Is it too late to become a software engineer?

over the last couple of videos that I've made I've noticed a bit of a trend um people are not confident in the software tech industry right now software Engineers software developers or anyone in Tech really um are are seeing a lot of layoffs uh we're seeing AI come into the fold as well and people trying to get into the industry for the first time are seeing all this from an outside perspective and understandably are is rocking their confidence a little bit and um they're questioning if they're going down the wrong path and wasting their time effectively common Trend I'm seeing a lot so I want to address that in this video and sort of go over a few of the things are that's going on in the industry and talk about sort of what I think of them what's happening my opinion and sort of solutions to that and if ultimately I think it's even worth trying to get into this industry in the first place uh if you don't have any sort of uh background in it whatsoever butth of course if you're new to the channel hello I'm steo um I talk about my journey into Tech and things I've experienced things I've learned and and try to give back to to you guys who are trying to get in for the first time and that's effectively what the Channel's been about so far if you like this sort of stuff and if you want to see more from me then hit the like button subscribe and uh yeah hopefully you stick around and also thank you for all the support on the recent videos as well um it's been great I've seen a lot of uh new people coming in especially to the video where I talked about me being laid off last year uh that in particular has sort of gained a bit of traction and people are really seem seeming to enjoy that sort of stuff so uh thanks I guess I have a job now by the way I've had a few people ask me that but um I actually had one before I even made the the video um I wanted to make sure that was sort of settled first but uh yeah um thank you anyway for the support so it's uh it's good to see so first of all uh reasons that it's tough right now um is well companies are drisking right now obviously the econom is not in a good place as many people are aware at this point and job markets in general are quite Grim at the moment uh a lot of companies aren't really hiring anyone and if they are hiring people they're looking for experienced people in their fields this isn't limited to Tech this is across the board really but we're seeing it in particular with tech um especially as Tech is generally um affected quite dramatically by the economy Innovation pushes forward whenever we're in a good economic place and when we're not in a good economic place that sort of innovation and uh desire to push things forward sort of gives real back a bit in place of more safe Investments and and safe things until we get the economy back on track that's that's kind of how economic Cycles go and the economy is a cycle as well I might add as well we're not always going to be in the exact same situations as we're in just now economies sort of rise and fall right they they they go up and they go down and Tech kind of largely follows that just to a very volatile and dramatic effect sometimes you know we've seen things before like the dotom bubble and the 2008 financial crash which have both severely affected tech jobs and things so it's it's not the most stable of Industries you know people coming in don't necessarily know that I do want you to know that that over time it has been proven that uh it's tends to dramatically follow whatever the economy does and it can often lead to you know layoffs in the bad times and tons and tons of jobs in the Good Times where there's people are willing to pay anything really for anyone to try and you know build whatever they're trying to build because they've got tons of money to throw at it that's kind of what happened in the last few years and now we're seeing obviously these sort of worst times where uh companies are starting to uh sort of skimp and save a little bit and and uh not invest so heavily into to new products and new Talent basically um and so that's effectively what's happening you know because of the economy because we're in this sort of lower cycle now where um people are starting to save their money and not spend so much um we're now seeing starting to drisk and not invest in new talent and things like that a lot of this can also kind of relate to AI in a sense but I'll get into that in a minute um it does affect it in a way but not necessarily as dramatically as you think a lot of what happened in say like 2021 and things when uh companies were starting to come out of you know the whole the big cough era is uh they were heavily investing in new talent and uh over hiring essentially especially these sort of web consultancy sort of type companies uh um they would hire a lot of people especially newer people um and just throw money at them and train them up and effectively just force their business to to grow exponentially because they had the money to do so um at the time and now that we're seeing these sort of uh economic hardships uh you know these people are being laid off now because um the money is not coming in the clients aren't buying and they've got all these people that they need to tr uh pay a wage to right um which doesn't make any economic sense at the moment so so that's why you're not seeing Junior roles pop up or not as much there's there's some popping up at least in the UK market now um but in the last year or so there's been Next To None um in comparison to the last couple years probably going to be that way for a bit really until something economically changes um but uh at this point in time it's not really going to be the way that people get into the industry just by walking into an entry level job even Junior jobs and they do come up now they tend to require some amount of experience right which kind of goes against you know the the name an entry level position right or a junior