Surviving Chaos to Become a Programmer

Kyle is 30, and a brand new software engineer using angular. He went to a sponsored full-stack web development bootcamp that was mostly about java, Prior to that he was working 12-15 hour days as a construction materials tester and studying IT support at night after his wife and 1.5-year-old boy went to sleep. 

Kyle's story is inspiring, we discuss the following topics in his interview:

• Life before a developer
• Living off no income
• The stress of Coding Bootcamp
• Helping others behind you
• Balancing remote work with a family
• Being a leader as a new developer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksjphx/
https://www.levelupfinancialplanning.com/techie-personal-finance-bootcamp-podcast/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Guy that reached out to me and gave me a job absolutely sing him praises all day. When he reached his hand out to me being a 30-year developer and owning his own consulting company, I grabbed his hand with my right hand to figure it out. And then I reached my left hand out and said, who else wants to talk?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

This is personal finance bootcamp where I helped tech professionals in their 20s and 30s dealt a great life today without sacrificing their future possibilities. I'm your host, Lucas Catares, certified financial planner and founder of Level Financial Planning, where I help educate, coach, and build strategies with my clients to help them take their financial confidence to the next level. Here's an important compliance disclosure. This podcast is for informational purposes only and not to be considered recommendations. Welcome to Techie Personal Finance Bootcamp. Today I'm excited to have Kyle Allen St. Jean on. Kyle is 30 and a brand new software engineer using Angular. He went to a sponsored full-stack web development boot camp that was mostly about Java. Prior to that, he was working 12 to 15 hour days as a construction materials tester and studying IT support at night after his wife and a Gary and a half-year-old boy went to sleep. Kyle's actually a former personal trainer and a geek slash gamer tattooed fellow who loves to grow exotic foods in his front yard. Thanks for coming on the show today, Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Thank you for having me, Lucas.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So I'm super excited to kind of get into your story, but when when I see the word exotic in foods, I'm just kind of curious, like what types of things are you growing?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So I grow all sorts of normal things like collard greens, kale, stuff that you would see in a grocery store. Okay. You know, I grow some mandarin oranges and some uh Meyer lemons as well. So that's kind of more typical. But I also grow things like goji berries and uh moringa. Moringa is actually a really cool medicinal item if you look into that. Uh that's really awesome. And then I also grow mulberry. And uh I'll probably be picking up some other plants this year, such as like a peanut butter plant and uh scrazy. Yeah, and maybe some guarana, which is really cool too. So yeah, the next year you might have some fun plants involved.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure it makes it a lot easier too, like when you're having to go grocery shopping and stuff. You're like, oh, I'll just go pick some stuff out of the yard. And you're in Arizona, so how how do those things work seasonally? Like, are all of them in the same season, or it just kind of varies based on uh the different plants?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

It varies based off plants. So during fall, we'll typically get the citrus harvests, and during spring, I'll see a nice uh array of mulberries that pop up on my tree, and then the moringa is really going crazy during summer. It grows like a weed. Um, and then I fluctuate, I have a garden bed for just growing greens, so I'll fluctuate my garden bed right now, like the collared greens that I have. They're from the size of my belly button to the top of my head, they're so huge, and they're gonna be finishing up soon. So I've got some kale seeds in there that are gonna start popping up. And so it's just uh a lot of things, you know. You just keep it all in flux.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

No, that's cool. I know um me and my wife tried doing stuff like that when we first moved in together and got our house, and we're just horrible at it. But yeah, I know it takes a lot of discipline. I know you you mentioned your background being a personal trainer, so that takes a lot of discipline. I I imagine we'll get into it, but that that's probably one of the things that helped you kind of get through this crazy journey uh that you're on. But yeah, without further ado, we'll kind of dive into your story and kind of your journey thus far. I know uh you still have a lot of great things lined out ahead of you, but you've had a crazy experience up until now. So, what was life like before becoming a developer?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Life before a developer was very, very chaotic. Um, as a construct as a construction materials tester, I don't think a lot of people actually know what that is because a lot of people understand that there's just construction workers out there. Well, when you're on a construction site, there's somebody who has to come verify that everything's being done right. So you have to show up and do all the more difficult things that um involve a lot of testing and numbers and data entry, and you have to run around dragging things around. Sometimes, you know, walking um walking with a bucket full of uh equipment in one hand and then a machine that's 50 years old and weighs 50 pounds in the other hand, and just kind of doing a lot of work with that. So shifts would be very odd hours, you know. You never knew if you were gonna have a four-hour day and not make enough money, or if you were gonna have a 19-hour day, go to sleep for three hours and then have to wake up and do another 17-hour days. And out here in Arizona, they work almost year round because we don't typically get a lot of snow. So construction's pretty much just going, especially with Phoenix blowing up. For sure. Um they, you know, if it's a hot day, they want to start doing jobs at midnight, 2 a.m. And you might not finish until 6 p.m. So you just never know what your day is like.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

