What I do for a living - Q&A #1

what's going on everybody welcome to the very first QA or questioning answers video I get a lot of the exact same questions over and over and over so I thought I could make these Q&A videos to kind of answer them all at once for people also so I can point people to them so the first question that I'm going to answer here and then also as I answer these questions the first ones are just ones that I've personally found but as we go on if you want you can ask questions in the comments and the next time I make one of these videos I'll try to answer at least mostly those questions the questions that are asked in the comments so the first question I usually get is how did you learn Python and not only how did you learn but how do you learn Python nowadays like because I get a lot of requests for like book recommendations and stuff like this so first of all a little bit about me I have been self-employed since I was 12 years old I have had part-time jobs along the way my last job was as a waiter and that place ended up going out of business at the time I was working like two days a week or something just for some side cash by that point I already had my own businesses and I was making almost enough money to survive I just didn't want to quit my job but eventually that place actually went out of business and then from that point on I just worked for myself so so I'd always been self-employed but I paid a programmer to make websites for me and do the things that I need I want it done but eventually I came up with the idea for what is now sent Dexcom which is sentiment analysis for stocks and other things and the web developer I had at the time was not going to be doing natural language processing they had no interest in it they couldn't do it so I decided I'll do it myself and so I found that Python had the module or library called n ltk which the natural language toolkit an NL TK dot org slash book is a great book for learning how to use NL TK and it has kind of an introduction that is an introduction to Python even so that actually served as my intro to Python was that n ltk book basically so a perfect introduction for me a probably horrible introduction for most people but that's why I usually tell people like you want to get off the basics as soon as possible and actually start working on something that interests you because the basics are boring the basics aren't applicable really directly immediately to anything that you might be interested in so in most cases you can you can usually just like learn the true basics like if statements and variables and functions and that kind of stuff once you learn that stuff like get out and like do something because that's how you're actually gonna learn anyway that's how I learn Python nowadays I really just kind of Google everything so I don't actually I don't have any formal computer science or mathematics or anything background but I just use Google I just look it up and Google has information on anything you could possibly want but especially programming the programmer community is incredibly willing to share things so that brings us to the second question maybe even this ones the more common question I get and that is what do you do for a living so what I do for a living is I run I've always just run online businesses that's just kind of always been my forte lately it's been most of my like base income comes from Python program at net in the YouTube channel just from like add revenue I can relatively comfortably estimate how much money I'm gonna make on the YouTube channel and Python programming at net so I make money from advertising and then on Python program at net from the subscribers with plus equals one so I make a okay base salary at least enough to like pay the bills right and then beyond that I get contracting and consulting jobs so if someone comes at comes to me and has something that sounds interesting or something I'll take those on but for the most part I really enjoy working on Python programming net and a lot of people ask me like why do you do that why don't you just like why don't you go start a business as if like going first of all as if Python print net isn't a business but also as if it's like really simple to just go and start start a business and be a billionaire or something it's really not that easy and also as someone who likes spent much of my life starting businesses and running online businesses it's actually really difficult to find something that you you're good at you actually enjoy doing and you get some sort of like reward for that isn't monetary as well so with the YouTube channel I get like pretty much everything plus more so like with the YouTube channel first of all I get to learn new things constantly if I wasn't doing the YouTube channel in Python programming that net I would not be anywhere near the programmer that I am today so if I wasn't doing that I wouldn't have learned all these things myself and because one of the best ways to really like learn something is to teach it and if you try to teach something that you don't really know it quickly like first of all it solidifies what you do now and it shines a light on what you don't know and if you're oblivious to something that you didn't know eventually someone's gonna watch that video and comment and tell you that you're stupid right and so that happens and thanks to some of those sometimes jerk viewers but sometimes like they're just they're good people they give you information you actually learn just from the fact that you shared and that's why I like peer review is often thought of as like a really a good thing to do it can be painful because sometimes people are really mean but at the same time if you do peer review of code and stuff like that it will make you a better programmer over time so for me I just I get to learn new things I get to like focus on whatever I want to focus on I get to learn new things over time I get to help people and for the most part like 99.9% of the people I interact with in regards to Python programming net are like super positive and and like pleasant people to be around as opposed to other businesses that I've run so for example with sent XCOM it's a cool business I really like the data analysis aspect to it it's a lot of fun to like dive into that that kind of big data but at the same time at the end of the day to make money what I have to do is sell that data to either institutions or individuals themselves and that can be kind of a challenge so with institutions you're usually dealing with like finance firm types of people and I don't mean to like offend anybody really but the people in the world of finance like too many of those people are betas who either think they're alphas or think that they need to act like to fit in because that's what you're supposed to do because they've seen like movies or something like that so those people are just not fun to deal with and then also there was a lot of people that as they're like interested in buying the data I just know when speaking to them that they're not gonna get anything from the data like they're not going they don't know how to properly make use of the data and I'm not here to teach you how to use the data I'm just here to sell you the data that you want access to so I don't know it just was not it wasn't fulfilling to me like I made money doing it but it just wasn't fulfilling and I actually still have like I have sources that still take the data like if you're on quanto peon for example you can get the date you can get access to the data for like twenty dollars a month or something so it's at least super cheap and it's easy to play around and there's like a free stream of it too so you can figure out if it's actually going to be worth it to you so that's just kind of like worked out but to get back to the point of like business like running a business is first of all most businesses will just fail but if you can find a business that you like you really enjoy doing and you have a passion for it and you make money at it and you're good at it and you're helping people at the same time it just seems like well let's hold on to that in the meantime you know we can look for other things but I just I get so much value back from Python programming at net that that's why I do it I just really really like doing it and also in terms of recommendations that I have for people a lot of people ask me like when they're asking on the topic of how do you learn Python and stuff don't forget that one of the ways that I'm learning Python and improving myself is by teaching Python so I usually suggest to people that you should do the same you should have like a blog or maybe even a YouTube channel like try to do that because that'll also get you exposure so the other thing not only do I get contracting and consulting offers I get job offers like every week I get multiple job offers and usually they're like two smaller companies and stuff but in the last couple months I've had an offer from Apple and Facebook and probably those are the two like biggest companies that you would even know about but many other companies beyond that and I'm not reaching out to these come like I'm not even applying they're coming to me and they're finding me and so you can pretty much do the same or you can reach out if you have something to show them that like I hey what I've been doing that's what they want to see and if you look at like what Google applications want or Facebook or whatever they want a portfolio look that's what they actually want to see nine times out of ten they care about like your the other stuff on your resume but for the most part they want to see what what you do and what you actually know anyway that will wrap up with the first Q&A hopefully that was slightly enlightening to some of you as I said before if you have questions that you want me to answer just comment below and I'll answer them I still have quite a few other questions that I get like all the time that I'm going to answer but these first two or at least the second one took me a long time to get through so I'm gonna cut it off here anyway questions below and otherwise I will see you in the next tutorial or question and answer video who knows

Channel: sentdex

Views: 808,115

Rating: 4.9570265 out of 5

Keywords: blog, vlog, Q&A, sentdex

Id: eMtHmKO8GsA

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 05 2016