How I went from $15/hr to 300k/yr as a Web Developer

i want to give a shout out to today's sponsor skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious developers just like you and me explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity skillshare offers creative classes designed for real life in all circumstances that come with it these lessons can help you stay inspired express yourself and introduce you to a community of millions especially with the uncertain times that we're all living in today skillshare is a perfect way for you to brush up on technical skills that you can use to secure your future as aspiring developer one of the classes that i'm particularly interested in is the hand coding your first website html and css basics original by rich armstrong and i think this is perfect for building that basic foundation that you need to help you move on to javascript and building your own websites on your own the first 1000 people to click on the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium once again thank you skillshare for sponsoring this video and i hope you all enjoyed the rest of this video [Applause] [Music] yo yo yo what is up everyone i want to welcome everyone to another video it's good to see every single one of you all welcome to my channel if this is your first time here i want to let you know that you're in for a surprise because my life is getting better by the day it feels like and this story that i've been documenting since i don't know 2017 is insane everyone i can't believe i'm even making this video i never once imagined in my life that i would even make a video like this just the amount i'm going to be telling you the value the content is insane and i never even dreamed that this would ever happen because i thought that to be able to reach a level i'm at today i would have to go to medical school i'd have to be a lawyer i don't know i'd have to be a nurse working two full-time jobs right but i'm not i am me and i'm doing what i love for a living i'm a proud college dropout don't know how i graduated high school and i am a web developer but technically i'm a software engineer today now i have worked for i think about five different companies since i became a developer almost five years ago just within the last 12 months i've moved to four different states i've worked for three different companies and just 10 months ago i started my own web development agency and i can't believe i'm going to share with you what i'm going to share with you it is mind-boggling to be honest everyone to see this point in my life that i'm at right now because there's one thing i want to tell you for sure everyone is that i've said this many times okay mama say it again five years ago if you told me today that just make a decision to go to treehouse teamtreehouse.com to learn code that i would be here today did i be working for a new relic as a developer relations engineer that would start my own web development company because i got laid off and that because i got laid off i'm at new relic as a developer relations engineer and now i'm a full-time content creator aside from as a contractor working for other people too building these websites for clients as well it is crazy to think about that everyone so what i'm going to tell you is how i went from 15 an hour which is about 31 000 a year to making what i'm earning now which is 270 000 a year it is crazy the fact i'm sharing this number and how this happened i'm gonna try to share as little as eight minutes i know i did like a two minute intro but it's just crazy for me to even share this right now okay everyone let's do this right now so my last job before i became a junior web developer at my first company for the first two years i was a executive assistant for an audio visual company in huntington beach that company threatened to fire me because i didn't really care about hanging out with people at lunch going out with them all the time not hanging out people after work i was more focused and i want to get my job done this is a paycheck to paycheck job they were paying me 18 bucks an hour but they cut my hours so it's technically back to 15 an hour making less than the last job and they threatened to fire me because i was more focused in just trying to survive than hanging out with people at that time so because they threatened me i i realized i need to make a difference in my life i need to change my life so what did i do i learned code at treehouse i saw a video saying that you don't need to be smart to learn code so i went to teamtreehouse.com learn code you can check the link description below if you're interested and i got my first developer job in three months now my first developer job as a junior developer they were looking for a senior developer that was not me i barely knew html css they wanted someone who knew php laravel twig everything right as a as a scene developer full stack developer i knew none of that but still i got the job as luck as it could be yes i got the job now that first job as a junior developer barely knowing any code they paid me forty five thousand dollars a year forty five thousand dollars it was just insane going from 15 bucks an hour to about 21 it was pretty amazing because i was able to afford so much more things and living in california is not easy whatsoever it is hard it's expensive it is not cheap so i got that first job i was at that first company for two years and as i was with that company at first for two years i realized you know i need to do something better with my life when i say that i mean i need a better pay because yo it's not easy to live in california it's really expensive especially have a car i needed better insurance and they didn't offer the best insurance i needed a good insurance so fortunately after two years of that company making 45k a year yes i'm docking my journey as a developer but then i got a job at my second company as a mid-level developer at entrepreneur magazine they offered me the job i got it i was earning about seventy thousand dollars a year which is amazing because after taxes in california that's about two thousand dollars every two weeks but what even sucks is that my home my apartment was two thousand dollars a month so they didn't even feel that like that much at all whatsoever and it was my fault because number one i shouldn't have gotten an expensive apartment i was not thinking and i was in debt so 70k a year is really good it's not bad at all but because of my bad decisions it wasn't enough for me to survive so good thing i had youtube to live off of now i was at that company for about two years and two months right i love that job to be honest if i could have stayed that