That sounds wild as heck. Like, was that was that just like the primary reason where you're like, you know what, this is not sustainable? Was it like just uh not a good fit for kind of what your life like what your life was like and what you wanted to be in the future? Like what was that push to uh see what else was out there? And I know you were kind of doing those IT support uh studying as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah, so the push came from basically just being sick and tired of the inconsistency. I could have 60 hours logged one week and make a decent check, and then I could have 30 hours the next week. And my managers just didn't care. And that doesn't work for me as a guy who's trying to take care of a one and a half year old and helping my wife get over her illnesses. So that's that's just doesn't work for me. So I thought, okay, I need something more consistent. And I've had a few friends who almost immediately upon exiting high school went straight to either college for computer science or they just got jobs doing things like Geek Squad. And eventually one of my buddies who I actually have a bat bat symbol on my chest uh dedicated to, he went and became a systems administrator and makes $120,000 or more or something like that, working for Toyota, if I'm not mistaken. And I'm like, that's that's just stupid. That's just stupid. Okay. And he's like, you could do it too, you just have to put in the work. So I said, all right, screw it. I guess I'll just go find some certification to help me get into being an IT support tech, and uh went down that route because I was like, I'm tired of being broke. I'm so sick of not having enough money to exist.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah. Yeah, and so during that time period, I know you had mentioned, and we kind of talked before, you mentioned that basically when you're going through this boot camp, you're we're essentially having to live off of no income. Like, what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Treacherous, very meticulous. Um we took our tax return and we saved up about three months' worth of paychecks once we found out I got accepted. Um and I tried to pick up as much excess hours as possible, so I was just working myself as much as I could. Um, so what it was like once we were actually in the boot camp was pure chaos because you know, I was Monday through Friday. It was leave the house at six, not get back home till about six. And um, you know, because it was an hour drive in, I had a 20-minute walk there, but um, that was the whole trip there. And the financial financial part of it was basically just trying to divide how much we could spend each week, grocery shop, you know, month, etc., and just trying to figure out right, can we make this? Can we stretch? Yeah, what do we have to do? And just allocating those funds to make sure that you know things are gonna float. And we only had a few thousand dollars to make that work. Yeah. So thankfully, our mortgage is next to nothing. The thing that killed us was our car payments, um, and our grocery hauls were not gonna be sacrificed as far as eating garbage food. So grocery hauls stayed pretty consistent.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Um yeah, yeah, that's great though. That's it sounds like there was like a little bit of window time between when you were accepted and you knew this was gonna be something coming up in the near future. So you kind of did what you could with that time, kind of hunkered down and tried to make as much, tried to reduce your spending where you could. Um that's pretty similar to what like my family had to do to uh launch a business, basically, is like we had that same mindset. Like, all right, we can't live the same way we were because like things are gonna change pretty dramatically from an income standpoint. What was there anything that you could think of that you kind of learned just from like money and and like living expenses from from having, although it was like a chaotic, like unstable, reliable kind of paycheck to knowing that there's gonna be no income and and now kind of being in a position where you're like, oh, my income's pretty, pretty decent at this point. Like, did you learn anything new or any anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Um in terms of things that were new, I would say what I learned was that it's completely ridiculous that I could go from not having enough money or barely scraping by to have enough money to get my wife and I and my son to be able to move out here to Arizona in the first place because we barely scraped by uh to make that happen to being able to somehow stretch for six months of no pay. And yes, we I will flat out say we used credit cards, and that was not a fun situation. It's still not a fun situation. My credit went from 780 before I bought my house all the way down to like 450, so it's atrocious. But let me tell you, the payoff is going to work. Um basically something that I learned that I don't necessarily recommend to anybody else is that if a credit card is there and you