position um but it's kind of the way it is because as I said companies are trying to Der risk uh and put safe investments in in people um so they're they're not they're not willing to take that risk and hire someone who might not be you know that good at the job or they might not be able to deliver uh what they're requiring for that position so um you're you're getting a lot of senior positions and things um but not so much uh Juniors uh but yeah that's that's kind of just the way it goes um it doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible at the moment but it is significantly harder uh for someone without that experience someone without that um that knowledge and experience that they can sort of present to employers and companies and things to drisk themselves effectively to make themselves look like Investments um people just don't have that they're a bit of an unknown when they're new to the industry so um companies just simply aren't willing to take that risk and it's as simple as that it's never anything personal um very rarely anything to do with people's backgrounds or anything like that as such it's just that lack of experience um makes people a bit of an unknown they could be great at what they do they could be really talented but companies just a lot of companies anyway just aren't willing to take that risk at the moment and that's kind of where that comes from so um yeah I also mentioned AI has a bit to do with it as well so I'll go into it it's not quite the way you think um AI is not taking all the jobs or like that and it's certainly not anytime soon I'll actually go as far to say AI is a bit of a hype product at the moment to be honest um people are way overhyping the capabilities of AI at least currently um yes it's a useful tool I use AI every day in my job it's great helpful um for multiple things where it's you know code autoc completion or um you know if you need just like a small sort of function or algorithm or something that does a thing uh it could be great for spitting that out and the problem with that though is you need to know exactly what you want and yeah it's getting into the problem of AI now of it can't do everything for you right um it's a very good sort of Helper and things like GitHub co-pilot is in the name it's a co-pilot right it's not there to take your job it's there to assist doing your job um they're they're very handy tools like I said Auto completion and things like that very handy tools but um they're just not there yet in terms of um being able to like completely uh replace that process and they're not going to be for a long time I made another video about Ai and why I don't think it's capable of replicating like a software engineer or anyone who has to use sort of problem solving skills or anything like that in their their day-to-day um it's not the best video I've ever done to be honest I was actually quite ill when I made it but anyway um it's uh it's the point still stands um so go watch it by any means I'll I'll link it below in the description if you want to go have a look but um yeah in that video I sort of talk about my feelings towards Ai and it um its abilities and things I'm not saying it might not be capable of doing more impressive stuff in the future um it certainly will as it as it advances but it's still very early days and uh it's it's a bit hyped up to be honest so that leads into how it affects the the job market a lot of uh companies that we're seeing pop up just now are AI companies right um they are uh they are built solely on the idea of building a product with AI or with AI Assistance or something like that and or machine learning Assistance or or whatever and um a lot of these companies are getting heavy investment in things like that because of of the AI part right they've got AI in the title they AI in the description um is very much hype around AI um there's a lot of Industry investment in AI right now so any sort of uh growth you're seeing in the industry right now is purely related to Ai and a lot of people might take that the wrong way they might see that that's potentially a a sign of the end days for software Engineers or whatever right um and that's kind of what we're piling our money into and things like that it's not quite the case um as I said it's not nearly as as capable as you might think in terms of that um it's definitely uh going to open up a lot of doors for for new products and things um but we need software Engineers to build those products at the end of the day the AI will just assist them in doing so and in building a product that does more impressive stuff you still need software Engineers you still need testers and QA and things like that you still need product uh product owners and um stakeholders and and whatever you still need a whole business to to carry to see that through and carry it to a market and and to sell that to Consumers who would actually use the product and and things like that and feedback and uh explain what they like and don't like about the product and then software Engineers can then take those requirements and and build on that you know it's that whole process still is very much applicable and will always be applicable for the foreseeable really um AI is just there really to assist in that process so spoken a bit about some of the problems we're seeing in the industry and stuff just now and um you know why people are struggling to get jobs and things it largely comes down to companies der risking um and and obviously AI being a bit of a hype prodct just now um people are starting to um even companies even are starting to not necessarily uh invest in you know Junior talent and juniors themselves are starting to maybe uh think you know maybe this isn't quite what I should be doing now I've missed the boat a little bit but at the same time regardless of that there's still an oversaturation of juniors in the market um in comparison to actual job positions that are advertised and available um so you know because of that you