How exactly is a Junior Dev supposed to get experience if nobody will hire them in the first place? Employers don’t really give a shit if you have 10,000 hours or 1,000 personal projects built up from your 60, 80-hour weeks or whatever. They want you coming in with 3-5 years’ worth of PROFESSIONAL job experience right out of the gate. Don’t act like you can just hustle your way out of a chicken-and-egg problem.
easy, jr dev must have some friends at university or whatever friends that has a company ;d ask the friend to hire you , even with a really low income ;d mosti mportant thing is to get experience and have it documented on the papers:p , easy?:)
Exactly, like wtf? If you worked on this 80 hours a week EVERY week for 2 years straight, you still wouldn't be at 10,000 hours. People need to make a living in meantime, so they have to work other jobs while practicing and building a resume. So it's more realistic that it would take the average person like a decade or more to get 10,000 hours in. Sure, it may take 10,000 hours to "master it", but it shouldn't take that to get a job.
As a self taught developer in Portugal (where its still mandatory to have a college degree) i have to say that was the hardest challenge i ever had to get a job. Almost 500 applications sent for 3 interviews. In the meantime i even worked for free for some companies. the trick for me is like primagen said is to get those hours working on personal projects, try to build complex things, learn as much as you can. Even so its hard because you dont have a college degree. I remember coding 16h per day to try to "catch up" the lost time. The trick for me was to not give up and try to become better myself and to be unique. I started with the frontend, now im a fullstack with 3 years of experience and i feel like a college kid still beats my ass. Npw my objective is to get a college degree which i hope to start next year. Finally now im starting to get more in depth on more engineer things like clean code and patterns and algorithms. but yeah for me the trick was to code code code non stop and tbh i lost a lot in these past 3 years but for me was totally worth it!
@@o_huno..Either way you have to learn JS whether it's "vanilla" JS, BE NodeJS, or a framework. The important thing is to at least understand the fundamentals of how the DOM and DOM manipulation works. I think a lot of "noobs" don't get those basic concepts.
It's very similar in the engineering industry, everyone says that there's a shortage of engineers, yet what they really mean is that there's a shortage of senior engineers. Junior roles are not coming up, and when they are they're incredibly oversubscribed so it's hard to get one. I think some of it has to do with the current job market, like it's very common now for employees to leave a company after 1-2 years, and as anyone who's onboarded juniors knows you're probably not getting a huge amount of impact from those hires until year 2 at least. When you look at it from a companies perspective, say I'm offering $60k/year for a junior role (let's assume all salary, no stock just to keep it simple) I'm probably spending $100k-$150k on a junior before they start to provide positive value. At which point they might leave anyway for a role somewhere else. Meanwhile I could offer $200k for a senior and they're going to make an impact from like month 3. They might leave after a couple of years too, but there's more time where they're being productive, and less time when they're getting up to speed. There's just very little incentive for companies to hire juniors, and it's going to be a problem down the line because you only get seniors from people having been juniors in the past, but in a world driven so much by current stock value and maximising immediate profit there's no room to do what you need to do to solve the problem (actually hire juniors, give them enough incentive to stay etc).
It's only normal for employees to leave a company after 1-2 years because all the companies made it normal to layoff their employees every 4-5 years. Company disloyalty always precedes employee disloyalty imo
If companies were loyal to their employees and actually gave them proper raises instead of giving them more responsibility for the same salary and letting other companies poach them then it wouldn't be an issue. "waaaa why do our employees leave when we refused to raise their salary above $90k, lets go hire a senior for $200k oh no there are no seniors how could this happen to us!" Having employees with specific knowledge about your codebase and your company's practices and history is even more valuable than a new hire senior. But these corporations have no idea how to manage talent and think employees are just numbers on a spreadsheet. That's when you get companies randomly laying off people with 15 years experience at the company and burning away all the domain-specific knowledge that person had.
I think the problem mostly comes down to just how much damage having a bad developer (or engineer) can cause. The problem is that unlike a lot of other jobs, having a bad developer or engineer isn't merely being slow at their job and producing less than a more experienced person would - a bad engineer is often actively counterproductive and can actively slow things down compared to not having them at all (or worse). and most companies don't like gambling on that, so they try very hard to pick people that are already accomplished at their jobs so that the risk is smaller.. and of course, when everyone thinks that way, then it's hard for anyone to become accomplished in the first place. Most other jobs can just settle for hiring several low skill workers at lower wages to accomplish the same task as a few higher skilled workers.. but that just doesn't work in these kinds of fields - there are some tasks where most low skill workers are just entirely unproductive and can't really contribute anything useful no matter how many of them you hire.