kind of just know you have to sacrifice for a while to use it, yeah, homie, it's there, you might as well use it, it's a resource. Um, and beyond that, you just gotta find out what's immovable and what's something that you can just deal with out short term. Yes. So for us, because my wife is sick, we couldn't just say, okay, no, you're not gonna take the things that are helping you get healthier. So we kept that. Groceries. Well, we're not gonna eat like crap because we're just gonna feel like crap, and that's not gonna help us. Yeah. Cool. Well, you can do that. So what I learned was my wife and I, before we even started that boot camp, drove down to Phoenix um and tried to find a spot that I could walk to the class from that was gonna be free. And we didn't know it was gonna work out, and it did. So I escaped four to twelve dollars a day worth of parking by walking a mile to the class.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Um, so you find ways to exchange your time for saving that money, and that's really valuable too.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, yeah, it's it's so crazy uh that when it comes to like financial stuff, it really is just allocating resources, and and sometimes there are like trade-offs that you have to make and it doesn't feel good. And you mentioned kind of like credit cards. You I'm sure you guys explored every single option, and they're like, hey, this this is something that's gonna help us get to that next stage. And you knew enough people, and you kind of knew your kind of background as far as how uh uh disciplined you are when it comes to setting your mind to something that's what this isn't gonna be like, oh, I'm gonna get four months through this, and then decide it's not for me, and that you're gonna see it through, and then there actually wasn't be a payoff, and you'd be able to kind of fix and and kind of start to rearrange stuff and actually come out better, even though there's a lot of chaos in that in between.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Absolutely. And and the thing that kind of kept us going throughout the entire boot camp was I was told the first week by the sponsoring company, first of all, the boot camp was free, so I didn't have to pay for that. That's great, it's amazing. Um, but second of all, the sponsoring company sent out what one of their head guys and told us all, as long as you work your tail off and you do what we're asking you to be able to do at the end of this, you're gonna get a job and we'll find a place for you. And then later on, I think in like the eighth or ninth week of the boot camp, the one of the support people that was running the boot camp, um, she tells me, she's like, Oh yeah, you guys are you guys are gonna be making like 80, 85 grand a year doing this job once you guys get hired. Like, you are fine, don't worry, just make it. And we stopped stressing, we you know, we had our blowouts, and no, no joke, we we had some really battle, big battles with my wife and I, and it wasn't because of finance, it was literally just because the stress of that camp was really hard. For sure. Um but we anticipated between me making that job happen because there was no escape. There was I'm going to make this happen. I'm gonna be among the top, I'm I'm gonna be among the top three people. I'm gonna make sure that these people they either take me or I'm going to be very, very close to being taken because there's there's no reason for me not to give anything but my 100% to this. And that's the way I attack those things. Because if I get to the point where I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do this, there was already so much discussion and thought that was already behind that of is this worth it? What's the payoff? Is this in line with what I want? That by the time I go to make that decision to do it, it's done. I just have to put in the time and do the things.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Awesome, man. Yeah, and I I've been following you on LinkedIn and everyone that's listening to the show and has listened to a previous episode. That's uh where I find a lot of my guests, and the reason for it is because they write, like you in particular, you're always writing positive things and talking about just kind of being a leader for a lot of other kind of people that although you're very new to this industry and you don't necessarily consider yourself sometimes a leader at this point from some of your more recent posts, but at the same time, like you are a leader for those people that are like at that same level as you or kind of right behind you. And uh you mentioned something like people, people that make it through this process should be sharing their stories that to help people kind of get through that dark time, that dark stretch, whether it's a six-month boot camp or six-month boot camp plus that gap in time before they find their employer. Like, what what is it that kind of motivates you to be so active on LinkedIn and try to share share your story?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

