Why I left my $200k job as a Software Developer

a few months ago I left my 200k job now I'm alone in a foreign country with no income at all so how and why did I get here this isn't clickbait let me show you guys exactly what I was making I'm on this site levels FYI it shows tech industry salary data and it's self-reported so people at the companies report their salaries and that averages out personally I was a software engineer too at uber and as you can see here the average salary stock and bonus per year I was actually making a little bit less than this average but still above 200k when you add all these together in a given year if you guys saw my software engineer salaries are higher than you think video I actually got promoted since then so I was making a little more than that video if you're curious the stock is what gets bumped up a lot when you get promoted when I told my team I was leaving back in August they said where are you going are you going to Google Facebook Amazon assuming I would be hopping to a different company which is what most people do after a few years but I said no I'm just leaving I'm actually just moving abroad and I don't have a job my teammates didn't really get it because they were all doing the normal thing where you you work for a few years you company hop and then you know you just keep living in that way right and I don't blame them like that's a reasonable thing to do and most people fight so hard to get into these companies in the first place that once you're in it's kind of like you're good so what did I leave for well I think it's important not to lose sight of why you got into the game in the first place you guys might not know this but I majored in finance and entrepreneurship and it was kind of funny because here's what they teach you in entrepreneurship you need an idea and then you come up with a business plan then you take that business plan to investors those investors give you money then you can hire developers or start a supply chain or something like that you essentially pay a bunch of money to have them tell you you can't do anything by yourself and you all you could really do as a business major is write a business plan the rest is is out of your hands I think a lot of people have this half of this phenomena happen to them where they're in their major they're kind of waiting for the big secret to to come it doesn't come in the lower level classes and then you wait for like the high level elective and you're like that's where I'm gonna learn everything but then that day never really comes and it was the same with my other major finance I was waiting to learn how to make money like in the stock market right but what they tell you at the end of the day even in the highest level class they're like oh there's actually no way to beat the stock market because computers and algorithms are you know way faster than any person so yeah so great I'm glad I majored in that what actually got me into programming in the first place was was just the fact that I didn't have a valuable skill you know and once you have a skill like programming that's marketable scalable no one can take that away from you so intrinsically like you have value as a as a person in the economy and for me I got into it because it was actually a way for me to shortcut the investors and I can actually build the stuff that I wanted to build but it was a long road before getting good enough to actually do that confidently so I moved to SF went to the coding bootcamp and I think after being there for long enough I got a little bit of brainwash to thinking that I wanted to work at a big tech company when I heard that the six-figure salary in cash was just the beginning of all the benefits you got I had no idea you you got food or stock or any of these other things so it's like expecting you're gonna get one thing and then the reality is actually twice as good or more and after a painful interview prep process which is one of the problems I'm working to solve now I did get in and as you know got into Eber and when you get in like yeah it is that great I mean I always say it's the best paid a stress ratio out there for any similar job you're either gonna be working 12 hours a day like Investment Banking or you're in medicine and you're dealing with people's lives every day writing code is nothing like that you're getting paid a lot of money to do it and as for going to the big company like yeah I'd recommend that to anyone it's the best way to get paid to learn you're getting paid a ton and you are you're you're improving your skill that like I said no one can take away from you but I will warn you about something called the golden handcuffs they make things just a little bit too good for you to leave for example the free lunch is it's not the best food ever but it's good enough where you're not gonna go pay for food and it's the same with the salary and the convenience of just all the benefits and the pay is just a little bit too good for you to take a risk they make they make it real hard to leave and especially when you're trying to leave and they say things to try to get you to stay like how about this how about this that makes it really really impossible golden handcuffs aside a few things kind of snapped me out of the the mentality of comfort and the first was looking around me I looked at people five or 10 years ahead of me in their careers and they had pretty much exactly the same life as me we rode the same train to work we sat at the same desk in the same chair and we ate the same food every day for me and maybe this is me being spoiled or my priorities are off but if I was gonna be doing the same thing for the next five years I didn't really want to do it and again this comes down to your personality type for me I'm kind of a person who likes to take a little risk and go for for a more excitement but if you're a risk-averse person like maybe this is a good thing for you but for me it wasn't the predictability was bothering me a little bit I wouldn't mind being handcuffed so much but a few things helped me rediscover my love for entrepreneurship and if you guys are all interested in that you have to check these things out I found a pretty awesome online community called indie hackers this is the home page here it doesn't look like too much but this is all people posting who are working on their own businesses a lot of them are bootstraps so it's just a one-man operation and these people either are building side projects as they're working or they've forgot working in the industry entirely and they're just trying to hustle on building a product so it's kind of like reddit it's a forum but there's a lot more features that are built around kind of this entrepreneurship coding world so if you're working on anything on the side this totally motivates you to stay stay with it keep going you post milestones and you see what other people are doing so it's pretty awesome the products are also all transparent so you can see people's timeline and then you know get inspired by that another really great thing about this site is the podcast this was the founder interviews people are a huge in tech and a lot of them bootstrapped and started from zero it's like 128 episodes so I would suggest scrolling through these and clicking on the ones that interest you maybe you'll want to build a similar product to one of these people or iterate on what they've done so that is totally awesome the other thing in kind of a similar vein that inspired me was this dude who's a digital nomad indie hacker type dude called Peter levels now this guy inspired a ton of other people too I know this guy's started by doing something called the twelve startups in twelve months challenge which when you hear that that just sounds like incredible impossible a bunch of words come to mind and he did this challenge trying to build a startup every month now he didn't get all the way through but just him doing that kind of the mentality of just finishing things getting them out there and building cool stuff is something that resonated with a lot of people and to those startups went on to become multi-million dollar businesses showing that you can start small and really take off if you hit the right chord so this Peter's blog levels I oh no relationship two levels fYI just a coincidence this is definitely worth checking out and it's also worth checking out is is sites to Nomad list this is big one it's just really cool if you're looking at one day go remote with your job you can check out different cities around the world and there's reviews on how their how they like to live for a digital nomad yeah it's kind of a cool looking site so Nomad list calm so at least for now here's what I'm doing I'm living in affordable countries having a little fun and building stuff I hope could really help some people out all that aside what exactly am i working on I've got a long list of tutorials that are on the way we're gonna be building cool stuff in both JavaScript and Python I'll talk a lot more about the software industry in SF and in general especially now that I don't have a boss the big thing I'm working on though is an interview course I remember trying to practice interview problems and being so overwhelmed there were hundreds out there and I just did not know which ones to study the explanations didn't make a lot of sense to me and I'm releasing a course soon that drills down to the twenty most essential programming interview questions and gives super clear explanations with really good visuals to it's not done yet but when it is I'll put a link down below and I'm really excited about this one because it's my first huge project and I'm doing it based on a problem I think everyone has so that's pretty much it guys pretty self centered video but I guess my point is programming is a tool to kind of like live the life you want right whether that's making a lot of money at a big company working remotely or starting your own business all I have to say is just be careful the golden handcuffs and remember what your priorities are instead of the people around you if you want to see where I'm at right now you can check in my Instagram its underscore Erin Jack and that's also my Twitter now and otherwise those tutorials be coming soon so we'll be back to coding I know I haven't made a coding video in a while but these ones are gonna be really good alright guys I will catch you soon hope you're doing well and still coding everyday

Channel: Aaron Jack

Views: 598,153

Keywords: programming, web development, react, learn programming, learn to code, coding, software development, become a software developer, silicon valley, google, facebook, software developer, san francisco, indiehackers, indie developer, entrepreneurship, tech entrepreneur

Id: 7FLZO2hidHs

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019