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Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
Welcome to the podcast that helps you develop your skills, your habits, your network and more, all in hopes of becoming a thriving Software Engineer.
Develop Yourself
#237 - Don't Learn to Code for the Money, But If You Do...
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You want to learn to code because you want more money. Let's just be honest about it.
First off - there are many other ways to make a desirable income without learning a difficult skill like coding.
You can do sales.
You could be a product manager.
Maybe start an illegal gambling den?
Have you considered selling large quantities of drugs perhaps?
If you do decide to create software for money, just realize you may never crack six figures, you're likely to be laid off at least once and you have to keep up with technology which changes fast AF.
Is anyone still here?
Here's the great news - if you do enjoy coding and are willing to do things that make you uncomfortable, you can have dramatic financial upside.
I have a process I've been following to maximize my earning potential as a developer and stay employed which I want to share with you.
Shameless Plugs
🧠 (NEW) Parsity's The Inner Circle Program - a highly customized roadmap to take you from 0 to hired. For career changers who want to pivot into software.
💼 Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Google, Brian-look-a-like)
👂🏻Easier Said Than Done Podcast
Already a developer? Check out 👉 Not Another Course
Serious about joining Parsity? Schedule a call with me ☎️
Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. So this year, I've worked at three different companies. In the last 12 months, I've worked at three separate companies as a software engineer. I don't recommend this. It's been incredibly stressful. If I'm being honest, in the last 12 months, I've worked at three separate companies as a software engineer. I don't recommend this. It's been incredibly stressful, if I'm being honest, going through interviews, negotiations, having to figure out what's the best place for me and my career goals. What are my career goals? Trying to think through all these things and, at the same time, run a business where I help coach other software engineers and get them in the industry. But it's taught me a whole lot and it's made me think a lot about the game of employment in this game that we play all the time that we might not even know we're playing. So I want to talk about one of your favorite subjects, probably, which is money and how to make a lot of it with writing code. This is not some get richrich-quick scheme. In fact, if you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. I will tell you that learning to code might be the slowest get-rich-quick scheme you could ever do. But if you're still listening and you wanna learn to code because you want more money, just be honest about it. That's fine. First off, there's a lot of ways to make a desirable income without learning a difficult skill like coding. You could do sales. You could be a product manager. Maybe you could start an illegal gambling den. Have you considered selling drugs or something I don't know? Pick one. You could do all sorts of terrible things and get money. You know, in New York you could own a hot dog stand and make six figures. So who knew right? But if you do decide to create software for money, just realize a few things. You may never crack six figures, you're likely to be laid off at least once, and you have to keep up with technology which changes fast. Af. The side effects include imposter syndrome, know-it-allism, hair loss look at me as example A and potentially fatal singleness. That's it. So don't learn to code. I hope you're happy. End of episode.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that I've scared off all the get rich quick people, let's talk about coding money. So I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. I've been working in software for about 10 years now. When I started, I had two kids. Really small condo was just getting sober. My Now, when I started, I had two kids really small condo was just getting sober. My girlfriend and I shared a small condo with a roommate. I made less than $60,000. This isn't really long ago, by the way. This isn't like 20, 30 years ago. I'm not that old. This was 10, 11 years ago, maybe 12, 13 years ago at this point right, it wasn't that long ago In the Bay Area, making less than 60K. I wasn't living in poverty either. By the way, I really hate when I hear that, oh, you can't live in the Bay Area unless you make half a million dollars. But since then, my highest salary that I took home was over a quarter million. It was $280,000. That include bonuses and stock options. My baby mom she bought a few properties along with me and our family and we've started a few businesses also. That's a 400% increase from where I started and a world of difference between my old life and the life I have now.
Speaker 1:I'm not the best coder and I'm definitely not the worst. I take this job seriously. I genuinely enjoy writing code. I want to see myself get better, even after 10 years. I feel like I have so much more to learn and I'm enjoying doing it. Unfortunately, though, most people who get into software just for the money don't ever make much of it.