I think it stems from the fact that in 2008, when I exited high school, um, I was about 350 pounds, and then I decided to lose weight, and I got down to 215 pounds at my lowest. And that was through nobody helping me and through me just driving myself as far as I could and trying to push myself. And so once I got to the other side and I saw somebody who looked almost exactly like I did, not facially, or you know, how their body was laid out, but they I saw them and I said, You look as uncomfortable as I did when I first started losing weight. And I didn't go, you poor soul. I said, I want to help you. You need to do what I did because I know how good this feels, and I want you to feel it too. And I think that if you're a senior developer, especially, um or anybody who has experience in any field, if you're capable of talking to people and being friendly with somebody, I think it's a natural human desire to want to help somebody do what you did, especially in tech, because I've heard too many times through articles and statistics that 2020 is going to yield a massive shortage of programmers. Yeah. So what are we all acting like? Some rookie one-year developer or brand new developer is going to take your senior job. We can't touch you, bro. So give us your experience and say, come on, join this ride. There's a lot of money and a lot of cool things that you can do involved. Like, why are you holding that information? You know darn well that there is nothing that you lose by helping somebody do what you did.

unknown 16:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Now, if the a market's saturated, like if you're trying to become a YouTuber and they're doing the same kind of niche uh content that you're doing, okay, you're screwed if you're helping them because you're shooting yourself in the foot. But that's not possible with pro programming. Like, just help them. Yeah. So that's kind of the driving force where I'm one of those people that I look at it as if somebody's reaching their hand out and helping me, which is exactly what happened via LinkedIn. Thank you to my my uh guy that reached out to me and gave me a job, absolutely sing him praises all day. When he when he reached his hand out to me, being a 30-year developer and owning his own consulting company, yeah, I grabbed his hand with my right hand, figuratively. And then I reached my left hand out and said, Who else wants to come? Yeah. And that's not something where it's like only one person could come because the guy who gave me my job didn't just reach out to me. He does this with other people. Yeah. And so you don't have an uh like a limitation on who you can help with your hand being reaching out, even if you have no understanding of what's going on. Because somebody could be right behind you and find value in the fact that you're saying, Wow, I really sucked at doing my job today. And I figured it out and no one made fun of me for doing it. They could say, Oh man, I've been stressing about that, about getting a job and having that experience, but now I know.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

So that's a long way of answering why I do that kind of thing because I want people to be able to follow my steps. And instead of looking at a giant dark staircase of how the hell do I get past this thing and get up there, what's it look like? I want to I want to illuminate that along the way.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And I I don't think that was long at all. I think it was uh very interesting to kind of see like the prime examples of what motivates you to do what you're doing. And um, I'm sure a lot of people uh for all we know, that could be inspiring a few listeners too to start doing the same thing where maybe that wasn't even on their radar. They were so focused on on kind of their own goals that they're like, hey, I can actually help people at the same time while still pursuing my goals. And that's one of the things that I'm starting to notice myself is like the more you give and kind of put yourself out there, like it's I'm not expecting to get clients or anything from any of the the content I produce. I know hundreds of people are reading my articles and listening to these podcasts, but that chances of like every one of them or even a high percentage of them actually becoming clients is not even close to being possible, nor could I actually help those people like one-on-one as far as being like a an actual client. So or just hey, I I want to provide as many resources as possible and and help as many people as possible. And it's been ridiculous, like the amount of just kind of positivity and growth and people just reaching out. Like this is how I've kind of been repaid from like this podcast and like the content. People just reach out and be like, hey, I listened to that uh most recent one with your your guest Sam or whatever, and it's uh like made a huge difference. I'm like, Yeah, well, reach out to Sam, like go go go talk to him, and then like he's the same thing's gonna come out with your episode. Like, I know there's gonna be people reaching out, so that's good. Please I get rewarded. Um, and yeah, I'm sure that's how you get kind of jazz about doing these things too. It kind of gives you an extra boost to to do other stuff in your your day. Um it does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I mean, there's people that have reached out just from like uh I made some really cliche posts just to test things, and it like had 16,000 views on it, and I'm like, that's stupid. And then somebody messaged me and they're like, yo, that was really something that helped me. And I was like, okay, that's still stupid, but I'm glad I helped you. And it like you don't know with your perspective, with what you've been through, yeah, what could help somebody else? Something that's trivial for you might be somebody else's, you know, giant mountain to climb. You have no idea. Like, if I find counting calories a great way to lose weight, which that's not what I'm saying anybody should do if they want to go that path, then doesn't mean it's easy for somebody else. You know, you don't know if going to a coding boot camp is going to give you the right resource to learn. You don't know that. You have to figure things out for yourself. And there's somebody else out there who's just like you in certain ways about how they learn and what they do things, uh, or how they do things rather, that they might be like, oh, dude, really? Somebody couldn't just tell me that. That was super simple, but it totally made sense. Yeah. You never know how some type of idea is going to impact somebody.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, and that kind of makes me think of another thing too, as far as a lot of times I do this, I know most people probably do, is they kind of uh filter what they're gonna push the send or the post button on because they're like, ah, is this actually gonna help? Is this gonna be valuable? Yeah. What a lot of people don't realize is though the people that out there that need to see that, there may not be anyone else that has that perspective you're about to share that could be helping them. And so that's that's one of the things that's helped me push uh the post and the share button a little bit more than I would otherwise, because otherwise the imposter syndrome in my head would be like, no, like people don't care about this, or there's enough things about any of these financial topics I could be talking about. But at the same time, that's not on like certain people's radar, and and all of a sudden my post pops up, or your post pops up uh trying to uh just kind of share your story, and then like, whoa, like that just changed my day. Like, now I'm gonna be positive today because Kyle is like talking about how his life completely changed and and uh and all that. So um perfect, man. I appreciate us diving into that a little bit more there. Um so one cool aspect about your role right now, and you actually posted about it today, uh, which is cool, is your your remote. worker so you work from home and you're able to spend time with your son which is a sweet deal I have a kind of similar setup myself.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

So congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Yeah yeah it's it's it's tricky at first but yeah it's like so amazing once you get everything kind of worked out as far as the kinks and the balancer. But I think a lot of people listening are like what the heck this lucky dude like how how did he get like a remote job so early in his career and I was just curious if you would have like any tips on how to work remotely from home. And then also like how how it sounded as like you alluded to it a little bit someone on LinkedIn reached out to you but can you share like how you manage working from home and kind of navigating that as well as like how did you find the opportunity in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Holy goodness uh yeah so I'm just gonna refer to him just to keep some anonymity for him uh as Tim so I was sitting there and I was just posting about how I went through this boot camp. The sponsor didn't take me they only took one person and yet they told us they wanted to take everybody and so I was pissed let me tell you I was pissed y'all told us that you wanted to take everybody I not only killed their final exam but like the people who were doing the review for us were were sitting there like okay um we're having a hard time finding something wrong here we're gonna have to nitpick and so when they didn't take me first of all you took away the $85,000 job that I was supposed to be almost guaranteed because I busted my tail for and now my family's got to somehow figure out how to make ends meet. So then I was posting to get back to the point you were I was posting on LinkedIn about this just my story of what I've been through with this boot camp my 12 hour days you know it's a 480 hour boot camp. Well it cost me 600 hours to do that because of travel and everything else involved a lot of long nights a lot of five hour nights five hours of sleep a night and so I posted about that and some dude liked that post some dude named Tim is friends with that guy and then he goes I saw that and then he just decides to inbox me and he's like hey for in my own words he's like hey um you know I saw your story and I'd love to chat sometime I got an opportunity for a spot in my team so I was on a construction site took a phone call from Tim and did an interview and so he was like hey you sound awesome and I like your personality because he was hiring based off culture fit and drive and willingness to learn and then he said hey I got to talk to my partner and so we go through that process right and so we go through the whole process I talk to everybody else go through one of their interviews and whatnot and then they hire me and it's for a remote position I knew that and so the whole balance of working from home so I've got the job I've got this crappy 2010 MacBook that I got to try to run everything on and it's really hard. It's old outdated I had to upgrade it just to survive boot camp and so I'm sitting at my compute my kitchen table right I've got my kitchen table a hard kitchen table chair it's comfortable but kind of not and so I'm sitting here and I start getting to work and I'm one of those people that's mildly psychotic where I will look at my job and I'm like I can't suck. It's not a thing of like I'm scared to suck it's like no I just I just don't like to suck. I like to know what I'm doing. Why? Because I want to do a great job. I want to make sure that I know what the heck I'm doing. I was obsessive when I tested construction materials and I learned things super quick. I was out talking construction workers who were doing you know doing this work for 20 years teaching them how to do stuff and that's not to be like egotistical or brag but like I'm just obsessive. I want to know why everything works. So I was diving deep into my work and so I'm one of those people where I told you know my wife and I talked and we said hey you know when I work I might look over at you sometimes and see what you and you and my son Ezra are doing and you're gonna have to know that if I if I talk you know as long as my earbuds are out we can chat and I'm gonna pay attention to you guys but if I'm super focused and my earbuds are in and I look focused I need that time. And so we have that respect built and my son knows he can come over to me and I will give him hugs, rub his back, give him kisses, entertain even though if he's like daddy blow you know uh belly he'll say belly, lift his shirt up and I'll blow you know uh like blow on his belly and everything and we just have like a fun time and then it's right back to work. Right. So I just stay focused and most of my day for my eight hours I stay hella focused and that's just what it is. It's I it all comes back to the drive of wanting to make sure that I repay Tim who gave me a favor to make sure he knows yo I made a good decision by hiring this guy. And it's because he's willing to learn he's willing to push and he's willing to go. So I just focus on my work because it's it's super important to me. I didn't sacrifice my 600 hours and all of that work and money that I could have gained from just doing a generic job to to squander it. Like he gave me a killer opportunity of not squandering that. So what was the other portion of your question so I can make sure I hit it.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