yes, this is stupid Primagen is a smart and entertaining lad, but he can say some dumb ass takes when topics tip into anything economy-lifestyle adjacent I'm glad everything worked out for him, but it's not a universal plan for everyone
That’s not what he was saying, he said you need 10,000 to become a master (which is probably not correct, but that’s the popularized amount) but you need to be able to stand out in a competitive market.
depends what kind of entry position you're going for. it's not like you're working for a call center or handling restocking coffee machines. if engineering isn't worth 10,000 hours to you then don't go into it
May be it's a European thingy, but as far as I tried get a job as a Junior Dev, I don't even have the opportunity to say "I know React and Tailwind..." The only thing that represent a value here is: "the industry based experience" Who cares that you've made "xyz" site with a JS and a Java backend? Or you know how to solve leetcodes in Python, C, C "shark"? Or you know Docker and Git, and his "hub"? Nobody cares! The main question is: "Do you, or do you NOT have any experience in the tech industry?" or in an other terms "Do you ever been employed (= "paid" $€) as a dev?" "No? Ok, then we don't even call you back" Tech company has the luxury to chose between 86, 1+ years " industry based experienced" devs for 1 "Junior" job. Why do they even care about the "bootcamp/ newly graduated" newbies? even though: PERSIST & RESIST!
@@GoodByeSkyHarborLive imo, they don't. even previous job experience in the tech industry doesn't really count if it's the wrong tech stack from some of these companies. The only thing that matters to most is "do you have the exact qualifications we are looking for or more?" if yes you'll maybe get an interview. If no, your not even getting that.
What's even more stupid, experience as a tech company owner (and sole coder) doesn't count. You've run a firm for 5 years, yet you've being asked "DO YOU UNDERSTAND BUSINESS AND CUSTOMERS?". I mean, yes, I had to pay my taxes and eat something.
Here in India even if you got 2+ yoe they will probably try their best to weed you out by throwing dp,graph questions at you from leetcode and then if you are lucky you will get a chance to attend their culture fit round only to get ghosted by them in the end.
The reality of the situation is that there are more people wanting to get an entry level job than there are entry level jobs now. Being able to "repair a pipe" unfortunately isn't enough anymore. It sucks ass, but people saw a gold mine and then we spent the last 6 years telling people "just learn to code bro!" and now everyone wants in the mine all at once, and now the entrance to the mine has collapsed.
Tech isnt like tradesman work though, the latter can stand out by being the only proffesional in there area even if their skills are quite bog standard. In the tech world, geography doesnt exist, so by nature youre competing with many, many more people.
@@jacquesfrancois4275 geography will exist in a few months once countries stop handing out entrly access to everyone. Plus, tech is easy, if you are just coding a landing page. Take away tutorials from most jr programmers, give them documentation and suddenly one task takes them more than a week to complete
We need to get rid of this idea that juniors take 6 months to kick into gear at a company, this is wild. Not all juniors have the same skill level, and many companies have products in which an average junior can start contributing in 3 months or less. Companies generalize this and with how shit interviews are, they can hardly distinguish a B-Tier Junior from a S-Tier one. Of course, there are companies in which this is the case, but then again, we should not discount how much a convoluted development process slows down contributions from new hires. Pair the 6-month cost-sink assumption with the fact that switching jobs every 2 years, on average, is better for an IC, career wise, and it becomes super clear why there's no incentive to hire Jrs. But let's not act like a big part of the problem is on the Jr, who has very little control over this stuff other than their own skill.
Very correct. I have never hired anyone for a developer position that has not been at least partially productive almost immediately. I start people chasing minor bugs, which causes them to learn the product and the code base. Yes, they spend a lot of time ramping up in learning, but they are absolutely doing someone that matters within the first couple of days.
Basically if you have shit management and a bad culture - juniors lose you money. But if you're actually interest in deploying people in a way that plays to their strengths, you can make good use of them, and then over time get them into bigger and igger roles.
I got experience by trying to make a better WordPress. Find a niche and make a big project and spend hundreds of hours making it. No need for a job position
@@neonraytracer8846 Yeah. Working on a big project is a real stand out, the problem of course is spending the time but if you can do it you should... I have a friend who is a senior dev and he's made a mobile game, worked on his own VR project an things like that... he's told me talking about his game always impresses people in interviews.
I don’t think that’s true. I built a couple large projects from the ground up between high school and the end of college. Had no problem getting a position after I graduated, even in this job markwt
for me, i learned a ton more in my first 6 months on the job than i did in the 10 "on and off" years of programming / linux geekery at home. Frankly just showing up and having something to work on is the most important part of learning anything. for me it helps a lot if someone else forces me to. since i never really learned discipline.