Speaker 1:Here's why Coding is a hobby slash profession. Do you think doctors diagnose patients outside of work? How many office workers do you know that practice Excel on the weekends workers? Do you know that practice excel on the weekends? Do you know any cashiers who like to ring people up for fun in competitions? Probably not right. As a coder, however, you're basically expected to work outside of work. I know, crazy right? Most developers code as a hobby and a profession. If you look at Stack Overflow's yearly survey, you'll see that over half of software developers code as a hobby, including me.
Speaker 1:Developers are also judged by the number of commits they make to things like GitHub, basically a big repository that saves all your changes in the clouds that's public. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine any other career where people will look at what you do outside of work as an indication of what you're gonna do in work? They look at something that's public on the internet and say, well, what have you done in GitHub? And if you have nothing that can actually work against you, I think that's ridiculous, but absolutely it can hurt you on the job hunt. It is ridiculous, but hey, this is the game we are playing.
Speaker 1:In order to just stay relevant, you kind of have to learn outside of work. Is anyone still there? Are you still listening? Here's the great news, though If you do enjoy coding and you're willing to do the things that make you uncomfortable, you can have a dramatic financial upside. Here's a step-by-step guide to maximizing your income through a career in software, based on what I've done over the years. Of course, this is biased. Of course this won't work for everybody, but here is a plan of action that you can follow if you want, that I am doing right now. I'm living this plan. I know this works because I've done it. I've seen other people do it, I've taken things from smarter people and people in positions that I wanna be in, and I've mapped out my career according to them. I'm still living it, so I can't tell you what the end result will be, because I'm in the middle of this thing. But step one optimize for learning at first. Here's a cliche that's lame, but it's true.
Speaker 1:In tech, learning is earning. Take the first job you can. We tell this to people at Parsity. We say don't be too picky. Don't go for the big, huge tech company at first. Go somewhere ideally a startup with smart people. Try to learn as much as possible.
Speaker 1:The beautiful thing about a startup is you can learn deployments. You can learn testing. You can learn deployments. You can learn testing. You can learn authentication. You can do DevOps stuff. You can shadow the engineers who seem really smart or just do things that you think are interesting. If you do all this and you learn as much as you want to and as much as you can possibly do in that first few years, instead of just coasting and collecting a check, you're going to learn it twice the speed. Most importantly, learn a skill outside of coding. How does the business get customers? What's their biggest pain point? Make it your goal to be able to explain the business clearly and articulate how what you do makes them money or saves them money. More on this later, because learning to speak business is gonna be your superpower. But put a pin in that we're gonna come back to that.
Speaker 1:Step two leave that freaking job. Didn't think that was coming. Did you Forget that first salary. Forget that first salary. Throw it in the trash. Take peanuts, take whatever you need to to scrape by and then leave right around the 12-month mark. I'm going to get to why in a second. Maybe they even pay you really well, maybe you even like these nerds, and fine. If that's the case, just stay.
Speaker 1:Here's one big thing I've learned over the years. As cliche and as lame as this sounds, it's not all about the money. It can't be. Life has to be about more than money. Seriously, I've never met a person that made a bunch of money and said I'm done now. You know what? Getting more money leads to Wanting more money. It's kind of like cocaine the more you get, the more you want to do right. So you get more money and you think you know what? 500,000 was great, but what if I had a million? And then you meet people with a million. They're like yeah, but this guy has two million. I'm telling, met millionaires and I'm shocked that some of them are still unhappy and they're chasing more and more and more and more. Anyway, you don't have to leave your job. If you like it, just stay there. Be comfortable with it, that's fine. But you have to be able to leave. This means you need to interview at least two times per year. If you cannot pass these interviews, this is a sign to study more.
Speaker 1:I spent around $10,000 learning data structures and algorithms three years into my career because I realized how much I stood to gain. It was simple math for me and I would do this too. If you're considering Parsity or something like that, just do some simple math. I spent $10,000 to learn data structures and algorithms. I made $120,000 at the time. This meant I could interview at companies like Google or Meta or really top startups in the Bay Area where the salaries were more near the $200,000 range. I was at least thinking 160 was at the low range, right? An offer from a really low-tier company probably put me around the 150 range in the SF Bay Area at the time.