No yeah I think that that was the biggest thing like and you kind of highlighted some of the tips too as far as how to navigate working from home especially with a little one it sounds like you guys set up some boundaries that kind of allow you to to be focused when you need to and then sure that flexibility to kind of like bounce out to and and uh spend some quality time so that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Absolutely and if anybody else is like oh I'm struggling working at home okay we'll figure out why are you distracted because of the TV in the room okay well get rid of the TV first of all you probably don't even need that because it's not providing you any actual value read a book do some education do some meditation do something else but I mean find what's blocking you down and just either talk about it with who whoever you're with or if you're by yourself like just just get rid of it. If it's not providing you some sort of intrinsic value then drop it from your life because trust me you're not gonna miss it. It doesn't matter I haven't had a TV in my house for four three years and it doesn't mean anything like it you can drop stuff like that. So find what's going to be the best value to you. If you need your own separate room to focus get your own separate room I don't care if you have to put like Amazon boxes up with duct tape to like seclude yourself just do it. I mean if you need to be a horse with blinders do it but be that horse you know um but me at a kitchen table it's you know my kids right there he's running around my wife is dancing having a time and playing with him and stuff and I get to see them do amazing things every day but I know in my head that I have a certain amount of time I can allocate to to witness those beautiful things and you just let them happen naturally. I'm not a douchebag father or partner. I'm just like yo okay hey um that just happened now's a good time for me to dip out and go back to work. This is my primary focus but my family is still my main priority.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

No yeah that's cool like how you're able to kind of separate those things as far as like the focus and then the priority because yeah I know a lot of people get confused sometimes they think that the the money or the work like that's that's like everything like oh if you get the money then everything in life's gonna be awesome it's gonna be amazing but as you were referring to like even just like something as simple as like a TV like it's just a thing it it doesn't really matter if if it's gonna improve the quality of your life a little bit sure do do whatever you want to but in the grand scheme of things like you have to focus in on what's the most important to you and then another cool thing you said is just like just make it happen basically is what you said like the no no excuse like find a way and then you two threw out some crazy ideas that make a whole bunch of sense like why why why do we allow ourselves to set up these barriers or obstacles when really a lot of them like don't even really exist.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Like we're creating them in our head to be yes bigger than what they are so that's that is so perfectly said I could not agree with you more we put up far too many barriers to block ourselves from attaining our goals no you don't have to go hang out with your friends. Let me tell you this right now if you think that your friends or your family or anything else in your life for the most part within reason don't be stupid now if those things you think are the reason why you can't do something you're lying correct that's not true. If you had to be homeless in order to have the best job of your life homeless for a year to have the best job of your life forever and till the day you die why would you not do that homie it's a year whatever that time is for you to sacrifice it's that time just get it done so you can have a better life we don't have that time in this day and age and I hope um I hope this won't be too crazy as far as what I say but I don't think we I don't think we have the luxury these days to just have one person make money and have everybody else stay home and be having a great time anymore. I think that that ship is sailed. You are going to have to hustle and rest and make sure that you prioritize what's actually gonna matter because if you go to school and you work you need to sleep adequately so you need to push the other things aside taking care of yourself is just as important as putting the hustle in and grinding. So you have to do those things and get rid of the stuff that doesn't matter even if people are mad at you about it as long as you're not hurting anybody like people will get over it. I had really great friends back in Michigan before I moved out to Arizona out to Arizona that were like we're gonna miss you so much. I didn't hear it from them after a week like you think these people are going to really be changed by that and they're not you think that you can't leave your job because you're gonna just like destroy the whole business.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

No it's not yep no that's just let it go. Yeah I hear this all the time I know it was something personally for me too before I started this company like oh I'm gonna let like my coworkers down if I leave like they're like they're like family and like yeah like they are but at the same time if they're if it's really like that close of a bond like you'll stay in contact and I've stayed in contact with all those coworkers from uh that's so true. But yeah the business didn't fail and yeah it's still chugging along even though I played an important role while I was there I was a cog and and they were able to to replace it.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Absolutely and that's that's how it comes down to a lot of those things. I thought I was important at the quality assurance job I had for a supplement company they had me replaced and good to go within like days. Don't think that that's gonna be the reason why you're not gonna make it in your sacrifice and especially if it's something that you really want to do. Like if there's anybody out there who wants to code like there are so many resources out there you don't have to pay for a boot camp. You can find so many resources online. If you want to go to a boot camp because you have no ability to structure your life and you need somebody being like you paid me $9,000 you better show up and okay go do that but like you need to find what what's going to make sense for you and and have that work.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah one thing I I don't necessarily want to get into a debate about it but like I I think what you mentioned as far as um like two people having to work basically is that that what you were kind of getting at with the um like if you have a household of two like people probably will both have to work in order just to have like a decent lifestyle or what what did you mean by that what the typical pay is versus what cost of living is in most places will almost always equate to unless you have a nice career and that ways to take care of things it's most likely going to equate to both people are probably going to have to work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