@@neonraytracer8846 Bruh 💀. And what ? Working another full time job just because the 4 years in your uni wasn't enough experience ? That's absolutely disgusting that you guys find that nromal
In my opinion, the shortcut to 10k hours is quality mentorship. The hours is all about accruing experience and learning from the mistakes along the way. A mentor that gives useful feedback and criticism can help you recognize and learn from mistakes more quickly and effectively. You still need to do the work and put in the time, but you don't need the full 10k hours.
I also believe the shortcut to 10k hours is having achieved 10k hours in something requiring sheer brain power and will.. then the subsequent 10k becomes exponentially easier
Yeah true. If someone can give you guidelines and suggestions, that can save you hours and hours and just advance you further, but I also think you have to come to many conclusions on your own. It's quite different when someone says "oh do this and do that" and when you actually try one approach, gather opinion, then try a different approach and draw some conclusions yourself.
100%, from someone who never had the luxury of any mentorship at all 🤣. What took me over a decade to learn, i try to give to my junior collegueas in a bit less time hopefully.
i think he's talking about making generic projects, yeah making a weather app is hard by yourself, or you can just watch a tutorial, and anyone can do that, it just doesnt make you stand out from other people.
Why does he think that all these entry-level candidates are just people who spent a couple weeks in a bootcamp? Do bootcamps even really exist these days? A huge chunk of these junior devs who can't get hired in this market spent multiple years and thousands of dollars to get through college. I'm not saying a CS degree entitles you to a $150k+ FAANG job, but you certainly shouldn't have to spend years of self-teaching AFTER getting a degree in order to land your first low-paying dev role.
The time where common projects can get you ‘in’ is not acceptable anymore Today, you have to have some internship/work experience, faith, right time, and possibly connections
I graduated from a US University (a big name, you've seen them play sports) with a Bachelor's in Computer Science & got a 4.0. When I graduated I didn't know the difference between a Frontend and a Backend. The entire education system is f*cked
Did your school have access to things like: - The global game jam (you don't need your school for this) - hackathons (you also don't need your school for this) - career development services for internships & job interviews - company employer talks - career fairs - the ACM - IEEE - IGDA And if so, did you make use of these things on a *professional* level? If so, and you still had bad luck, shame on your school. Also, when you were picking classes and seeing what was around, did your school let you take electives in Information Systems and Information Technology? Web dev classes aren't just in CS. But what do I know, I graduated at a different time (2016), doing IT game dev, at a school I knew did that stuff, and looked around for what classes interested me for building my portfolio. But that's also because I knew my school had all those other things I mentioned and I made use of those. Not trying to sound like a boomer, but there was always more AT school than just your classes. You just have to get out of your dorm room to find them
I don't know why my comment isn't here anymore it wasn't inflammatory, just making a point here that you make your own experiences with what you will All I said was that your university should have had access to things like Career development services Company visits Networking events Career fairs Student jobs that could help you in software engineering positions (I had one as a web designer/graphics designer my sophomore year) an IGDA/SIGGRAPH/ACM/IEEE club Student research opportunities. Like, I'm not saying colleges are perfect and that these are end-all-be-all services Just, man, like people who complain about college when they had all the resources and information to look at what classes they were signing up for BEFORE taking those classes I didn't do CS in my undergrad because I wanted a major that did more programming, so I did IT. Because I read my course descriptions and figured what I really wanted to do. I didn't want the CS with electives taking the game programming classes, I did IT that had a game development specialization with a bunch of Information Systems web dev classes, and Computer Science algorithms classes I'm sorry I made use of my educational investment, the college I ended up at was like, 5th on my list, I only went because they gave me the most money.
true, but if you remember the stuff from CS you'll be better equipped to write algorithms and stuff when you do have to. It's just that that isn't what most of actual software dev is. Actual software dev is picking between a map, set, priority queue, or array in the right scenario and putting them together in the correct way. And structuring event loops & control flow/concurrency in a reasonable way along w/ a couple of other rules of thumb.
I find this ridiculous. Its like all Juniors should have developed like 2 enterprise software projects that are at a senior level to get there first job. I know you are supposed to stand out and all but man, the requirements are insane. Its like you should spend 2 years of unpaid software development before you are legible for your first job even with a degree. I know senior devs who had little to no experience on the very first job and became really excellent senior devs in a few years.
I feel for juniors. The senior+ job market is just as bad right now. Companies are looking for someone with a decade of experience in their exact tech stack and experience in their business sector. With how many tech layoffs have happened companies have their pick of the litter and they're waiting for that magical unicorn to show up in their pipeline. re 80 hours -> 10k hours to become an expert. I think there's something to be said about the quality of time spent learning. Intentional practice and study will get you to that expert level "faster". It's still going to take a shit ton of time and effort, but you'd get there in say 8k hours instead of 10k. If you spend 80 hours watching tutorials a week it might take 20k hours.. but if you spend 60 hours building passion projects, tooling you actually need, etc.. it might take
Thats 10k hours of good quality learning to become a master and I would agree. It is around there. The standard has dropped a lot and we have morons like Kanye West proclaiming to be geniuses and other morons nodding along like "yeah that doesn't sound unreasonable."