Speaker 1:To me, that was a no-brainer and also very necessary insurance, because there is no such thing as stability, right? We know that companies are not stable anymore. This is not like when our mom and dad had jobs in the 70s and 80s and 90s, when they could stay at a company for 30, 40 years. That's just not the case anymore. There's really nowhere to hide, so the only good defense is a really good offense. You want to avoid a scenario where you're unexpectedly without a job and you have zero ability to get a scenario where you're unexpectedly without a job and you have zero ability to get a job, and this is, unfortunately, the situation of your average LinkedIn power user. Please don't hate me for saying that. I'm just saying right, this is.
Speaker 1:The issue with most people is that they get hit by the market or they get hit by an unexpected layoff and they're like oh my God, I am screwed. I don't know how to interview. I haven't posted ever and I have two connections. What am I going to do? I'm going to just spam the easy apply button and I'm kind of screwed now. Now I'm at the mercy of the market. Now we're all ultimately at the mercy of the market, but the best time to look for work is when you're working. Yet most people refuse to do this because it sucks right. No one likes to interview. Like it or not, interviewing is the highest paying skill you can have. If you get good at it and you get good at finding and passing interviews when you don't have to, you'll have the most important thing in the whole world options.
Speaker 1:Step three take the big fish small fish approach to your career. I actually talk about this in an article. I have this theory about careers being a big fish in a small pond and then being a small fish in a big pond. So I think about it a little bit like this If you have a glass of water, it's really valuable. In the desert, it's not so valuable, like I don't know, at a water store. Fill in the analogy. However, you want to right there, so I don't actually recommend job hopping excessively. However, you want to right there, so I don't actually recommend job hopping excessively. I think you should stay at one company long enough to make an impact, pick up some valuable skills and increase your value. But here's the thing all value is not created equal. Just like that glass of water is worth a lot of money in the desert, right At a massive company like Google, I'm actually not worth much.
Speaker 1:I don't bring any particular expertise that they don't have 10 times over Now at a startup where I've made most of my career and they need a developer who can contribute to the product and help with marketing and start from scratch and is really autonomous and doesn't need any handholding. I'm a great catch right. I've learned marketing and sales by running my own business. I can bring that knowledge At the last company I was at. I was not only writing code from scratch and getting features out the door from day one. I was also helping with things like video editing or some marketing or talking about landing pages or talking about SEO value. These are things that I learned over the years running my own businesses, so that was a huge benefit to them, and I was hired at a big, boring Fortune 500 company about five years ago after working at some really fast-paced startups.
Speaker 1:I went from being a pretty average senior engineer at a really fast-paced startup where I was like, okay, this guy's pretty good, he's pretty decent. Now I went to this other company. I was like a leader. What was normal to me was like magic to these people. They didn't write unit tests. I was like I really know unit tests really really well. I taught the whole team unit tests. They were doing two-week release cycles. I'm like we can deploy our code daily. They had never done a hackathon to generate ideas. I'm like cool, let's do that.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I kind of didn't grow much at this company. I was a big fish in a small pond, but my salary blew up. I learned how to manage people. I leveraged my expertise and trust to get into management where I got stocks and bonuses, higher base salary more than any other small startup could offer. I'm like great, I'm set right. I'm like I'm not going to play this game anymore. I'm not going to go around job hopping, I'm going to stay here and maybe retire.
Speaker 1:And then I got laid off. Isn't that funny how life works. I got a company and I was ready to take on the world and then boom out of nowhere. Out of nowhere, I got laid off. So sad, too bad. And then I went back to being a small fish, because I'm like you know what? I've coasted for too long. I need to go to somewhere where I'm really getting stretched to the limit, right.
Speaker 1:So I went to a really small startup. It was all people that were at Meta and Amazon and all this stuff and I'm like, oh my God, how the hell did I get in here? And so I'm with these incredibly talented people and I was like the worst engineer on the team. The team was, by the way, three people. So being the worst out of three is like hey, you know, it's not hard to be the worst. I also learned more in that last nine months than in the last four years combined.