And I'm not saying that as a flat fact because I know plenty of people have a partner who stays at home male or female but or do it all on their own but to live a really comfortable really good life on some of that stuff I think sometimes it requires two people to work. And that's not always a luxury to be able now it's a luxury I would say yeah be able to have my wife be able to quit and stay home and take care of her health and my son.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

For sure. Yeah and I think that's that makes sense like at some point it's it's possible but it is like a luxury thing and and there are trade-offs to doing those types of things too. At minimum wage definitely two people and and sometimes it's two people working multiple jobs.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

That's what I'm getting at.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah yeah um a lot of my listeners are like in tech and it and and I imagine a lot of them similar to you are like yep one of one of them may be the only one working or maybe the only one working while the kids are like super young or whatever. Sure. So like all these things are possible and when you look at some of the statistics and things like that like usually once you get to about 70 75 8000 depending on kind of where you're living in the the country like that's where you can like afford to do everything normal plus like a little bit stuff like you can have an unlimited phone data you can have cable that you're into and stuff like you can do these things on that that type of wage whether it's one person earn it or two but then if you want to do those extra things and you want to like live a little bit more outside of that then yeah you have to find a way to either trade off some of those other things maybe not get the unlimited plan maybe get rid of a TV and you just save $60 to $100 a month well that frees that up for something else one of your other goals something that's important to you and I think that's that's kind of what I want to get back to is I just like anything it's it's possible you can make it happen kind of like the working remotely from home like find out what your obstacles are and then find find a way to make it work. And obviously that's up until a point you have to have a certain income in order in order to be able to do those things. But once you get to that income I see a lot of people sometimes that are making over a hundred thousand they're like I can't make ends meet or like this isn't enough money I need to ask for a raise well you're probably you're probably making enough money and it's just how we're maybe thinking about the money and and how we're using these things where you could be exactly so that's that's kind of what I want to circle back to but I think please um you were able to clarify on your end too dud to totally make it make sense uh to everyone so I think it it was good that we circled back to that um so I mentioned earlier on and I and I wanted to kind of get back to it from thinking about your future so how many how many months have you been a software engineer at this point?