know people are still struggling to to find roles to find the job so some solutions because I do have some so solution number one um don't you know try and take everyone's boxes right so what I mean what I mean by that um you see these uh job requirements for for jobs now now especially um they're just filled with stuff that they want um and you sometimes see this stuff referred to as a wish list right it's kind the true right especially in this sort of oversaturated Market you know there will be a ton of competition and um you want to try and fulfill as many of those requirements as possible to get a good chance at it but it's not necessarily the case where you have to know everything on the list um what they're looking for at the end of the day is a good fit you know someone with the experience that they want but also someone who clearly knows the stuff that they know um and and can demonstrate that and can demonstrate good problem solving skills and things like that and be able to work with people and stuff and so what I will say is rather than trying to learn everything that you see on these sort of requirement lists for for job listings and stuff um don't do that right so what you want to do is basically specialize um obviously learn the fundamentals there's a few like things you just need to know right so like if you're learning say JavaScript for example you need to know how to write JavaScript HTML CSS you need to know like a framework and you know how to deploy websites and stuff like that you know you need to know all the sort of Basics obviously but beyond that I would say try and specialize in particular Technologies or particular types of uh Industries and things that you are interested in so um you know if you want to focus on webd and do that and then focus on a particular uh language or framework and build specific types of projects have like a a theme have an interest right have something that kind of makes you you um rather than just ticking a bunch of boxes you want to specialize and become an ultimately become an expert at something whether that's front end or backend related or whatever it doesn't really matter um it's not a case of there's more jobs doing any particular thing um Al there is more jobs doing some particular things but the point being you want to work towards the thing that you ultimately want to do um because believe you me it's very difficult to change later I've uh I've experienced this a little bit once you start to go down a certain path once you start to specialize in particular Technologies you kind of end up getting stuck there so what I would recommend is you pick the stuff you're passionate about uh first of all and just learn that and be really good at it because that makes you stand out more if you specialize and something you stand out from the crowd for that particular thing um if you're a jack of all trades uh if you take all the boxes and can do everything sort of moderately well then yeah so can everyone else right so that's uh that's kind of all that comes down to just um you know get really good at the things you want to get good at that's sort of number one there sounds a bit obvious when I say that but you you'd be surprised by the amount of people who just try to tick all the boxes and learn all the things in these requirements lists to a moderate sort of level a moderate ability um it's not really helping them and they're kind of just wasting a bunch of time doing that leading into uh the whole getting a job thing I did mention that getting an entry level job or just walking into an entry level job is not really the way you're going to do things now as I said I did mention I do have another video going more into detail about this but uh you probably get your first job doing other sort of things potentially even unpaid things sort of hobby things in your spare time to begin with building your own projects and products and stuff you could even potentially sell um as a business and things that's a good way to get experience under your belt a lot of people just end up going down that road uh and not bothering with working for companies uh collaborating with other people as well I'm going to get a bit more into that because that's very important uh and also you know working in open source projects and stuff as well but what I will say again another video about that which I'll link is with open source you don't go into that just for the sole purpose of getting a job you go into that working on stuff you're in particular passionate about and products that you are excited about um and that's more for getting experience with particular Technologies I would say than anything um it's definitely not for the sole purpose of getting a job but it does help towards that if you have never had one before that and then even some freelancing as well if you get some uh uh sort of experience on your your belt with say more front- end Technologies so you like U making websites and things um uh you know there's tons of things like WordPress for example um used for like you know brochure websites and stuff and people advertising their businesses those kind of people are always looking for people to set that stuff up for them uh freelancing can be a great way to do that it's quite easy to to learn that stuff and um the hard part there actually is just building the client base up and building trust in and people to to come to you for that right um so what you want to do with that is build a sort of portfolio of work uh that you can sell to people and ultimately ultimately that's a business kind of thing as well and that's kind of a short summary of some things you can do but I did mention one of the most important things is collaborating with people uh and if you don't necessarily want to go down the business route um or open source or anything like that um just collaborating with people and networking is the most important thing you can do so if you just want to build some fun projects on the side for fun do it