Speaker 1:So I'll let you guess what my next move has been. I'm in a company now where I'm a bit of a big fish. I'm more like a medium fish. It's a really small team. They lack expertise and knowledge in a certain framework like Next and React, and they don't really know the web stuff. I know that pretty well. I'm there kind of setting the standard for what we'll be doing on the web, and now I'm a bit more of a big fish in a small pond.
Speaker 1:I do this on purpose. Right, I could have gone to a really big company. In fact, I worked at a really big company before going to this small startup and I realized this is not following my strategy. I'm in a big company where I'm coasting again, I'm learning nothing again. Is this really a good move for my career? And I knew it wasn't. Even though I was only one month in, I could see the writing on the wall. I'm like man, if I stay here, I could grow old and maybe, if I'm lucky, make a career here and just stay here forever. This really big company, no-transcript actually the safest bet. It was actually safer than going to the big big company. So let's get to the last step.
Speaker 1:Step four I need you to understand something Coding is never going to be enough. It was never enough to begin with. That lie. You've been told that, oh, you needed to know how to do as code. That's never been enough. I strongly suggest you learn things like public speaking and writing.
Speaker 1:You thought I was gonna say AI or something, didn't you? No, no, no, no, no, no. You can learn some AI, if that means learning cursor, and some tools, if that means learning cursor and some tools. I am seeing just how bad this is getting. There is so much vibe-coded crap out there right now that it is silly that if you're just basically what I consider a mediocre software engineer, I think at this point you actually have a major advantage over a lot of these so-called vibe coders. I'm seeing this in real time, just how bad this is for the industry, and I see a rude wake-up call happening very, very soon. So, yes, learn AI, learn how to leverage it in your work. Then learn how to actually software engineer, because that's the only way to actually make money in this career. It's not by vibe coding crap, I guarantee you, if you think that's the actual way you're gonna do it, then I don't know what to tell you. Just turn this off. But if you can learn the skill of how to articulate yourself, that can translate into much larger sums of cash.
Speaker 1:And here's why Leadership positions require strong communication. Writing is the simplest way to scale your impact, and I mean like writing documentation, writing articles, writing newsletters, writing posts on LinkedIn. If you can write and expand and share your knowledge with other people, this is a great way to scale your impact. It's way better than you talking to one person at your job or teaching one-on-one or anything like that. If you wanna scale your impact, the best way to do it, in my opinion, is to write, and the next best way is to learn how to speak publicly. Maybe you could flip those around, depending on how you feel about it.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of developers who can write good code. There are way fewer who can explain what they do to a non-technical audience. There's even fewer who can captivate that audience. Public speaking, by the way, is a learnable skill. Join Toastmasters, do a Lunch and Learn. Watch videos on how to speak in public. Write for your company's blog or for your own. If you combine public speaking with software engineering and marketing, you have an incredible set of skills that most developers just can't compete with. It's going to set you up for positions where you're not judged solely on your technical skills Basically, any role past senior software engineer.
Speaker 1:When you want to get past senior and you want to be like CTO, or even tech lead or engineering manager or all these roles that you think are so far beyond your scope, you have to realize that at a certain point no one cares about the code. They care about the systems that you're going to design. They care about your leadership stories. They care about all the war stories that you have. So have a career full of good stories. Go chasing those fires. Realize that all the stuff you're dealing with now are the stories you're going to build up to tell later that are going to help you in the interviews and beyond. Forget the interview. They're going to help you actually do the job. So do all the things that you're freaking out about. These are the things you want to chase and do, and then you're going to be able to really be in those leadership positions rather than just faking it.
Speaker 1:So a little bit of job hopping actually is necessary. You want a breadth of experience. And job hopping, by the way, doesn't need to be at different companies, it can be within the same company. Maybe you go from QA into software engineering, into DevRel, into, you know, engmanager, into whatever. If you can move around within different positions within the same organization, that's a great way to do it.
Speaker 1:And I lied, there actually is one last step. There's one last very important step that everybody seems to forget Don't inflate your lifestyle. I knew this dude who got his first developer job. He went from 50K to well over 100K. Do you know what he bought? A Mercedes Benz.