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Month and a half. Month and a half so started October 7th.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Yep that's that's awesome man and yeah I I definitely love all the posts you put up on LinkedIn I try to like go and comment all that stuff and I know thank you yeah of course so one of the ones you referenced like your future goal is to be a leader software engineer and I haven't looked at it recently I'm sure you got a whole bunch of likes uh on it or or whatever different emoji things people can add on it uh lots of comments I saw people saying hey dude you're a leader to me like I don't know I don't know what you're talking about so but I get I get what you mean right um you just want to kind of keep furthering that and uh increasing your impact I imagine but what does that mean to you um at least what you're referencing in that post like what does being a leader in software engineering really mean to you and what types of steps do you think that you need to take in order to uh achieve that I guess being a leader in software engineering slash programming slash coding whatever you want to label it as because we can call ourselves whatever we want at this point um I think that means my goal is not like let's say my team had 20 people right and this is all made up my team has 20 people I want to be a manager slash leader on blah team the front end developer team okay that's not that's not the goal that's that's nice I'd love that that would be a nice little like kind of group symbiotic kind of thing but my goal is more so to I'm kind of stuck on this whole thing of the fact that you can have no degree and you can make up to six figures or more depending on how you apply yourself and what you learn with tech.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Yeah and I'm looking at a lot of people in this nation especially within my generation of people who are really tech savvy and smart people who are really nice as well and have good hearts and good drive and want to be okay. And I my definition of leadership would be to be able to say hello I've been doing this for this amount of time this is the path that I took in order to get here. It's not going to work for you this way. But I would like I would like to be a steward of you who knows nothing into you who can do something. Yeah and be able to chauffeur people from I don't know a damn thing but I know that I want it to I am now you know doing super well I moved out to this place and now I'm making blah amount of money I don't have to fret about where I'm getting my next paycheck anymore that just helping people around basically acquire those skills to fill these gaps. You know if there were 2000 jobs open for being a developer I'd like to help 2000 people understand that's your job you need to now go get this stuff done in order to get that job because they won't hand it to you trust me I know but you can do it and you're gonna you're gonna have to be uncomfortable to attain that just like when I told people as a personal trainer to lose weight I'm not gonna glorify this for you. It's gonna suck just like I'm now trying to lose weight again after gaining about 45 pounds um since my son's been bored I know for a fact it's going to be uncomfortable and I'm going to have to go through that. But um to get back to your point leadership is being able to articulate what I've done and how I did it and then also look at the individual who I'm talking to and say okay who are you what do you need what is your kind of lifestyle how do you learn and all these things and be able to say here are your options to do that. Instead of all of us trying to come up with this amazing you just got to work three jobs and hustle harder kind of mindset which is toxic we need to say okay here's what you're dealing with and all your struggles how do we attain that for you and I love having those conversations with people I loved it when I was a personal trainer it was the most fulfilling thing possible when I had somebody say who I've never had a personal conversation with but was in one of my classes come back and say hey you changed my life five years later and they look amazing okay I didn't I didn't even talk to you directly but that's freaking impossible and amazing. That's that great keep doing it. Yep and so that's the same kind of thing that I'm kind of going for in terms of uh leadership within software engineering. I want to help people understand that you don't have to be a genius to do this and that there's paths out there to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Awesome man yeah I super appreciate you coming on today and and throughout the whole episode it just kind of highlighted why I thought you'd be a perfect fit for this and and that's really why I have these guest ones I I rotate the normal kind of traditional this is a financial topic I'm gonna cover and then kind of hit every aspect because I know there's a lot of do-it-yourselfers listening but then sprinkle in these awesome inspiring stories of people that really just want to help by sharing their story and and knowing that this isn't the way but if you listen to a bunch of different people's stories or um as as you're kind of moving along and you're starting to build together these resources whatever form of content that you produce like it's just going to be something that this is another piece of information that someone can use as a building block to to make that life that they want to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Absolutely and that's all possible. That's awesome yeah perfect perfect ending so any any last comment something that you'd want to to leave listeners with uh or or something that you'd tell like your younger self yeah go into programming sooner so you can live a more uh fulfilling and free life uh but yeah I guess if I was going to tell somebody else something uh I mean whether it's especially with tech too this applies a lot but with with anything for the most part be willing to sacrifice for what you're actually after and if you aren't willing to sacrifice just be honest with yourself and say you don't really want it you're just romanticizing the idea and things are uncomfortable when you're trying to attain something great. Stop also romanticizing the idea that it looks like living on a beach and being awesome. You're seeing a lot of highlighted end story results of what people's lives are all over social media. They aren't video recording themselves at the beginning of their story when they don't know a thing running around with their head cut off and like failing miserably all over the place. But that's what's happening I mean I can't tell you how many times I've tried to approach a problem and it's just not working. Just find a different way. Stop idealizing the fact that you have to succeed early just fail fast fail often fail your way forward I know I'm just repeating a lot of the people that I've listened to and actually pay attention to what's going on in your life don't let other people's beliefs drive what you are going to do because it's your life and you can change beliefs they're just beliefs. Yep it's not your genome that's awesome man.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Yeah again just more great bombs you're dropping right here at the end so that's awesome. People jump off let's say uh like they are inspired by your story they want to connect with you uh just uh just find you on LinkedIn is that the best way people to to get in touch with you yeah that's the only social media I use just because it's it's just the only one that makes sense to me for right now. Yeah nope perfect in uh if it's okay with you I'll include that link in the show notes and people can find you that way.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Yes and I hope anybody who even has anything to say will message me and talk because uh if you just reference that you heard this and how it impacted you I'd love to have a full on conversation with you. I'm just I'm just a guy trying to survive and I'm just a guy trying to you know provide for his wife and kids. So if you find some way of connecting through this and want to talk more about something I'm here. I'll help you I promise.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

Dude that's awesome that's a great offering yeah take take Kyle up on this and you do you don't have to do this but yeah just treat him like a Starbucks gift card or something after the conversation if you've made oh that's too kind thank you Lucas yeah thanks for coming on the show man thank you so much for having me and I appreciate it. Awesome thank you for listening at techie personal finance bootcamp remember if you like what you've been hearing to subscribe review and share with your friends and colleagues if you want to take your connection to the show to the next level you can find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook next time at techiepersonal finance bootcamp