5 things you NEED to know as a Programmer

man i really feel like a youtuber right now i got the microphone in the frame i got the bookshelf i got the softbox light five feet above my head i got the whole production baby anyways how you doing i hope you're doing well uh today i wanted to talk about my journey i'm coming up on five years of being a programmer right or at least doing this professionally for five years which is really crazy to think about because to be honest i'm nowhere where i thought i was going to be five years ago i don't mean that in a bad way or honestly a good way but i think that's i mean that's just how life is you know we we build up these things in our head and they don't happen the way we we picture them all the time anyways uh but yeah five years in january if you count my first year and a half doing an internship which i do because i got paid for it and you know i got a lot of value out of it so with that being said i want to talk about the five biggest things i've really learned in these last five years so let's go ahead and jump right into it with number one and that is i think it's something that that i struggled with certainly and i think a lot of people struggle with is that finding your first software development job it's a pain in the ass man it's hard it's very difficult and when you have no experience and like me if you're like me no degree it's difficult to get your foot in the door somewhere but to be honest with you once you get that first job it is such smooth sailing from there i've been doing this in like almost five years now and i have recruiters literally blowing up my dms on linkedin every week so how do you get your your first job as a dev how do you get your foot in the door essentially and to be honest it's pretty simple really in practice i mean it it takes a lot of hard work but the simple answer to that question is you really need to sell yourself you need a selling point and what i mean by that is you need on your resume to show whoever you're you're applying for whoever you're interviewing with that that you know what you're doing basically you need to start writing software and you need to put it on your github or portfolio it doesn't have to be a unique piece of software you know get together with a friend follow a youtube tutorial and try to make it a little custom literally just do anything to get code out there so you can show interviewers that hey i've written code here it is that's gonna be your best bet and uh you know probably the most effective use of your time if you're looking for your first job you just need to start writing software and when you're looking for your first job you honestly might want to consider taking an internship or part-time job something that might not pay the best but will help you build that foundation for your resume this is what i did i found a job making 12 an hour about 20 hours a week but i i mean i was 20 at the time and i my previous jobs paid me like eight dollars an hour so 12 dollars an hour hell yeah sign me up and i get to code so i'd say if you're in a position where you can do something like that definitely look into it definitely consider it if you're having trouble finding a full-time job but obviously yeah you you're not going to want to stay at these companies forever so i say that i did my internship for about a year and a half and from that point i found my first full-time job where i landed at a decent salary which leads me into my next point point two if you're looking to maximize your income you really need to switch jobs every one to two years let's be real there's no need to beat around the bush here software developers make good money i mean that's one of the biggest drawing points for most people i think is the money that you make writing code with that being said the average dev usually switches jobs every two years in my experience i've seen so many of my co-workers just dip and go to a new company presumably for the money and the reason for that is because often it is so difficult to get a sizable promotion with the salary you want within the company you're at uh than it is to go to a different company that will pay you what you're looking for right off the bat your value as a death essentially skyrockets within the first one to five years of experience and from that point it kind of baselines off so let's use me for an example in terms of how my salary or my total pay has increased over the last five years so when i started out as an intern i was making 12 dollars an hour after a year and a half at that internship i had left to go to my first company where i was making a total comp of about 55k a year which averages about to uh 26 an hour after about another year and a half at that company i got a promotion making a total of 72k a year which is about 34 an hour and after additional year at that company right so a total four years of being a dev i left that company i moved to chicago where i make about fifty dollars an hour as a dev so yeah eventually there will come a point where you can't essentially double your income every time you you look for a new job but in that first i'd say in the first one to five years you want to try to switch jobs every one to two years to really maximize your income now with that being said i really wouldn't recommend hopping around once you find a job that you really like with a company that you really enjoy and the reason for that man is honestly because it it can be hard to find a company that you actually enjoy a company that you align with uh that that has people that you really enjoy being around and when you're working for a company 40 hours a week you want to try to enjoy that company as much as possible so once you're making a comfortable salary and you really enjoy the company you're working for in my opinion unless money is your your only driving points um i would recommend just just staying there and enjoying your life for real all right so number three and probably the most difficult one for me to adapt to uh in these last five years of being a developer is that you have to expect a