How Coding Changed My Life

what kind of impact did becoming a software engineer have on my life after 10 years in this career what are the highlights and what are some of the bad parts this video is my personal story there's no course there's no sponsored segment I just want to give you guys a perspective on this career starting from the beginning I was a broke University student and I was looking for ways to make someone M on the side I studied computer science because frankly I believed it had a higher chance of paying the bills than being a physics student which is what I truly wanted to be I was always okay with math and physics and I really loved them but I played around with coding in my free time like a hobby I made a bunch of cool projects back in the day I remember I had this one book on Java which really formed my early understanding and intuition for coding in retrospect I think the quality of this book was the key factor not so much the quality of the Java programming language the thing is once you become good at something it starts rewarding you with things you didn't really imagine at the start and I want to tell you about what those rewards were for me in order from least important to the most important reward number one the developer Community I noticed very early on that the developer Community was more entrepreneurial than most certainly more than the physics Community there was a very noticeable can do Vibe and some contagious optimism everyone one was building something hustling talking about projects it was a big inspiration for me and I felt like I was being pulled forward instead of constantly having to push against some imaginary wall as a developer I worked with a startup based in the US and even though I worked remotely they invited me over a couple times to work from there it was a transformative experience for me it may sound silly but being so far away from home and also feeling right at home when talking to other developers and entrepreneurs from halfway across the world made me feel like I belong somehow I don't know reward number two Financial rewards in my years working as a developer I was generally paid adequately okay satisfactory there is a huge difference of course between developers in the US and everyone else and I naturally fell right smack in the middle of that everyone else category but even though I didn't get rich in these 10 years in the same way that people of my similar skill and experience are getting rich in the US it's honestly been 10 years since last time I checked the price on some everyday item like food rent clothing or vacations when I think about it it's such a big contrast to the time before that because I can very clearly remember a time when I thought to myself wow I wonder what it feels like when you need a jacket and you can just go and buy one reward number three the universality of coding is a skill for reasons you might be able to guess by now for the longest time I wanted to to move to the US and work from there as an engineer but life is unpredictable and I ended up moving to Norway for my family a couple of years ago now if I were in any other profession and I wanted to find work in Norway I would first have to learn the Norwegian language then potentially spend money and a lot of time getting all my certifications recertified and translated and whatnot and only then start looking for a job but because I was a developer I got an interview with a company almost immediately and the interview was of course in English I invite you to entertain the idea how valuable that is and also maybe you can entertain the idea of subscribing and hitting that like button people think that the perks of software engineering are like playing games at the office or getting some free snacks that doesn't even register on the chart comparing to how Universal this skill is across the world but now let's talk about the final reward going back to my entrepreneurship aspect of software engineering the skills you learn as a developer position you so well to start your own business there are so many free resources both to learn but also to use for example if you're clever about Distributing your workloads across the free tiers of different Cloud providers you can run a huge project for like $10 a month or something compare this to any other career let's take a well-paid one like lawyers no matter how many years you work as a lawyer you're not getting any closer to opening up your own firm unless you saved a bunch of cash in the meantime but but as a developer if you stumble upon a cool idea you can build a massively successful product with basically no Capital how crazy is that also when your product is ready there's no limit to how many people can buy it you have no distribution costs no Logistics to worry about you don't have to deal with product returns or physical locations there are countless single person businesses out there making a couple of million dollars a year and that is a gift that no other profession can give you even the ones that universally recognized like UI design or something similar you still cannot build a product as a UI designer alone but as a developer you can okay but enough about the rewards what did it really feel like this profession well it's hard for sure especially in the beginning ironically as much as it is hard to get a job in a large successful company once you get in the work is in many respects easier simply because people around you know what they're doing for the most part in contrast to that when I was just starting out typically because you have no experience you apply for jobs that pay less then turns out the reason they pay less is that they can't afford developers better than you which by definition means the code base is and people don't really know what they're doing for the most part but it gets better with time it is important to keep working on your own site projects because at least there you have a clean environment to use the skills you have and improve every day outside of the constraints of the work that you're doing at the moment for money in the more recent years however I feel like I saw a lot of developers around me kick it into the slow gear they find comfort in the simple repetitive nature that coding eventually becomes yeah people will tell you you are problem solving every day but the truth is most devs are not really breaking any ground I'm going to be honest with you here a lot of them are just riding along the same old groove of replacing old stuff with new that for the most part is just different not necessarily better in with the cloud out with the cloud in with kubernetes out with anible in with reddis out with reddis in with microservices out with microservices in with monor repos out with monor repos and on and on and on many people thrive in this environment but I personally don't way too much bike shedding goes around in the quote unquote senior and architect roles a lot of fake imaginary and inflated responsibilities a lot of office politics too but still you can always do your own thing after all coding is a hobby as much as it is a profession no accountant will ever ever say wow I can't wait to get home today to work on this new accounting trick in Excel but I genuinely feel excited about my little coding projects every day and this is how coding changed my life [Music] sh

Channel: Marko

Views: 69,409

Keywords: software engineer, career, side project, making apps, developer, lifestyle, productivity, startup, startup ideas

Id: kGEOl3BWfgk

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024