How To Get Ahead Of 99% Of Software Engineers (Starting Today)

hi everyone quick announcement before we start the video I know it's been a while since I've actually made a coding video just wanted to share that I'm creating a very long one on web3 around four to five hours and that will come hopefully very soon but that's why things have been slow and just to maintain the frequency of the channel I'm putting out such alpha videos which hopefully help a few of you guys but yes real coding videos will be out very soon so today's video I wanted to talk about Winner Mindset how people who are in the top one percent have differentiated themselves from the bottom 99% specifically when it comes to software development why I feel that if you take everyone today and put them at the same slate in the next five years the people who were successful today as software developers will again be successful in the next five years the reason is that I feel that this is a very learnable skill and the people who have differentiated themselves today know something which I'm going to teach in this video and hopefully some of these habits you can inculcate that will help you in the longer run let's get right into the video I want to talk about this thing called the winner mindset so the CEO of coinbase once said that you can take away my company and you could basically take me down to zero as long as I have my laptop and a good internet connection I will be able to build all of this up again I think this is a very common mindset in all good Technologies I know where they don't really care about macro economic effects or what's sort of taking down the world of software development they're really just focused on their work and money is a very nice byproduct of what they're doing on a day-to-day basis they don't really look at their bank account or their overall comp and usually when they're switching from one company to another it's because of better work or like more challenging work that they're looking for in the new company more than compensation although I've seen that compensation or good compensation always follows these people so what is advice number one ? advice number one is don't be faced by Cycles Cycles come and go in the end if you're in technology you will find a way to be employable but more importantly where you should be spending your time is learning and growing as much as you can with that let's move to the second Point choose very wisely who you're spending your time with and very strongly think about who your inner circle is what is the Inner Circle it's the top five people that you're talking to on a day-to-day basis people say that you are the average of five people around you think that's very true especially in Tech I've seen strong devs clustered together look at good big startups, look at remote software developers look at sort of people going to Google as well you'll see or find a pattern that there was a group somewhere of five to ten people and they were very passionate towards one thing which doesn't necessarily have to be especially when you're starting your career it doesn't have to be a tech, it could be a job but they all had a common goal and were inching towards it when you have this inner Crew That's all sort of behind a certain goal in tech specifically I have seen the best startups in India the most successful ones all started with a very small strong team of people who knew each other very well all my friends who went for a PhD were writing research papers together when they were in college people who went into entrepreneurship were people who tried a bunch of ideas on campus and and I think this applies very well to Software developers I personally have created a Discord server even though I'm extremely inactive there these days because of my course but you should join it at some point I'm going to create an inner circle I'm going to create a community when I have the time where I can sort of just put out alphas and a lot of times these passive things that you hear in this group lead to very solid impact like one small thing that you'll hear here might lead to a very big impact three years down the line you just don't see it yet which takes me to my third point which is the butterfly effect I think it's very common in tech for the people who don't know Butterfly Effect is a phenomenon slash Theory which says a butterfly flapping its wing in one corner of the earth could lead to a tornado in another part of the world it could be as powerful or just a lot of circumstances could lead the very minute amount of wind that generates from a butterfly flapping its wing to convert into a tornado personally for me I've seen this only once in my life when I was very mindlessly scrolling in my phone one night and I came across this freelancing platform this is when I was not a freelancer I was a full-time employee looking for my next thing back in March 2020 I just came across this website and on my phone itself applied for it which means I was on Reddit and Reddit opens the worst sort of browser does not open Chrome natively it opened in the worst browser I did not feel like logging in with my email and password and verifying my email but this was like a very small two minute effort that I took which we all know when you're scrolling at night on your phone on the internet the very hard thing to do when you have Instagram and other things other places you want to sort of look at thanks to our small attention spans yet I took the conscious effort and applied for a platform which looked like a very American platform and there was a very low probability at least from my first looks of it for me to get in I got my first interview very passively from my bed I gave the interview