@@huntermacias2023 He isn't he is a terrible producer, an awful musician, a below average rapper. He is a pretty good snake oil salesmen to morons though.
@@sacredgeometry idk how much Kanye knows about audio, but given that he's around geniuses all the time and engineers, he probably knows more than you give him credit for. You would have to be dense not to learn while being around them for so long.
This is why I think taking an operating system class which walks through pushing the power button and all that actually happens before the machine lands you at a login prompt was great. It lets you know there massive ocean of things that exist that are deep and complex that engineers workon that a boot camp will just never reveal. It makes you think about memory management, instruction pointers, registers, etc, etc, etc. It left no room for a feeling of "I totally get programming and am engineer" for raw dogging some php for a blog.
Time gated proficiency ratings are useless. I know bad juniors and good juniors, bad seniors and good seniors. Just because someone has been working for 20 years doesn't mean they've improved over those 20 years. And no the ratio of good programmers to bad ones is not noticeably higher or lower among the seniors compared to juniors.
Yes, it differs a lot depending on how they spent it, but yet there is no way someone with 2000h can be an overall better developer than me at 20k, my ability to build big projects is far too refined to be learned in a short amount of time.
@@invictuz4803 Is that frustration that I detect in that single word? There are no actual shortcuts in the programming world, just slightly faster ways to get there.
@Leonhart_93 One of the principal engineers at my company has 40 years of experience and yet he wants me to send him my code in zip files instead of learning how to use bitbucket and git for code reviews. I say this as someone with 8 years of experience as a dev and most definitely 10k+ hours: I don't care about how many years you have or your stupid ego. Can you code a decent solution in a decent amount of time? Are you willing to learn new things? Can you collaborate with others? That's what I care about. I would not want to work with you because you fail the last criteria.
@@aspenshadow7920 Of course you should care, because the counter example applies too. I have trained many people, no matter how smart they are they just can't build big projects in an efficient way when they are inexperienced. It always takes years and it's never perfect, they need at least one year to start getting decent even with guidance, so it's absolutely a function of longer periods of time. That kind of knowledge cannot be thought directly, it needs to be practiced a lot.
I havent finished the video yet but I need help on understanding something, What more does a junior dev need to know to get a job outside of the basic weather crud app? They arent the ones designing system, or anything intermediate cause they are juniors, so why would they need to know more than what is need? The advice to stand out is good advice, but to keep it honest if I gotta learn how to design and build a complex system for a junior job I'm starting my own thing at that point
Dont listen to primagon too much, hes pretty off on this one. You probably know ebough for an entry level job. But you need someone to vouch for you, most people dont even get called back for a job interview... a degree will not help you at all develop react apps but it tells recruiters youre worth considering. I got my job from a free bootcamp which you sign a contact for and they take their pay as a cut from your salary and they get the first job for you. A strategy is these companies will sell you off as a good enough engineer and you can be fired for the first month on them if they find you not suitable. This makes it safer for companies to hire from.. Youre getting ripped off with this, but its an entry level job, in this market. So.
For sure. The 30 vs. 80 hour week is a great comparison. I moved into a programming role (Data Engineering) with no CS degree, background, or having wrote a line of code before within 6 months which makes people react in two ways: either amazed or think programming is really easy to get into. I lost my job during the pandemic so had a lot of time. I did courses for 2 months and then spent 4 months spending 8+ hours per day coding, watching RU-vid videos, and applying for jobs Monday to Friday, 8+ hours per day just coding on Saturday and a "day off" on Sunday limiting myself to around 6 hours. When I say coding here, I mean actually coding. Not following tutorials, not taking ideas from other places. Literally coming up with ideas, learning new skills along the way, and seeing if I can do them. I completed around 60% of the projects I started. I regularly get people asking me on Reddit how this is possible because they've been trying to break in for 12-18 months. When you ask them how long they spend programming and they reply with maybe 2-3 hours per week following courses and completing certificates, there is absolutely no surprise people can't break in.
is this a remote job or in person? im currently working to learn programing atm python right now. i spend 4 hrs a day while i still have a job-family-wife. its hard to do more than that
@@almightyderpyMy first job was hybrid (started as remote, then went to two days per week in the office). My current job is fully remote. I have been a DE for just over 3 years now.