with someone else um you don't necessarily need to do it yourself what a lot of these companies like to see is people having worked in teams people not only having worked in teams and can demonstrate sort of experience with working with people but also people that can demonstrate uh their sort of uh project um working on projects sort of experience and uh experience of agel methodologies and things and be able to sort of uh track their progress um using things like you know uh can band boards and uh you know estimating their work velocity and stuff like that Sprint burn down all that kind of stuff it's all stuff you need to know about in a company um working you know in sprints and an sort of agile environment these are all Concepts that get thrown around on a day-to-day basis and you know it's not all just about knowing to code right so um start collaborating with people and start sort of employing these sort of agile uh principles and and getting sort of familiar with them right um because you can then demonstrate that in the likes of an interview um you know I've I've been asked in the past questions about you know agile and stuff as a junior especially um you're not expected to know a ton of technical things um and so what a lot of companies will do is they'll gravitate more towards your sort of experience with working with people working in teams and projects and they'll ask you about you know things that you know about agile and stuff and they'll ask you know you know what's you know what's velocity all about you know how do you track velocity um you know can you explain what a Sprint burndown chart is can you explain how can band boards work stuff like that like you may get asked that stuff because it's very important knowledge it's useful to know sort of best practice around that and how to how to navigate that sort of uh way of working because it's very common and uh it's not going anywhere anytime soon um a lot of companies work that way now um so they expect people to know how to work that way um but you gain a lot of that through collaborating with other people um which you don't necessarily need to be employed somewhere to do um so Network right so um couple of different ways you can do that uh you can obviously through Linkedin you can can just sort of connect with people and people are doing similar stuff or if you have been to like a boot camp or a similar style course you can obviously connect with people that you've met through that and you can continue to collaborate outside of that um but you'd ultimately do that through Linkedin and you can use the tools on LinkedIn to sort of help each other out as well you can sort of uh recommend each other endorse each other and things it's a bit of a social media platform as well I guess in a sense so you can use that to uh you know post your projects and sort of promote them and talk about things that you've been learning and stuff uh and talk back and forward to these people um you know recruiters see all this stuff right they're on there looking for talent all the time so um you know utilize the platform right use use LinkedIn it's a very useful tool um but you know life isn't perpetually online right it's not all about LinkedIn you can do inperson events and stuff as well meetups and things uh wherever you're from I imagine there's some kind of local sort of scene um of you know people trying to get into Tech or just the tech industry in general people of all experience levels quite often like to go to these sort of meetups to talk about you know programming languages and and best practices and um various stories about the industries and and things like that there's there's always tons of stuff like that going on and just general networking events and meeting people and uh talking to people and you might find that you run into a few people that you know end up down the line help you get a job or um you help them get a job or you work together on a project or something um you never know right it's you know not networking is far worse than networking because it although nothing might necessarily come from talking to one particular person it's increasing your chances by exposing yourself to other people either in the industry or trying to get into the industry uh making yourself known to these people is the the best thing you can do really you want you want to make yourself known trying to stay in your own little little bubble in your own little and sort of not get involved is only going to hinder your progress um so network network as much as you can talk to everyone connect with everyone collaborate even if you can and you never know right um I've mentioned this in a few videos before but um the way I got my first job wouldn't have happened without networking um I um I actually got my first job effectively through Linkedin right but it wasn't through a for a role um if you've been around for a while you might have already heard this story but if you haven't this is sort of the end of like 2020 at this point so um I was looking for my first job the market wasn't great for me either at that point it was probably slightly better than it is now but it wasn't great because it was still during you know those times um and companies hadn't quite got back into the highing Rhythm yet um so I wasn't really finding anything and in terms of you know roles to actually apply for that were applicable to me in my scale level so what I ended up doing was I just started contacting people in LinkedIn effectively and one person in particular um guy I knew from the company I'd ultimately work for uh from my first role um not Tech related to tall at least he wasn't it was actually in sales but I knew for a fact this company dealt in web Technologies they were a web marketing agency and they had a team that did all that stuff so I'd actually applied to work from them in the past as a as a sales person and ultimately didn't actually even get the job right uh it just wasn't for me at the time um and so didn't