DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
Signs the Self-taught Developer Path Isn't For You
Here are a few warning signs that the self-taught developer path may not be for you.
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Self-taught developers. Can we be honest for a moment? Most of you are going to fail. It's just the truth. Most self-taught developers do not break into the industry. It's a really hard path. We have to stop glamorizing it. We have to stop pretending that it is like the best solution for so many aspiring developers. Like most people, are trying to go the self-taught path and most people will not succeed. There's a lot of competition at that level and I'm just going to jump into it. There are some early warning signs that I want you to be aware of. If you are going the self-taught path, that maybe it's not for you. Now, you know me. I'm always going to be honest with the reality of things. So the very first one is if you are someone that constantly needs motivation kicks, you need to watch a ton of videos for motivation, or you need to feel inspired to work on your project. You need to feel inspired to go through your course. Basically, you don't know how to self motivate. You're probably going to fail.
Don Hansen:People who are successful with the self taught path learn how to self-motivate, and it's a really hard thing to learn if you haven't learned it already. It takes time. It takes a lot of time and kind of just forcing yourself to take action until that motivation comes afterwards. And that's the key thing, don't depend on that motivation for you to act and learn and grow as a developer. You act and learn and grow as a developer, and then the motivation comes. But, most importantly, that motivation is not consistent, which is why you can't rely on it. But most people who are self-taught developers, who did break into the industry, they learned or most of them came into learning to code, knowing how to self-motivate, they know, they kind of have figured out what motivates them and what pulls them in a certain direction and things that demotivate them. And they've examined things like their environment, their relationships, stuff like that that can negatively affect some of their motivation. And they figured out you know, surround yourself with people that are actually going to inspire you to be much better and not hold you back. Like there's so many little things you got to set up in your life and you figure out over time as you get older and make a ton of mistakes where you basically set yourself up for success yourself, for success yourself.
Don Hansen:If you are someone that constantly feels demotivated to learn to code or you are someone that feels like they can't kind of kick their butts into gear or at least act and learn to code. Without motivation you're probably going to fail. That self-taught path is rough, it's long. There are going to be many points where you are not motivated. You do not want to wake up and work on that project. You do not want to wake up and get rejected again. You are probably going to fail. That's just the truth.
Don Hansen:Um, so there are other avenues. You know, like you have the coding boot camp route, which I think will work for the fewest amount of people, given the price point. But that can bring a little bit more motivation to kind of teach you how to learn and teach you how to structure your day and teach you that you are capable of more when you push yourself despite a lack of motivation, despite a lack of motivation. And then CS degrees can kind of carry you through a bit more and a lot more people trust and are familiar with the structure of CS degrees. But you know CS, if you're trying to get into web dev, cs doesn't really teach you web dev. So you're still going to need to branch out of that and learn more practical skills. After that You're going to have to lean on your motivation.
Don Hansen:But the hope is that, like, if you have structured learning with mentors, with teachers, it can kind of at least give you or shape your day-to-day. It can shape your structure of learning what you need to do and kind of just build patterns and habits in you. So when you do go off on your own to supplement the rest of it, you're set Like you have better habits, you have more confidence in yourself. That's kind of what those programs are really good for. So with self-taught you don't really have that, which is why you should connect with a ton of other aspiring developers and communicate, talk with them. It can be a little bit of. It could be inspirational to kind of feed off of that energy. As you lift them up, they lift you up, which is why I highly recommend you don't go through the self-taught developer path alone because it can be a very lonely and discouraging journey if you do.
Don Hansen:But you know, if you are trying to make the self-taught journey work, please get a mentor, paid mentorship, anything like that, like or like make connections in the industry and meet people at meetups, like participate in hackathons, just build friendships where you know like you can ping people and ask them for questions and, um, maybe some of your favorite content creators live stream and you can ask questions there. But self-taught path is very lonely, it's very rough, you're to lack a lot of motivation and if you can't get past that, you're probably going to fail. So the second one is you need the entire learning to code journey planned out up front. If I just had this perfect curriculum, if I just had this perfect path to becoming a developer, I would just execute and do it. There is no perfect path and a lot of people a lot of people are just trying to get a developer job, which is hurting them because they should be aiming for something a little bit more specific so they can have a tailored learning path. Tailored projects and making the right connections. That's the ideal thing that you want to do. But a lot of people are just trying to land any sort of job, and then how the hell are you supposed to even define your path when you do that? You can't.