What languages do you recommend to learn and then begin coding on? Did you get an internship before the job and did they not care you had a degree. Because it seems they value experience more than just being able to code. And landing internships or a first job is difficult without a degree even if it's just paper and you learned everything by yourself. Was it the projects you did that they cared about or what in your opinion made you land internships or the jobs? @@TheWongAndOnly910
The key is to grind past junior, because junior more expensive than senior when you compare them by productivity. At least be a junior-mid, ideally mid. In tech you can get experience by practicing yourself
Hot take 1 His suggestions is vague. His words are either implementable or not. I'm not saying he is right or wrong. But. Here's why 1.) Time is not unlimited. You can't say to someone. Hey, you needed 10,000 hours before I consider your application. 2.) Money at some point in time. While grinding that 10k hrs, you'll probably spend some money. But your money is not unlimited. 3.) Other priorities. Not everyone would be able to put. Programming their one and only priority. The worst is if that priority doesn't pay off. 4.) Difference in type of experiences acquired. Two people can both have 10k hours of experience. And yet one of them might be better than the other. 5.) Category of experience. If someone is on a different experience, he/she won't really get the other one. For example, someone with work experience is not the same as someone with a freelancing experience (even if let's say they both have 10k hrs). 6.) Method or absorption of learning. Some people have good methods of learning. Some people have a good way to absorb what they learn. 7.) Etc. Hot take 2 You can't really stand out. (Instead, you should stand proud) No one really stands out. Here's why. The thing you learn, the techniques, advance methods, hours of experience, etc. They have all been done or can be done by others. Also, people can catch up. Someone who doesn't know to invert a binary tree, could someday can. Instead, before you present yourself. You should be able to stand proud of what you learned or accomplished. A person who learns in depth of something is technically better than someone who learns a lot of shallow things. Hot take 3 technically, there's a solution or solutions. An example of a solution is exposure. If we can expose someone to working experience before they work. They can have an idea on what's going on. Which technically makes life easier.
It’s pretty callous of Prime to tell people trying to find jobs that they need to put the time in, and it points to some shittier aspects of our society generally. People are expected to finance their own job training for roles that we need filled but are unwilling to pay the training costs for. It’s a real tragedy of the commons. Frankly, telling people they need to be putting in 80 hours a week is unrealistic and borderline abusive.
if you like your career you would be doing in your free time and advancing you skills, the tech industry grows and trends change, you have to up to date plus there's more Canidates with more exp to choose from. it's not a personal thing but just business. most ppl that get hired were either connected or really good and unique. nobody wants basic, entry isn't entry anymore
@@jurnossSoftware Engineering is the only Engineering field where this is the case. I’m an Electrical Engineer who got a dual major in college. I know how to do both but I won’t take a job as a primary software dev because the field is awash with workaholic mentalities like that. Your employer should be training y’all and not expecting 40 hours a week of unpaid work so you can work another 80 as a Jr Engineer. They want you to be married to your computer to get a job and that is horrible for mental health. It’s honestly the biggest reason I see washout with software devs and horrid mental health issues.
I agree but there's a lot of competition in this space. If companies can be picky, then try to be the first pick, all industries especially in STEM, are not created equally. The employer is expected to find candidates with the necessary skills, who would you think they'd choose? A: The new graduate with no background in CS other than a bootcamp or degree B: The thousands of candidates who all did the same projects(EX: the weather app) C: The candidate with an impressive portfolio and has an good startup on the backend. (some college kids literally doing this to secure a job) @@HammytheSammy-ds2em
But how do you know you are learning and studying the right things if no one will give you a chance on actual production? How does one know that they are bringing something new to the table? Do I just code for 80 hours on end? Writting and trying to make as much as I can? Do I have to get through years of writing shit code to become a good software engineer?
and then why the fuck do these people deserve my knowledge when they didn't invest in you to begin with? as they try to short change you on your X years of hard earned knowledge for a junior level role? I saw some feel good story, "i failed and was fat, but #GRIND, and then they saw i was no longer the fat chick and wanted me" shit on linked in where this guy got rejected from google, he had to make his own product and then it succeeded and he made good money from it, and then google crawled out of the toilet and said they were interested in him as a lead for basically what he was doing already, and he dropped everything he was doing to go to the company who couldn't give a shit about him when he had nothing. This crap is wild lol
if you code more than 8 hours a day you cant even have a life, idk what youre coding for but brother whatever it is it isnt worth you throwing your life away
If you want to break into the industry... spend a good amount of time trying to make friends and connections. A recommendation from someone at a company is worth just as much as a good portfolio and leetcode profile IMO. As an autist it sucked trying to build these connections but that's how I got an internship that led to a fulltime position as a 27 year old self taught dev. I did the grind every night after work doing personal projects for a year and half until I got the part time internship. I still had to work my full time 40hour a week job on top of the 20hour a week internship. It was 16 months of getting 5 hours a sleep every night and then working 12-14 hours a day but it was so worth it now that I am a full time Dev. The phoenix cannot rise without first being engulfed by the flames :).