job for 10 years i probably would have they paid well and assurance was really good but unfortunately what was going on in the world last year in 2020 as everyone knows i got laid off and that was the hardest thing ever because i love the people i've worked with my boss like company is amazing jake i love you forever man you taught me so much he was so understanding he really did have our backs and he did everything he can to make our jobs easier which was the first for me but i got let go and it was tough because i could even tell that my boss's eyes were really red from crying or it was just tough for him right and and then even after i got laid off my co-workers former co-workers told me yeah like you could tell jake was like having a hard time telling the whole team you had to let me go fortunately from the best of my knowledge no one's been let go yet so after getting laid off it was the toughest thing ever right but little did i know that being laid off from my dream job the dream company i loved working with the people i loved working with right little did i know that this point in my life which was only what does it happen like what 10 months ago okay that happened 10 months ago that that would cause a spark to change my life forever why because when i got laid off i realized that at the end of the day no matter what company you work for you're just a number no one cares about you why they have to protect their butts in the end and who is it that they have to sacrifice to make sure that the company could survive is they let us go and when i realized that i realized i need to do something to take care of myself now i'm going to keep looking for a new job as a developer but one thing i need to do for sure is start my own business so that's why i started developer branded started my own cloning company started my own leather desk company i started growing my youtube channel even more i started doing podcasts like crazy and then what ended up happening is i even created my own web development agency and what's so crazy okay when i decided to start my own business even though i have no idea what i'm doing did not know anything i still don't know anything i still don't know what i'm doing i'm just going there were so many people doubting me there were people that i caught my own friend going behind my back they said it is cringe hearing chris saying he wants to start his own business now does he think he can do everything and when i caught him i called him out like dude why did you say this about me like that's so messed up we've known each other for three to four years like why would you do that and he said what you want me to take it back because he was caught he got prideful ended up being a jerk so i'm not friends with that person anymore but because that person talked behind my back do you know what i wanted to do even more i wanted to make sure this company was successful and grow like crazy okay so we'll go back to this later so after getting laid off i started growing my own business started trying to sell stuff bought a bunch of lot of desk pads really good quality that i could sell for a good price hoping like they could do all this it's not doing bad so what happened is that after getting laid off at my new job right i got a new job offer actually no i got two job offers after getting laid off from a company in san francisco silicon valley and a company in the middle of nowhere in uh virginia or in tennessee well technically virginia tennessee and that two job offers in california that job in silicon valley wanted to offer me ninety five thousand dollars a week he actually offered ninety thousand i negotiated and i'm like no i want to go a little higher go a little higher all right i said ninety-five ninety thousand i'm like oh no i wanna do a hundred thousand hundred ten thousand right and they finally settled to all right chris we're gonna go with this amount and then what happened was i got in the second job offer in the middle of nowhere and that job it was just it just sounds so tempting because i get to move to the east coast and experience a new life so i ended up rejecting a job in the bay area in silicon valley and i end up moving to the middle of nowhere in virginia right middle of nowhere all white people norwegians except at the asian restaurants and the only reason there's so many asians that asian restaurants because the kids who work for the parents of that restaurant are asian too so i moved there they offered me a decent job but they paid me better than what i earned at my last job an entrepreneur but then i ended up quitting that company because one of the people were just toxic and i left right unfortunately right the company wasn't toxic but one person was and i just had to have a little bit more self-respect for myself and i ended up leaving in good terms though in good terms of the ceo right and what happens when i end up leaving i end up instead just being a small contractor for that ceo working on other things on the side rather than working for the main company right so fortunately that happened but then when i announced on twitter that i'm quitting my job because i just wasn't happy and i couldn't handle a toxic environment my tweet on twitter went viral it got like i i correct me for wrong i might be remembering this incorrectly but it got thousands of retweets thousands of shares thousands of likes i think i got close to one million people like just looking at the post within itself and because of that tweet a week after i quit that job in the middle of a pandemic after moving across the country from las vegas or west coast to the east coast i quit my job after one week of quitting i got interviews with apple interviews with facebook interviews with companies in boston interviews with company in san diego in florida all around the country and there's some people outside of the country as well interviews everywhere so many interviews and then what happened this amazing hiring manager from new relic reached out to me saying chris i i'm a president for courage and i'm sorry for what you went through i have a job proposition for you this is the new team of building we this team will be doing things that no other team in the world is doing it's going to be different and i'm like what are you talking about this is my new job at new relic as a developer relations engineer my job is to create content for a living to stream on twitch for a living upload youtube videos for a living teach people code travel around the world speaking of conferences inspiring more people to be better developers right and be a developer so that's my job right now as a developer relations engineer and that job i'm gonna tell