Self-Taught Programmers... We need to talk.

man it appears that I've ruffled a lot of feathers a few months ago I made a video titled the end of the selft talk programmer and a lot of people weren't happy with that video I mean overall the feedback was pretty positive but it's safe to say it was my most disliked video ever which is totally understandable because it's a pretty bold statement the end of the selft programmer however while it seems a bit uh catastrophic and admittingly it was pretty clickbaity but anyone who watched that video for more than just 2 minutes would know that I was just basically saying that it's not the end of the selft talk programmer it's the end of the low effort selft talk programmer and I don't know if I did a very great job explaining that in the video so let me elaborate more in this one the thing is coding has never been as mainstream as it is today and there used to be a a time where coding was looked at as a skill that only hyper nerd 150 Einstein level IQ people could do and that time wasn't that long ago matter of fact if you told people only 10 years ago that you were a software engineer they would look at you like you were Rainman or something but then starting around 2016 coding sort of be uh began to hit the mainstream and I remember coding boot camps really started to become a thing and a lot more people started to realize that hey you don't need to be a total neck beard to learn how to code then it was people like Chris sea coding phase and Andy sterkowitz they kind of came on the scene and started making YouTube videos about how becoming a self-taught programmer you know in a matter of three months or something and Landing a software development job was totally possible and it was around this time where Google announced that they were no longer requiring employees to have a college degree I don't know if you remember this but I I vividly remember an article stating that Google no longer requires a college degree now on top of that people like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg started talking about how everyone should learn how to code anyways to make a long story short coding in a very short period of time just became the cool thing to learn now over the past handful of years the trend of coding is cool and anyone can do it has sort of continued with more boot camps than ever before and then just students choosing computer science majors in universities I think tripling in just a few years so what does all of this mean well where it was once possible to only need HTML CSS JavaScript and three months of learning how to code to walk into your first developer job is no longer the case you are competing with a lot more people not only with boot camp grads and computer science Majors but also with people who have recently gotten laid off and people who are possibly desperate to pay their bills meaning that if they have to take a lower paying entry-level job just to do that just to pay their bills they likely will and that is really all I was trying to say in the original video yes it's totally possible to become a self top programmer today however it will just require a lot more work than it once did now I could sit here and I could say oh yeah everything is fine just keep working on your shitty JavaScript to-do list apps and keep your hopes up because you'll soon find a job but I would be doing you a massive disservice and borderline lying to you because again yes it's totally possible to learn how to code on your own and break into this industry however the the bottom line is it will require much more effort than it once did you will need to work much harder than you once had to just to stand out and find your first coding job unless you either get really lucky or you somehow find a job through a network of connections because a lot of the time getting a job isn't about what you know it's about who you know which by the way if you're looking to expand your network of developers check out my free coding community that I've built with three other Tech YouTubers Tech with Tim Nick white and Kevin nton Jr that over 11,000 members have already joined so anyways how can you stand out as a self- toop programmer in this market well first and foremost I would say don't pigeon hole yourself into front-end web development yes learning HTML CSS JavaScript and react are certainly valuable skills but the reality is everybody is learning that every boot camp grad every self toop programmer and unless you are exceptionally talented and I mean the top 5% of front-end web developers it might be worth expanding into other skill sets Okay so learn backend development learn a language Let Go learn cicd and devop stuff learn lower level programming languages like C so you really understand how pointers work and how memory management works learn low-level principles in general because low-level computer science principles is something that a lot of self-taught programmers skip out on and to be honest this wasn't something that I really focused on until last year where I took a three-month uh course on computer architecture compilers assembly languages and then operating systems now yeah the tools we use nowadays to build software is so abstracted away from the hardware that you don't really need to learn these low-level Concepts to make full stack back web applications however after I learned these low-level Concepts I was so much more aware of how my code runs on my computer and I gained a much better foundation for my coding skills and honestly just more appreciation for the work that I do now on top of expanding your skill set outside of you know the typical webd you should build projects or you should focus on building projects that actually serve a purpose I'm talking full endtoend software applications that you put your heart and soul into something that you can proudly showcase on your resume and on your GitHub something that you spent like three months crafting that will really make you stand out as a candidate that shows a high level of Competency in building real world software that solves real world problems okay and even another great way to stand out is considering dabbling into freelancing where you take make low paying or even no paying gigs just so you can build up that initial experience on your resume now before I go you shouldn't look at self-taught as being an easier route because it certainly won't be yeah the time frame of going from you know zero to getting your first job maybe shorter than going to college and getting a four-year degree but learning on your own is objectively harder than somebody telling you what to do and when to do it anyways rant over and I will see you all in the next video peace

Channel: Kenny Gunderman

Views: 17,196

Keywords: self-taught programmer, the end of the self-taught programmer, learn to code, learn to code without a degree, learn coding, programming, software development, coding, entry-level job market

Id: Jo42FZh84uE

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024