I feel prime never really went over on the solution for jrs to stand out. Fresh grad here finished my bs in June 2023 and still no luck. Not even getting interviews. 75% of the entry level positions I see posted recruits some type of front end framework too. I’ve gotten two interviews in the last 3 months and my last one he asked if I had two years of react experience and I said no but I’m eager to earn and develop my skills and I am a fast learner and he said “sorry I require 2 years of react experience, thanks for your time”. It’s getting ridiculous out here man
@@luke1804 I’ve gotten three referrals. One of them by buddy his dad is on the board of directors and he personally referred me. Flat rejection. No interview. The second was the instance I spoke about in my original comment. Recruiter asked if I had two years of react and rejected me then and there.
I sympathize with jr devs in this market, I was also in it a year and a half ago (no personal projects in my resume either). My best advice to y’all are do your best to maintain some positive energy (really important in interviews) and don’t just shotgun generic resumes. After shotgunning for a month I ended up spending the next month doing cover letters for the companies and was able to land one in about a month of doing that. It’s really just luck but doing cover letters and refining your resume increase your odds pretty significantly. Good luck!
Sidenote, but the 10000 hour rule is a significant oversimplification of the underlying research. There's nothing magical about 10000 hours, and depending on the field, it can be much more or much less to achieve mastery (which, as it stands, is also a somewhat arbitrary term). The 10000 hours is also in reference to deliberate practice - not general experience - which means the quality of time spent is equally important. It's true that quantity will increase the rate of learning up to a point, but if accumulated fatigue starts significantly affecting the quality of learning, there is a point at which the marginal learning rate for each hour is negative (because it spoils your next session). Fatigue resistance is individual and highly variable - it's a matter of knowing how hard you can push yourself and backing off at the right time.
You’re right, it’s a “rule of thumb.” They way “drink 8 glasses of water a day” or “the average human temperature is 98.6º F” are just general rules of thumb but your actual values will vary by person.
Anyone who legitimately thinks that mastering something is as simple as just mindlessly grinding for exactly 10000 hours knows literally nothing about the process of learning.
@@RobRoss It's not really a good approximation either. The origin of the 10000 hours is - as I recall - a single study of music students at a German school, and they were attempting to estimate how much time the best performing students would spend practicing either up until that point or by the time they graduated (i forgot which one). I blame Malcolm Gladwell from trying to turn that into some sort of universal rule, and then trying to shoehorn that into other areas, such as the success of the Beatles. More significantly though, mastery is kind of an arbitrary cutoff. There's a dose-response to quantity and quality of practice that continues past that point. All else being equal, someone who did 15000 hours of quality will likely be better than someone who did 10000, and someone who did 5000 will likely be better than someone who did 1000. The rule of thumb should be that higher quantity and quality of practice makes you better at something, and that if something you need to do is still too hard for you - put in more hours and you'll likely get there eventually.
And there's also the fact that deliberate practice is only applicable to fields that have a well-defined learn structure. Programmers are just kinda not there yet.
Last coding bootcamp I took I helped 9 people graduate who paid me and told me they learned more from me than the professors. I had prior training from studying software applications programming at itt tech , and almost done with a cs degree, They all work in the field now, when I asked them how they got in most of them told me they just lied on their resume , been over 2 years since that last course and still not even a single interview, wasted almost 6 yrs of my life on learning software helping others get into the field and never got a single interview so I’m done
Its like being an 'anything'. Am i a musician because i own a guitar? Do i need to know a minimum number of chords? Songs? Just years of 'experience', which might be little more than tuning it?
the idea that once u spend alot of time you are guaranteed success is a bit silly. The quality of the hours is far more important than the amount of time.
if you spend 10000 hours (a few years) on writing code (every time different code), you probably get a job, I can't imagine you don't, while it is around 1000 different functions written
I changed careers after getting laid off. Started online college, started building my own games in Unity, when I found a new job I was working full time, doing full time classe , and giving time a week to work on my game. When I was at work or driving I was listening to audio books, podcasts ect on topics tech topics outside of pure programming. It's hard to change careers, especially if you need to make a living still. When I got my first job what impressed them was not what programming I could do, but my passion for tech.
Did listening to those podcasts and audio books about tech really help? I feel like it's neat to have, but I wouldn't see a company choosing you solely for that or even factoring in that as a reason for hiring
@@weirdo3116 Yes. It isn't something a company is going to hire you for obviously, at least not directly. They will hire you for showing a better understanding of things. Having a wider knowledge base has given me the ability to tackle problems others couldn't, to communicate my ideas and why they matter, and to learn quicker. That has translated to moving up quicker. Remember life is made up of opportunities.