you everyone i'm not gonna tell you the exact amount but i'm telling you this they paid more than double than what i earned an entrepreneur you have to understand i got laid off an entrepreneur in may around may may may or june look i think it was may of 2020 in the middle of a crazy pandemic i move across the country because i got laid off i move across the country for this new startup i quit that startup in the middle of pandemic as well one week later i get a new company reaching out to me for this new job and they offered to pay me more than doubled in what i earned at my mid-level position that is unheard of in the middle of what's going on in 2020 okay now while this is happening again you know what i earned in my job at entrepreneur they paid more than double i'm telling you that right now that's not even including bonuses in stocks right okay now aside from that what crazy thing happened as well is that my web development agency because my youtube started going up because my brand started growing all these things started happening clients end up coming to me to make them websites to work with them on new designs to give them like consulting advice in regards to how to better improve content creation all these things things i can't talk about on here unfortunately so my web development agency started kicking off and i'm gonna tell you this how much i make okay how much i make from just contracting alone with my well-developed by the end of this year i'm also getting a new client that's going to pay me additional about what negotiating but about 30 to 40 000 just this year for that one client so and all together that's about 150 000 um all together but end this year please know now when the manning's all looked together all this math 10 months ago i was making only 70 000 i'm not including youtube okay not including youtube right now just 70 000 a year at my middle level position i got laid off i started my own business moved across the country new job offer as a full-time content creator for new relic as a developer relations engineer just streaming code online that's my job and my business kicked off in total not including a new client what i'm earning right now every year is 270 000 a year this is crazy i might lose one of the clients that's fine guess what i'm gonna get a new one like it's crazy to think of where i am right now and i'm not sharing this to brag at all as you all know for those who've been following me for the last five years i documented my journey from when i was living in my car i even made a video on me crying in the car because i can't believe i have health insurance for once i made a video of getting my very first apartment renting my very first home now i'm in this gigantic apartment which i can't wait to make a new home tour of i'm sharing this to share my journey with you all and i'm really hoping that a video like this can encourage you to let you know that if i can do it you can definitely do it too yo i was doing my budgeting the other week and after taxes everyone i mean this to me this is insane i don't know about you but fifteen thousand dollars in cash like that's unheard of to me i can't believe that now this is including youtube too though okay but with this new client if it goes through everyone 270 plus 40k that's 310 000 my client list clientele will continue to go up why this all happened because i got laid off and realized at the end of the day no matter what company you work for the one who cares about you the most is yourself and you need to do something about that i decided to do something about that now i'm telling you i got lucky i'm lucky to be who i am today i'm lucky to be a developer in a world where they need developers i'm lucky that my i get to learn code for living on twitch because what that is doing is that now i'm able to improve my skill as developer as well i'm learning react every morning and then i'm learning cyber security in the evening and in the weekends i'm doing all this other stuff and i'm even learning python on twitch this is my job so i'll put the link in description below to my twitch if you want to check it out but everyone i did get here by accident it's true but the reason i also got here was because i didn't just sit back and do nothing i didn't just sit back thinking this is the end for me i had no idea what i've been doing the last four to five years but one thing is for sure is that i just kept doing that i kept going i kept trying i felt like crazy yo when i started my business i called coding phases i called my uncle i called all these different people called spoke to joshua fluke about like starting a business taxes and all these different things should i do llc should i do all these different things should i do an escort trying to learn and i made a lot of mistakes but man this all happened because i decided to never settle and keep getting better in my skill and trying to do something new and i'll let you know if i can do this again everyone you can too it just starts with how bad do you want it i gave up gaming i gave up some things to get so i am today and to go back by the way to that friend who talked behind my back saying it's cringe chris is starting his own business he's nowhere to be found now okay i mean when i say he's nowhere to be found i didn't do anything i mean like he's out of my life okay nothing like that he's out of my life meaning we're not friends anymore but he can't say that no more and the people he was talking about me to them can't say that no more people always doubt you especially yourself i doubt myself all the time but you can't let that determine if you'll succeed or not you have to fight against your thoughts you have to fight against what people will tell you what you can or can't do in the world and keep going anyway ah that's how i did it that's literally it and i'm gonna keep going i can't wait to see where my life will be in five years it's insane it's exciting but i love you all thank you for watching man if you can everyone please if you made it in the video comment below let me know but if you can if not comment i ask and i'm begging you like this video help me grow my channel help me reach a hundred thousand subscribers by the end of this year but anyways i have another video coming out really soon love you all this is chris shawn this is the life of a web developer and i'm out peace

Channel: Chris Sean

Views: 51,929

Rating: 4.9020143 out of 5

Keywords: learn, code, life, of, web, developer, html, css, javascript, query, js, php, angular, programmer, software, frontend, backend, front, back, programming, job, hired, junior, jr

Id: t9sGy_347UA

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021