Speaker 1:Do I need to tell you why this is a bad idea? What do I really need to tell you? Come on, come on, man, just think. I've met software engineers in the SF Bay Area who can quote unquote barely get by on $300,000 a year. They probably laugh when they see my salary. They're probably like that's nothing. That's nothing. I can't tell you how much I can't stand this narrative. Here's some quick facts for you.
Speaker 1:Revolving around money, right, because too many of us are on TikTok or Instagram, youtube shorts, looking at the kind of money that we see floating around out there, which is ridiculous. We think that, like you know, half a million is normal. I saw this one guy saying how a quarter million wasn't really that much. The average salary in California is around 30 bucks an hour or $62,000 a year. Less than 20% of all Americans make over 100,000. Those are some sobering facts for you.
Speaker 1:I know it's tempting to buy a fancy car, eat out more, take extravagant vacations, shop at boutique grocery stores. Here's my hot take Don't Within reason. I don't think there's any point in chasing money if you don't have time to enjoy it. Personally, for me, the biggest change in my life is that I don't have to constantly worry about money. I remember going to the gas station and playing money, math and thinking, okay, $20 today, that means if I spend $20 a day and another 20 in a couple days, I'll have this much and I can save this much by the weekend and I can put $100 away a month, maybe, and maybe if something comes up. Well, I hope nothing comes up, and that's the way most Americans live.
Speaker 1:If I'm being honest, when I was a kid, that's how my parents lived. We were always stressed out about money, and now I just don't stress out about it. It just frees up my mind to think about other stuff. I don't have a big gold chain. I don't have a big Mercedes Benz. I still shop at bargain grocery stores. I don't, honestly, take much vacation and I cook most of my meals at home. I bought my first new car four years ago and I probably won't do that again. It was a cool experience. I don't think I'll be doing that again. I don't really see the point in it. I don't drive around that much. I also don't know anything about stocks or investing or whatever, but I'm learning more. I mean, I bought some properties with my partner and she's the brains behind that operation. But we've done some things with our money that we think are smart to hopefully get more money back.
Speaker 1:The bottom line is making lots of money doesn't mean anything. If your life is wildly expensive to maintain, then it basically is a zero-sum game. Then you're just chasing more money to fill a never-ending hole, a pit that cannot be filled. I promise you it cannot be filled. Once I made 120,000, I'm like, oh my God, I'm rich. And then I thought immediately, almost like within a few months I'm like you know what? I could probably make more. And then I made more. And then I thought what's the most I could make? And then I thought, oh wow, if I could only make 200,000, that would be insane, that would be insane. And then I made that.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking where does this game end? Not like my mortgage has gone up significantly. Not like my kids are younger and I need to buy more diapers and groceries and clothes for them. It's not like my life is more expensive to maintain. So what is this obsession with getting more and more and more and more and more? And I realized, after talking to other entrepreneurs and people that earn a lot, or what I consider a lot, I realized there is no limit to this game. This is a game you can play for your whole life of just accumulating money and then doing what with it, making more money, and then you're just chasing money, and I don't think that's as fun a game to play as I used to. So I'm shocked at how many people don't get this very simple concept because at each promotion, each pay raise, they inflate their lifestyle a little bit more and, as a result, their massive salaries barely keep them afloat.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think I've said enough in this episode. Here's the deal. Money isn't everything. It's also not nothing. I've been broke and I've been not broke, and I prefer the latter. I always hope you find what I say on this show useful. Sometimes I like to talk about topics that aren't so technical, right, and so I really hope you got some value out of this.
Speaker 1:And if nothing else, if you have questions about this or you think what I said was dumb or whatever, hit me up. You can email me at brian at parsityio, and if you're interested in joining Parsity, you should. I'm not. This is not a get rich quick scheme, by the way. It's not even a get rich slow scheme. To get rich quick scheme, by the way. It's not even a get rich slow scheme. It's a learn how to code, change your career the right way scheme. So if you're down for that kind of scheme, hit me up and go to parsityio, slash interdazzcircle and I'll see you around. That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and wanna want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes. See you next week.