lot of feedback and a lot of criticism and when i first got into to coding right and when i got my first big boy job i got a lot of feedback and a lot of criticism i still get it to this day um and at first it was really difficult for me and at times it still is to be honest but you really can't take that to heart you really can't if you want to grow and become better as a dev you you have to you have to think about your code reviews and your technical reviews as a way for you to grow and when you write a piece of code and someone comments on your pull requests or comments on that piece of code you wrote telling you how you know you could maybe optimize it or you know you should you know do xyz better so on and so forth they're coming from a really genuine spot and you have to realize that no one's out to to hurt your feelings everyone in in your company is there to to help you grow and to help you get better as you are for them don't be that guy who gets a comment on his code and then argues with the other developer that comment with that commented on that piece of code and then go back and forth you know what i mean when you get feedback come from uh come from a non kind of detach from your ego a little bit i guess and come from a really non-judgmental non-bias position and and really think about that feedback critically and say okay how can i improve myself and when you oh when you're open to this feedback and this criticism it's going to help you so much it's going to help you tremendously you're going to be you're going to live up to your full potential as a dev and you're going to be a very high value to your co-workers and to other companies so just be open-minded i guess that's all i'm trying to say so number four and i got two more i'll try to add on these pretty quickly here you never stop learning i've realized the more that i learn about coding and in tech the more that i realize like there's so much i don't know even after five years i get so lost sometimes right and that's why i said at the beginning of the video i'm not where i expected myself to be five years ago right if you were to ask me five years ago like how good i'd be at a program i'm gonna be like oh i'd know everything right i'm gonna be smart and i'm gonna be able to write the best code but in reality that is so far from the truth so yeah even after five years i'm occasionally being thrown on projects where i'm completely lost whether it's a new tech stack or a new piece of software i get really lost sometimes and i know it sounds so cliche but this is especially true in tech you really have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable no matter who you work for you're gonna be thrown on on projects and tasks that are so uncomfortable and so unfamiliar to you you know and when i first started my career this gave me a lot of anxiety because i felt like oh if i don't if i don't figure this out then i'm i'm fired i'm gone and i've gotten to the point where i'm basically numb to that happening in a good way right if if i'm asked to work on a project with a tech stack that i'm like completely unfamiliar with i just say okay let's do it i don't think twice about it and i'd say the best piece of advice for situations like that is fake it till you make it baby i tell myself you know what i have no idea what i'm doing or how i'm gonna do it but i guarantee you this i'm gonna figure it out and to this day that mindset has not failed me so last but not least number five and before i go on to number five if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up subscribe and it really helps the channel it means a lot to me um but anyways number five people make work enjoyable i mean i always thought that if i could work on a really cool project that i would be happy right and after five years i've worked on some pretty cool projects but with people that were so difficult to work work with you know you you really do have to have to learn how to work with with people that you don't necessarily get along with but working with people that are difficult to work with even if you're working on the coolest piece of software ever makes you really not enjoy your job but i've also been on the flip side of that where i've worked on some pretty honestly boring software but with just super awesome people right and in those situations i end up enjoying my job so much more i actually enjoy going to work and you know i would choose the boring software with awesome people over awesome software with people that are really hard to work with every single time i'm telling you um people really make the job fun and they don't even and they don't necessarily only make the job fun like when you work with a team that you get along with right that you really click with you guys can you know bounce ideas off of each other you have this really awesome team dynamic and because of that you build really exceptional software and i'm at a really fortunate spot to say that i currently have that at my job but anyways that's it um whether you're just starting to look for a job or you've been interested in software development 20 years i hope you found something interesting or at least helpful in this video if you did if you enjoyed the video i'd really appreciate a thumbs up if you could subscribe to my youtube channel it really helps me out it really gets me motivated and amped to make videos i enjoy talking about tech stuff like this it's it's it's a lot of fun i i used to do it alone like in the shower i would just you know i'd have an idea and i would just ramble to myself uh about basically like what i'm doing now but you know i decided hey let's flip on the camera and uh do this for for youtube anyways let me know what you think hope you enjoyed the video and i'll see you in the next one [Music] now

Channel: Kenny Gunderman

Views: 155,087

Rating: 4.9671879 out of 5

Keywords: 100k, software, engineer, programming, must know, development, computer, science, leetcode, 5 things, tech, data structures, algorithms, kenny gunderman

Id: lYSKssDhZYI

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020