Don Hansen:So in the beginning you need to be comfortable and accept this idea that you're not going to have the perfect path in front of you. It's not going to be perfectly linear. In fact, you might go backwards sometimes. You might realize like, hey, I've spent a little bit too much time in courses. I actually need to go back relearn some of these fundamentals and then apply them in project work. Right, it might be, it's not going to be linear. And then we talked about motivation. But even me, I can self-motivate, I can act and I understand my motivation is going to come afterwards and it's taken me a while to really build this confidence up in myself. But I know I can do it. But even me, to go through what someone tells me is the perfect linear path to becoming a front end developer and spending potentially years on that path Just learning all the right technologies that is so boring.
Don Hansen:Where's my curiosity in that? Where's my excitement for software engineering? Where's my curiosity in technology for software engineering? Where's my curiosity and technology as a developer, someone who's like getting or going to software engineering route into tech? A lot of good software engineers are really fucking curious. They don't just learn what they're told to learn. They learn something that interests them and maybe catches their eye and they they build something with it, because you're not going to learn it if you don't build anything with it. And they spend time doing that and then they organize that in their own way and they have their own conventions with it that they include on that, and maybe they bring in a couple libraries that weren't recommended in the tutorial and they build something else with it.
Don Hansen:And I want to try this with this library. What if I use this new technology that I just learned to build this? It's different, it's outside of the tutorial, but I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to reinforce concepts, and this is taking me further and further away from what this tutorial said to become a developer. This course or this content creator told me to become a developer. I'm going all the way over here. That's not good, right? I can't do that. No, no, I got to go on the super linear path and just try to make it as efficient as possible. And you know what's going to happen if I do that. I go down this very linear path that I think I don't know I think is going to lead me to a dev job. I'm going to get bored and I'm going to burn out. I'm going to quit because I'm not a robot.
Don Hansen:Be that person that goes off the beaten path a little bit, gets curious, learns something that's fun for them, reignites that passion in them, and they use that reignited passion and put that energy back into the linear path. So you're pivoting a little bit, a little bit, just to spark that curiosity, spark that motivation. Ooh, I'm having fun. I'm learning something that isn't the standard Merdstack template. I'm learning something different and I can use some of what I've learned, some of the ideas, some of the paradigms, the ways of thinking and apply them to this linear path.
Don Hansen:Oh, by the way, if you're trying to become a front-end developer, I highly recommend you check out Scrimpa. I'm specifically talking about their front-end developer career path. They have a fun, interactive way to learn how to code and become a web developer, and while that's true, that's not the main reason that I want to promote them. Honestly. The main reason is their curriculum is solid. There are a lot of curriculums that do not prepare people to actually be competitive in the market, and I've reviewed a ton of programs and to this day, it is still one of my favorites and one of the best front-end curriculums out there for self-taught developers, and they're backed by MDN, a leading and well-respected resource in the developer community, and I actually personally run my own mentees through the program to prepare them for front end developer jobs. And if you choose to sign up via my affiliate link below in the description, you actually get 30% off if you sign up for a paid plan, but you have to sign up by the end of February to take advantage of that, because it expires after that.
Don Hansen:Anyways, check it out for yourself. What do you have to lose? Let's get back to the topic Now. That's when the linear path starts to get fun again, right? So, first of all, you're never going to get the perfect, most efficient path into getting a developer job. It just doesn't exist. The people that go up to developers like we we all know these types of people, but like people that'll come and ask us like, what is the most efficient, fastest path to becoming a dev? It's like one of the worst questions in the world. It's a self-report for your mindset that is basically telling us you're probably going to fail. There is no super quick, efficient path to become a developer. It just doesn't exist.
Don Hansen:Stop asking that you want to land a dev job. Become a really fucking good software engineer who is curious, who builds things, who wants to build things, who is learning technology just in general, to be able to utilize that to build more interesting things and more complex things. Be curious why does anyone want to hire some templated, surface level bullshit developer that thinks they're learning the most efficient path possible because they're following the same mern stack that tens of thousands of other developers are following and there is nothing unique about them. Why the fuck would anyone want to hire you if you're going down that path? There's nothing unique about you. Why there is. There is inherently something unique.
