DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
My Transparent 28-Day Challenge | Channel & Life Updates (part 2)
Here's where I share my goals, failures from last month, and what I'm going to do about it next month. The goal of this is to just provide some transparency into my own struggles with trying to grow and provide community updates.
---------------------------------------------------
🔥 Webdev Career Help - https://calendly.com/donthedeveloper/coaching
🎮 Join Discord - https://discord.gg/TpQe2k8Ab3
❤️ Support What I Do - https://www.patreon.com/donthedeveloper
Disclaimer: Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
===========================
WEBDEV COURSES I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:
🎓 Learn Frontend - Scrimba (20% off): https://scrimba.com/the-frontend-developer-career-path-c0j?via=donthedeveloper
🎓 Learn Backend - Boot.dev (25% off): https://boot.dev/?promo=DONTHEDEVELOPER - Get 25% off your first payment with code "DONTHEDEVELOPER"
🎓 Already Experienced? Level Up Here - Code Crafters (40% off): https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=donthedeveloper
Hey everyone, all right, we're back for another video with the series where I'm just going to be transparent with my goals and how things are going right. So, if you haven't been to this channel, essentially I give a lot of advice for aspiring developers and you know I'm a big advocate against victimhood. I think a lot of people get very comfortable blaming external circumstances for their situation, and I find that most people end up just shooting themselves in the foot with that mindset, and so I want to share my transparent process of trying to hit my own goals and showing you that I failed to, and that's okay, but I'm going to continue pushing forward. So hopefully this is inspirational to you, but I also want to share a couple of other community things as well, any events that we have going on. But yeah, so let's start with my goals. Um, originally I think my goals were I wanted to record 28 videos in 28 days, um, and I wanted to reach 205 pounds with my weight loss journey starting at 21 15. I wanted to code 10 hours per week and I wanted to read the book uh Tao of react. Um, I didn't hit any of those goals. I failed miserably, um, but I'm going to reset and make new goals off of what I learned, cause I had pretty ambitious goals, uh, with the other responsibilities that I had. So, um, essentially I think I recorded like 12 videos, 13 videos. I can do more, but 28 videos is a lot.
Don Hansen:As a content creator, I have given all the advice that I will ever have to give. It's all in there somewhere in all my live streams and videos and, you know, to an extent I got to repeat myself because there are a lot of new people that come to the channel that have no idea what I said, what I stand for, the advice that I give. They never heard it right, I'm brand new to them. They don't care about me. I'm just another YouTuber that they happened to come across last month, and so you'll notice that, with a lot of YouTubers where they will repeat their advice, it's just because we've given all the advice that you need. It's all spaced out in all of our videos. You know we gotta repeat some stuff, but I find that it could be a little tiring giving similar advice that I've given before.
Don Hansen:Um, I think what would excite me is to react to some stuff I love doing, react content, but, um, it's kind of lazy content. I don't know if I really want to do a lot of those types of videos, but maybe we just touch base on kind of what's happening in the programming space a bit. I don't know. I got to think more about what is going to inspire me to create more videos. But I know what I can do and I can create at least 16 videos. So that is going to be my goal for next month. I think I can do four videos per week. That'll kind of be a bit of a soft goal.
Don Hansen:But as far as my weight goes, I I think I started reaching about like two 10, and then I decided to have one drinking night and then I ate a bunch of food the next day and gained a few pounds and I feel like I'm at about two 12 right now. So the goal is to lose 10 pounds and I failed at that pretty miserably. I feel like I'm someone where, um, I don't really have a drinking problem, I have an eating problem. Afterwards I feel like shit. Even if I have like six beers the night before, for some reason I still get a big hangover, like I just get dehydrated or like super low energy and then anything sugar related just ah, it's so good the next day. So you know, that's just being realistic with myself. I think to hit my weight goals, I'm just going to have to completely ditch alcohol altogether, which I have no problem with, because when I don't drink the night before, um, my eating's fine, I stay on track. I eat a lot of meat, a lot of vegetables, um, I don't eat a lot of carbs and I just start losing weight. So you know that's what I'm going to be aiming for, uh, for the next month and um, yeah, that's how I fix that.
Don Hansen:But one thing I love is coding. Holy shit, do I love coding? I've been live coding, um, and I feel like I've just been kind of stuck with foundational stuff, with the learning, nestjs and TypeScript. But, man, have I learned a lot and I love it. Like I get excited to live stream and code Um, I do it every Tuesday, thursday and Saturday, right now. I do it every Tuesday, thursday and Saturday, right now, 3 to 7 pm, central Time, and I look forward to it every single time. It doesn't feel like work and I get to just decompress and I don't, I don't know, I don't, my mind just goes to another place and I don't worry about stuff and it just feels freeing. I miss coding. I really do.