As a girl trust me, they do not want us either without 50 years experience. Just because you cannot blame someone on this shit market, doesn't mean you just resort to blaming women for no reason..gow up
I'm not assigning blame to anyone; I'm simply stating what I've observed in the workplaces where I've been employed. There are significantly fewer women in the field of software engineering than there are men, and companies generally aim to promote diversity.
When you throw out these numbers I usually take it as including both the time you spend working for pay in addition to the time spent learning and practicing on your own outside of work. It's a lot less daunting when you realize the 4 hours your spend hacking together a new data structure counts. You don't need to spend all 60 hours in an office for a job you might be trying to leave.
If you are spending all that in the office, you're doing it wrong. You need to invest those 4 hours in yourself, not your company. If you can align those, now you're cooking with gas.
Whenever I hear someone say they do 60 or 80 hour work weeks I assume they're either lying or they are wasting most of the time and not actually working for those 60 or 80 hours.
Just stream on twitch once a week for 2 hours and put "programming streamer" on your resume to stand out. Hiring is a game of impressions, HR filters most people and they cannot tell the difference between water and orange juice.
Hi, quality assurance lead with enterprise experience here; I often talk with HR and managers in the multinational I work for. Most people who judge your resume have no idea what non-conforming wisdom looks like in reality. If it is, it needs to be explicitly visible. So streaming works. Doing presentations works. Building an educational platform (showcasing your abilities) works. At the end of the potential hiring process, a senior is pulled in to judge the compatibility of the person with the company. I'm sometimes that person. After the visibility boxes have been ticked off, all I do is look at attitude. If you're willing to adapt yourself to get yourself a position and you're showing that, I give off a positive recommendation. Not everyone judges others like that. Some people test your comformity instead, and then doing non-conforming things will be seen as a negative thing. They'll judge you for being a wild card, as comformity is a means of control for these type of people. The real advice I can give you is; learn who your audience is, who you want your audience to be; then change the explicit presentation to meet the base demands to get respectability. From here you get opportunity to show how you can be beneficial to them (first), then the company.
This is why I used to lie on my resume. If the company isn’t going to be fully forthcoming with what work I’ll be doing, then I don’t think I have a moral responsibility to be fully forthcoming either.
I’m 24 years old with a CS degree and 1.5 years of XP. I never saw the hype in learning React + Web Dev. I’ve always learned towards game dev/graphics just because it was different and challenging. IMO the people who are learning Web Dev will require more time in finding a job since they’re creating the same projects as every other cs student.
As someone who has learnt to code on my own and through a bootcamp; I can say that there is just so much you can do without getting some industry exposure. I didn’t get to learn about microservice architecture or clean code until I got my first job last summer. After worked with my current company for 5 months I started to work on my side projects again to apply what I had learnt. I think it would have taken me over 1 years to learn what I learnt in 5 months. The idea of coding for 80h a week seems good but when you don’t know what tf to learn and how to do it properly. So you burnout quite quicker and your code can tell
I agree, Dev work is a CONSTANT feeling of being uncomfortable If you are not willing to search for answers, create solutions to problems you never experienced, and/or be thrown into the deep end then this field is not for you
10k hours is a insane number, that is like 10hrs of working every single day in almost 3 years. I dont think you can keep that pace with family and other stuff to cool of your head of tech things. 100k hours is like a lifetime.
It’s the generally accepted number of hours to become an expert at anything let alone tech. If you want to change your life you are going to have to put 10,000 hours into something get used to it. This is why adults don’t play video games.
@@ConernicusRex I agree, i just dont think that expertise is achievable in 3-4 years working at that peace, your brain just stops learning. To be fair, prime didnt say that it needed to be done this way
@@markusmachel397 What math you do applied to get to that number? 10h every single day is like 70h per week, which accounting for the clearly lower efficiency would be like at most the equivalent 3y worth of 5. I have 20k hours, there is no way to get that in a few years no matter what. And also I have worked with a lot more passion and interest than most of my peers. And yet my knowledge still has plenty of holes, especially in the newer fields.
Just like there is"work smarter, not harder" there is "learn smarter, not harder." I've been in the business for 25+ years and seen plenty of folks (myself included) get sucked into the more hours mantra. Problem is, doing 80 hours of the same dumb or incorrect thing over and over isn't as useful as learning and embodying best practices upfront and correctly. Are there unicorns out there who do 80 hours of "smart" work? Sure. But as the unicorns they are, they are genetic anaomlies and also already have the highest paying jobs. For the rest of you, learn smart. Find mentors. Read good books on best practices - and then follow them. Understand design patterns, event loops, memory management, and other behind the scene concepts. Hell, write a complier in a langauge that isn't JavaScript (or your chosen langauge). That'll teach you lot. But you don't need to burn yourself out before you even get your first job.