Don Hansen:You come from an old industry. You have different hobbies. You can apply that industry into the dev work that you're going to be doing. You can apply your interest in these hobbies and solve problems through your technical solutions. With your hobbies, you can solve the problems of your hobbies. You can find other problems that are interesting in the world that a lot of other people wouldn't find interesting. All these little things make up your unique version version and you want to go down the most efficient, quickest path to becoming a developer, which is some standard surface level bullshit.
Don Hansen:No company is going to want to hire you. Bring some fucking life and uniqueness into you. Bring your personality. You're a human being that is bringing something unique into the dev world. And if you aren't and you're not willing to do that. You want to go down this templated path. You are just going to be non-hireable because you're so fucking boring and there's nothing you bring to the team. What is interesting about you? Bring something interesting about you into the dev world to bring something new and interesting into the teams that you're going to be applying to. This requires a little bit of resourcefulness too. It requires exploring and analyzing if this is generally moving you in the right direction, if you are generally growing as a developer.
Don Hansen:How do I analyze my progress as a developer? And I got to improvise. Sometimes the market can change, technologies can change. I got to improvise. Market can change, technologies can change. I got to improvise. You have to be able to be resourceful and improvise and think on your feet a little bit to alter your path into the type of deposition that you want. If you're not capable of doing that and you need someone telling you what to do, what to learn you are not going to make it as a self-taught developer. Someone telling you what to do, what to learn, you are not going to make it as a self-taught developer.
Don Hansen:Now the third thing and this applies to so many people. I know some of you are moving into the dev world because you want more money. I'm not going to lecture you on how you are probably going to fail. If that is your only reason I've created enough videos about that I don't care about that but what I am going to say is that if you choose to become a developer to rescue you from a really crappy financial situation and you're not able to pay your bills while you're becoming a developer, you are probably going to fail.
Don Hansen:I have seen the financial burden bury people mentally as they're trying to become a developer and I think that's what partly influences some of these people to get the most efficient path possible and then they fail. That burden, that financial burden, that weight on your shoulders, I felt it. It sucks and it's like it is very. It just destroys you mentally sometimes. You mentally sometimes but that weight makes you not, it shoves out any sort of creativity or curiosity. It's driven by like all of your actions are driven by desperation to get out of it. You can't be curious, you can't be passionate, you can't love the tech that you're learning and be motivated and inspired to dive into different things and get excited about tech, when all you think about is that financial burden, that heavy weight on your shoulders and when you look at software engineering as that thing that is going to rescue you from your bills because they're going to swallow you in six months. I see it time and time again. So many new developers just they make all the wrong decisions and seeking out the most efficient path causes them to take way longer to become a developer. Ironically, it just causes bad decision and desperate decision making and doesn't allow you to enjoy and get excited about becoming a software engineer. It crushes those spirits. You're probably not going to become a developer if you have that weight on your shoulder and the only thing that's going to rescue you is dev work. It takes a long time to become a developer.
Don Hansen:I highly recommend that you don't quit your full-time job if you currently have one. If you're going through a CS degree, it's a little bit different. I don't know your financial situation. I don't know your current debt. I don't know the loans that you're going to be taking out. I just don't know your situation. But if you have a full-time job in this market, I highly recommend whatever educational path you choose. You do it part-time, outside of the work that pays the bills. If you need to pick up more hours to pay the bills. That's what rescues you out of that financial situation. A lot of people have different situations and a lot of people don't want to hear that, but getting a dev job is not going to rescue you, for, like 99% of you, it is going to destroy you.
Don Hansen:When you are desperate for it to rescue you, you take the wrong actions and you take way longer, given your desperate actions, to grow as a developer. A lot of stuff doesn't sink in. You get frustrated more with yourself because you're realizing, like I just went through an entire course and none of it sticks right. A lot of that's going to happen until you apply it again and again and again. You might need to relearn something. You apply it again and again and again, but you are desperate because you need it to work within six months. You need it to work within a year or I am fucked.
Don Hansen:If you are in that situation, man, your focus immediately shouldn't even be learning to code to save you from that situation. It should be learning better financial habits, stripping a lot of your expenses. It should be focused on financial management, health, and that might mean picking up new hours or getting a job that's easier to get than a dev job. In the meantime, that's going to help you pay your bills. It might be a little bit more stressful, but that financial burden is something that crushes self-taught developers and it beats them into the ground where some of them will never even try to code again. Maybe that won't be you, you know. Maybe none of these apply to you, but you will be an exception, not the rule.