Don Hansen:You know, when I start thinking back, I really think I jumped into trying to become a content creator and an entrepreneur a little bit too early, because I set myself up to not be able to code a lot to be able to put food on the table, and that I'm finding that that was a mistake. I want coding in my workflow, I want it in my business in some capacity, or I want to work for another company where I'm working as a developer. I want to code, no matter what it is. I want to code and be able to put food on my table. And so my transition right now and how I'm trying to change my life, is to be able to at least change my business model so I can do that a bit more often. And that's probably going to be releasing a SAS product, twitch sprout, which I'm working on. Um, but no matter what, I want to figure out how I can code a lot more, because I just love it and I miss it and um, and that's kind of where I'm at with that, and whatever that turns into, it turns into whatever it turns into, as long as I get the code, I'm going to be happy. So my goal for next month is going to be coding at least 12 hours per week.
Don Hansen:Still have other responsibilities and cause I've been doing a lot of mentorship sessions. Um, so, if you don't know, I actually reduced my rates cause a lot of people did request it, including current clients, but just because economic times which I get so previously it was 97 an hour I reduced it to 74. This is temporary. I'm not going to promise that it's going to stay this low forever, but, um, for now I lowered it. I'm getting more clients in and it's paying the bills. So I love the technical mentorship, I love career mentorship, so it does end up putting food on the table. I'm not making a ton of money, just enough to pay the bills and I'm going to continue doing that. But you know I'm still trying to fit in coding as much as I can and we'll figure out where my business ends up being down the road. I'm kind of.
Don Hansen:I'm actually really curious where I'm going to be at in three months. What I'm going to be hyper focused on. I don't know about you guys, but I think about that a lot because I feel like in three months. My future is pretty damn unknown, as I'm trying to reshape my business or decide if I want to go back to a developer position. So you know, I've been thinking about that a lot, but we will see. Right now I'm going to focus on what I can control and we'll see what that turns into.
Don Hansen:But in the Tao of React book I just I didn't have a need for it. I'm diving into NestJS. I'm learning a lot about that. I'm diving into TypeScript I'm learning a lot about that. I'm diving into TypeScript. I'm learning a lot about that and I am having fun with it and I feel like I am just able to structure things in a much more scalable manner with NestJS and it's fun for me. My Nodejs applications have been incredibly messy and I've kind of formed my own structure and data flow, but I always felt like I never, uh, was able to pick up really good conventions on the backend. Front end I'm pretty solid with right, uh, but backend man I I just still sit at a low junior level and I'm just trying to ramp up a bit, um, because it's interesting, it's fun, I like front end, I like backend and I just want to get better with the backend. So you know it's fun. I like front end, I like back end and I just want to get better with the back end. So you know, I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time reading a book. I think I'm just going to continue to get more comfortable with Nest and TypeScript and that's challenging me to learn something new. I'm fine with that right.
Don Hansen:So three goals essentially record the videos. So 16 videos in 28 days get down to 205. I'm going to keep that as my goal and it should be a little bit easier to get to because I'm not at 215, but weight loss is important. And then I'm going to code at least 12 hours per week. So again, I just want to be transparent with what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to improve with, and people in our Discord server shared kind of their own um, their own goals for the next 28 days, which I love. We had like five or six people share that in the discord and they're kind of trying to achieve their own goals.
Don Hansen:But that's the goal of videos like this is to show um, is to kind of just like invite people and inspire people to have some goal setting in general, because I think it's really easy to want to improve but we never really solidify how we're supposed to improve and then we never solidify the actions that we need to take our actual goals to be able to get to that outcome. So my outcome really is to pump up my content quite a bit, because I do see an increase in traffic and revenue. But also I feel better and I'm getting closer to getting back into more athletic things as I lose weight and I'm coding more, which makes me way more happy. I'm just a happy person when I get to code. So that's why these are my goals, but I'd love to hear what your goals are below. That's why these are my goals, but I'd love to hear what your goals are below. But before I end this video, I want to share one more thing.
Don Hansen:So I have been pursuing warm leads for in the job search just with people that I've worked with, people that I know and you know. Thank you to everyone that did kind of extend something to their company and I. Sometimes I got instant rejections and I made it to a couple final round interviews and I want to talk about a recent one. But it was for a company is for a front end position, pretty big company, thousands of employees, I believe, worked at the company. So it's outside of my comfort zone of working for startups, but it seemed like a really good company and I got to the final round and I did three final round interviews and two I think went pretty good and then the third one I bombed terribly.