get it but I kept in touch with the guy because we got on fairly well and um I basically just out the blue just messaged him and says hey you know remember me um I've uh I've went down this path I've I've built all these projects I've learned all this stuff and I'm looking for a role in in in web and and making stuff as as a a programmer a software engineer as a a web developer whatever you want to call it um and you know I was wondering if you and your company are looking for that kind of thing right now because I know for a fact that that's the kind of work that they do um and if they are then you know hit me up give me a shout and uh we'll have a chat and um surely enough he got back to me he looked at my stuff and went yeah that stuff's really cool you know this was only about a year apart as well so he's looked at all this stuff and went w this guy's learned all this stuff in a year right um just think of how much he can learn you know with us in a short space of time he obviously adapts quickly and learns quickly so he was quite enthusiastic about it and uh he he put all my stuff forward to the you know the person who would ultimately be my boss um and I actually still talked to to this day um he's a he's a good friend of mine um you know I put all my stuff forward to him showed him everything uh that I'd done and that I'd sent over and it was obious really impressed uh we got chatting about a week or so later and next you know I had the job there um they weren't even hiring at the time either that's the thing like they weren't even hiring a web developer or anything at the time but there was internal talks of oh we might need someone to do some of the more technical stuff because a lot of their work at the time was largely just WordPress based um but they had a few sort of requests for more custom apps and bespoke apps from from clients and stuff um and as a team of mostly designers and things like that they didn't really have that capability at the time so um they were thinking about it they just hadn't really you know formally put anything out um and it was the right place at the right time for me I just happen to show up at the right time and and come knocking so uh the point of this story is um Network basically Network you never know right you never know what kind of opportunities are going to come up LinkedIn inperson events even open source as well while I said uh you don't necessarily go into open source looking for a job if you get chatting with other collaborators and things you can collaborate on your own projects with them and stuff they might work for companies themselves they might have an opening they might put you forward for it right it's just one of these things one of these things that Cascades into an opportunity eventually potentially if you don't ask you don't get if you don't put yourself out there you won't get so to wrap up this slightly larger longer video than I had imagined originally basically the question of is it too late to become a software engineer is uh has been asked before it's not you and the answer is still the same no it's not too late um you can you know learn to code learn to program just as you the same as you could 5 10 years ago in fact it's actually easier than ever to pick up the basics just pure purely because of the amount of resources out there now if you're passionate about tech if you're passionate about learning to code then you know things haven't changed in that sense uh is it harder to get a job right now yes there's there's no denying that it is objectively harder to get a job right now but there's always a way there's always a way to um create your own experience and find your way in right there's always a thing something somewhere that you can do to to create opportunities for yourself and it's maybe not the most obvious path um but I mean is it ever right for for most people um people in the past obviously were very lucky with how easy it was just been able to walk into some of these jobs without any experience whatsoever it's um you know it was an ERA that is come and gone and you know even before that it was also difficult to get a job in Tech um you know back in sort of you know after the dotom bubble and things like that no one was hiring developers then either um as I said at the start of the video it largely comes and goes and waves with the economy and uh yeah it's always been worth it regardless so yeah that's my take on the whole thing um if you you know have any concerns if there's any questions that haven't asked uh asked and answered here about whether uh software engineering is worth it for any particular reason if you have anything on your mind that is putting you off the idea um but you're not sure then leave it in the comments by all means and uh hopefully I'll get back to you um I'd love to see you know if there's any other sort of apprehensions people have about getting into the industry now if you like the video of course like uh subscribe if you haven't already as well and uh I will be back shortly I've I've been away for a little bit um I've not made a video for a while actually um and that's just larly due to sort of it's been a bit of a whirlwind for me this year I've had a lot of sort of stuff going on in my own life um which I've had to deal with um so luckily not necessarily job related but um just sort of personal stuff um but yeah I'm I'm I'm getting to a place now where I can sort of start making videos a bit more often again so um hopefully bit more of this stuff and uh yeah hopefully you'll see more of me soon so like I said like subscribe and uh I will see you in the next one bye for now

Channel: Stevo The Dev

Views: 26,856

Keywords: developer, software developer, software engineer, coding, programming, tech, software jobs, tech jobs, getting a tech job, junior tech jobs, learn to code, open source, contribute to open source, junior developer, networking, ai, tech industry

Id: EQufIbStisY

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024