00:36:14] Mm-hmm. The industry will change all in all knowledge work is going to change. But the future will belong to people and this is a good thing for career changes. There was a time when all year to be was an Uber technical nerd to succeed. I think that era is gone. Yeah, for sure. I think career changer have a big advantage now 'cause I'm seeing it in my work.
[00:36:33] Mm-hmm. Is if you have other skills, especially the softer skills, because the technical stuff can, a lot of the hard things can be done with the ai, with the right supervision. And supervision is a human skill. It's not a machine skill, right? That's why we have supervised machine learning is 'cause they can't supervise themselves.
[00:36:50] We need to supervise them. So if, if we get good at those sort of judgment skills and combine that with technical skills, I, I genuinely believe the future software engineer is, is a very well-rounded personality. A hundred percent. Yeah. I could not agree more. Excellent take. Thanks again man. Thank you dude.
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