because I was still on bed from my medical leave and it was my second interview after which I became slightly serious so this was something I never really expected to happen but this platform became my primary source of income for the next two years it is what gave me the confidence to become a full-time remote software developer and it started from a very random scroll on Reddit which takes me to the point if you can if you're young and you're looking for your first job if you are in your first job looking for a remote opportunity whatever if you're trying to go to the next pedestal in Hindi there's a saying "हाथ पैर मारते रहो" which in English means a sort of mindlessly throwing your hands left right and Center till you find that first opportunity you take small steps today which could be like going to a conference if it's far away even if you have to go in a train there and if you have to sort of take care of accomodation yourself do it because it could lead to one recruiter that you meet there which will sort of change your life because we all know there are like stages in Tech and your first stage which could be your first job could just come from one such very small Butterfly Effect movement so try to chase those be it through finding friends speak through meeting people online don't be shy slash restricted when it comes to looking for opportunities one small Butterfly Effect moment would change the trajectory of your career with that let's move to the next point take risky bets uh the good thing about tech is even bets that are considered traditionally very risky are not really risky in Tech if you're starting a startup you can easily raise a few thousand dollars maybe more than 100K and you can take out a humble salary from it compare this to non-tech traditional startups uh the upside isn't as high and you're still taking similar risks and you might not be able to raise Venture money so thankfully a lot of rich people who want to build slash hold on to slash grow their wealth believe a lot in technology at least today and for the same reason they invest a lot of money here because they feel they'll get asymmetric upsides by investing in these young people they are still fairly safe bets and I don't know why but every time I've seen someone take a risky bet in Tech at least in my circle they've done fairly well now you could argue that my circle is IIT folks which is why this happened I don't think it's necessarily true I've seen people from tier 2 tier 3 colleges my friends who started their startups and are doing pretty well and this would feel conventionally as a very risky sort of a bet but almost always in Tech I've seen it work out so just move out of that Circle of the salary trap and if you can um take risky bets take bets where you feel you can grow technologically much more even if it means a salary cut or less job stability because the learning that you have will compound and that's what ends up mattering in the end after five years making 1.5 x or 2x more right now won't matter much where you are technically in the next five years will matter much more and hence I would strongly suggest that bet that might feel risky that new startup that might feel technologically great but isn't paying you as much try to take that bet I think and I could totally be wrong here but every time I've seen people move from Big Tech to startups I think it's very hard to move back and similarly on-site jobs to remote work you don't really think of that as an option anymore even the worst case of remote job feels much better than sort of an on-site job similar to even the worst case of a startup which could be the startup sort of going to shit feels better than a monotonous nine to five sometimes in a big tech so it just feels it's just very hard to take that first step but once you do and I'm seeing this happen much more in India thanks to Shark Tank where people are taking risky bets and hopefully that that tradition continues because it is through these risky bets and us trying to challenge the conventional mindset of going to a 9-5 that Humanity grows so too philosophical of a video now so let's let's get back on track if realistically if you have an offer to move to a startup with less upside take it if you're thinking going for a masters is too expensive you could have exponential upsides after two years sure two years would be difficult and there is a risk what if Market goes to shit in two years you still have student debt to pay but again as I've said markets came and went I saw the whole covid cycle where a lot of my Master's sort of friends people who went for their masters did not have any jobs but it only continued for six months and after six months they're all working in meta Google whenever so it just feels like it'll be risky it isn't in the end for some reason in tech risky bets workout I don't know why we're just privileged I guess that a lot of money flows into Tech and so even the worst case here is much better than Sometimes the best case in other places so please like this is something that you will have to do not me but I've seen it work out if you're when you're ever getting that option right just move you'd always come back to the less risky bet maybe get paid a little bit less but at least you try one last Point forget books forget notes I think we've sort of been traditionally very wired to learn from books uh be it in school and especially in India we go through IIT-JEE prep before going to campuses um it might feel like that's the right way to learn unfortunately in Tech it isn't in in IIT-JEE it is even in school it might be but in Tech the only way to learn other than you are a complete Prodigy is by doing so build a lot of projects and usually your