Don Hansen:So I did essentially two technical interviews. One was kind of just coding challenges and then the second one was kind of front end challenges and, um, I did okay with the second one but there was kind of a miscommunication with the API stuff, uh, but I still could have responded, um, I still could have prioritized things a little bit differently with how I built the application, even though we had this like really weird blocker. That probably shouldn't have happened. Um, but the third final round interview I found that I just blanked, like I just had a bunch of anxiety come up and I noticed in interviews I forgot about this because I used to do this in interviews but it's been so long since I've interviewed. But I would.
Don Hansen:If I don't prep, if I don't know there's going to be a technical challenge, sometimes I get into the state where I kind of just blink and if I get over that in five to ten seconds. It's not a big deal. But then I haven't really trained my mind to think about coding and so I have less confidence that I'm going to be able to get past this blocker. And then it's like a snowball and I continue to just blink on really simple stuff and then I remember even asking the requirements like two or three times and they're really really simple stuff. I do way more complicated stuff in my personal projects and I did way more complicated stuff as a professional dev.
Don Hansen:But I just get into this kind of anxious state and the only way to overcome that is practice. It's only practice. So I don't think you're supposed to be really good at interviews if you're a good developer. I don't think that's a thing. I think good developers in interviews also practice interviews, especially when you are competing with a lot of other people.
Don Hansen:And you know, I just have to remind myself as well, even though me being anxious doesn't reflect my skills, there is absolutely no reason that company should ever take a chance on me, right? It is really costly to hire a developer that could end up being a bad developer and being a risk to the company, like a financial risk or like a non-cultural fit. It's in the company's best decision especially when there is a lot of competition, there are a lot of applicants to really be sure that you don't hire a bad developer. You probably heard that before, but it's true. It's very, very costly to hire a bad developer. So I completely understand why they didn't take a chance on me, and that company doesn't owe me that. But I owe it to myself to get a little bit more comfortable practicing interviews so I can actually showcase a skill level that's true to where I actually am, rather than me just fumbling over really simple stuff, looking like I just started off coding, and so I don't know if that's supposed to help you.
Don Hansen:But I think my advice if I had to give any is just, if you screw up in an interview, I don't think that necessarily reflects your skill level, and, just like you, doing poorly in the job search because that's a whole other thing of its own doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad developer. Just because companies aren't reaching back out to you doesn't mean you're a bad developer. Just because companies aren't reaching back out to you doesn't mean you're a bad developer. It might mean you're not great with building up connections, you're not great with presenting yourself, your resume, your portfolio. There are so many kind of surface level things where companies don't really have a lot of time to analyze, where you could just make little improvements that would make you stand out a hell of a lot more. And it just because you are doing bad in an interview doesn't reflect that you are a bad developer. It just reflects that, hey, this is what we were able to assess with the skill level and you know, we got a lot of other applicants we can't take a chance.
Don Hansen:So that just means doing mock interviews and even doing pair practice interviews with other people that you're learning to code with and trading. You know, maybe one person can, so maybe you've met friends on discords where you're learning to code together. Maybe you worked on a project. Do some coding challenges where one person is the interviewer and one person is the interviewee and just reverse those roles and practice that. And just reverse those roles and practice that. I think that'll help a lot of people get over their nerves and I think you're going to do a lot better in the interviews. It's really about conquering that anxiety in the interviews and it just comes off so much better, even if you are struggling with some technical concepts, how you handle that and how you rebound usually tends to improve when you feel less anxious. But you know, I'm telling you this advice because this is advice for me.
Don Hansen:Now I've applied probably for 12 developer jobs over the past three months. I have not tried. I mostly pursued warm leads and then applied for a few different positions Well, maybe about like eight or nine different positions in Miami where they wanted me to be in person. So you know, I just wanted to take a shot because I'd like to head to Florida. But, um, you know, if I ever take it seriously, maybe I'll share that process with you.
Don Hansen:Um, but right now I don't know if I want to like, I just want to code. Code, whether it's for myself, building up twitch sprout, or whether it's for a company, as long as I can pay my bills, I just want to code. I don't care what I'm doing, I just want to code. So you know that's still. I don't know where that's going to lead me with um down the road if I'm going to be working for a company as a developer again, if I'm going to pivot my business, um, if I really am going to double down on Twitch Sprout and really try to push out my first SaaS product, because it's a passion project as well as something that I'd like to build revenue on top of. But I feel like it's just kind of a big unknown for me. I feel a little uneasy because I don't exactly know the direction my business is going to go or where I'm going to be in three months. And until I figure that out, I'm just going to continue pushing forward and we'll get there.