motivation to build a project is good when someone is paying you so try to find people and let them pay you even if it's really less money if it's like $300 for a react website tell them I'll do it at least you have a deadline at least you have some upside at the end of it and slowly and steadically that's how learn the best way to learn initially is to keep under pricing yourself even if it's not a one dollar but like even if it's like $200 I'm sure you can find people who pay you $200 for a website a full stack website it will take you a hundred hours it will be like one dollar an hour or something like that so extremely low pay but you're not doing it for the pay you're doing it for the learning trust me you spending a hundred dollars on a book and reading it versus you getting paid for $200 and building a project second one is much better I have never learned from a book most best people I know don't learn from books so try to leave the whole notes and learning from books behind and start building projects be it full stack be it whatever open source companies are out there leave companies code bases are out there you can learn and literally read how open AI is working these days a bunch of Open Source Alternatives of these so just be curious and throw you hands as much as you can try to read through code bases of projects if you don't understand them then take a step back and build a smaller project the tech is a very hodgepodge field it's it's extremely haphazard and I think the best way to learn is not have a structure just have projects that hopefully are Milestone based and you're getting paid for them because if you pick up a project on your own most probably you will leave it at some point someone is paying you you'll probably have some accountability so if you can get someone to pay you for a project if you want to get into ml should be an ml project if you want to get into full stack build a website slowly and steadily through projects is how you learn everything and doing like learn how to build then learn how to deploy everything that's needed in a production scenario if you create for clients uniquely through freelancing slowly you'll become really good at it and by slowly I mean literally in six months so try to spend your time there and make that your learning framework versus reading books or even scrolling through YouTube videos I think that's the best way for you to learn so the last point is being be appropriately irritating uh I think a lot of you are struggling with oh I'm not getting my first job or there are so many people in the market how do I differentiate myself uh I think the answer is I've also learned this through a lot of trial and error the answer is being appropriately irritating when you're approaching people so you you have to realize people are very busy people today 's Market no one is going to reach out to you unless you're really good you are the one who has to reach out to employers companies HRS and there is a very right balance of being irritating when you're approaching them which means approaching them every few days but not sort of pissing them off employers are usually very busy they don't really care if you're messaging them and they won't get irritated the first time if you keep messaging them or you send them the wrong things then they will but if you're just being polite showcasing your work between open source is just contributing to them very slowly and you know nudging your vein and if it's not open source if you want to get into company just getting in touch every few weeks they know you they know there's this person whenever they have this opportunity if you're there at the right time I've seen this many times that someone reaches out to me I don't have the job right now but I know at the back of my head there is this full stack person if they keep sending me their projects every few weeks every few days I will be aware that this person exists whenever people are employing right there's just one crisis day that oh we need a full stack developer today so you just need to be if you're lucky you'll be messaging them the same day this has happened with me many times that someone who's been sort of pissing me off for a few days luckily messaged me the same day that I was looking for someone to hire so find the right balance of being appropriately irritating especially when you're trying to approach companies remotely if you're at the right place at the right time sort of a fit in and that's a very ad-hoc way to get hired so be appropriately irritating but if you're good at coding just sort of keep contributing to open source and don't even leave things to chance but if you can't yet contribute and if you're contributing & they're not noticing you yet keep nudging them that you're looking for a job at some point there will be a crisis day in the company they'll need someone will resign or they'll get some funding from somewhere they'll need more developers or they'll just realize that this project is going very slow we need a new developer you should just be positioned very well which in case of open sources just keep contributing there will come a day and then you should be there at the right place at the right time that's the best way to get hired cool all right this was long video but this is all my sort of factors that I've thought and seen uh that differentiate the top one percent or people who find Opportunities even in this market and good opportunities from the rest of the group let me know if you like the video if not dislike I'll see you the next one bye guys

Channel: Harkirat Singh

Views: 251,287

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Id: 1-LLMmKjj5I

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023