Forgot to mention that at 30’s and 40’s the experience compounds and your learning curve shortens because you have past experience to work with. Even if you wet to pick up something in an unrelated field you can learn so much more efficiently than using the brute force like methods commonly employed by younger people. So you gain efficiency in exchange for lack of productive hours.
Here is how I see it, the main causes of job market's fatigue: - covid: 10% (and shrinking) - AI => 20% ( no idea how it's going to effect the market in the future) - "hiring less" trend => 20% (will shrink as the economy heals and competition increases) - recession => 50% (and growing, It'll probably take 3-5 years for the economy to get on its feet)
trying to get into the industry has been very demoralizing. I have a family to support, and once schools done, the money stops flowing and I need a job. internships have also become competitive. The interviews I've gotten have literally said "school is not enough". for Internships. its fuckin wild.
This is going to sound discouraging and it is, I was in a similar position, if you need money like yesterday stop trying to break into the tech industry and get any other job dude, I know it's hard to give up on something you didn't even got the chance to experience yourself but surviving is more important, since apparently they are only hiring ex-CEOs for entry level jobs.
If you're in the West the issue is outsourcing. I'm not a dev anymore but I'm dev adjacent and the companies I've worked with are just moving dev, dev ops, and admin roles to India.
jr’s not prepared to put in work outside work hours is the biggest red flag to me. if there’s no drive, there’s not much ROI especially in todays markets. I’m already happy if they mention this channel over lunch, cause it means they still learning and investing time in career building. Even if they don’t do rust or squeel.
Genuinely the only "shortcut" is solid mentorship which is very rare to come by. It's not the same as following tutorials, good mentorship can short-cut many headaches without hurting growth.
this is so depends on what you want to do. if you just want a job, any job, work for free to build your experience until you have enough to charge. if you want a high paying job, do what everybody is too scared to do, which means Rust yes JS/Python no, Database engineering yes, buidling websites no. If you're in it because you want to do, make something, then just build what you want to do and do it from scratch.
I still think contributing to OSS is a valuable learning experience -- but with some sane guidelines: - read through the docs - read through the source code - every time you come across something you don't understand, take it upon yourself to learn and figure it out. Other than on-the-job experience, this is where I've learned the most. - Make contributions that 1) provide value and 2) require the least amount of maintainers' time
Well I like the fact that he claims that neither a portfolio or open source work is beneficial. Then what the hell are u supposed to do as a junior if not that? Your experience building a portfolio doesn’t matter and your experience contributing to open source software doesn’t matter, then what? Only industry experience matters, but juniors cant get in so they cant get any industry experience. Bullshit! Im about to start my PhD soon, so i absolutely could not care less about this market. The only reason i mention this is because anyone who complains about the market is automatically labeled as some sort of “hater” that is salty they cant crack into junior roles. I hold a masters degree in CS from an R1 institute, i have about
I'm not a software engineer, and I'm in Norway, but I am in my final semester of actuarial science and dataanalysis (Masters degree), and I applied for a handful of jobs in early to mid january, and out of 6-7 applications I got interviews for all and 3 who offered me jobs. I am currently choosing between a Business Data Analyst and a Price Modelling and Portfolio Management (both for the same insurance company) and a consulting job (Insight & Data, Capgemini). Feels like the finance market here is craving competent data analysts with sufficient mathematical / statistical background (in addition to finance theory),
@@steveochoa7801 I accepted the price and portfolio management job, and my role is essentially doing lots of data analysis and developing models. That's what I've been doing on a daily basis lately anyways, and I definitely enjoy it.
Taught myself to program basic when I was 9. By my teens I was writing assembly. Comp Sci in college, programming classes were a snoozefest. Even so the first 5 years in the industry were rough, a couple of them brutal. Sounds like nothing has changed since.
It was like that in 2016 when I graduated... it fluctuates. Once we start reducing amount of engineers on the market the market will be desparate to hire anyone. Seems we are in again hitting the low for juniors.
Not even focused on getting a tech job right now, just freelancing for small businesses in my area to gain experience/money/portfolio work -- then I'll start applying when I've done that for a few years. The days of HTML, CSS, Javascript to get 6 figure job are over -- but if you become a complete developer and not just a gipity frameworker you can carve a niche, and eventually stand out with a proven track record.
@@beqer9281 the 90's and early 2000's: hold my beer I say this mainly because there are so many of these recruiters that larp as tech workers on youtube that keep dream selling this idea to noobs/people in desperate need of a career change
@@beqer9281It absolutely did exist - around mid 2021 to 2022 - and a ton of bootcamps were exploiting that to reach record growth. (Just note that "exploiting" also means "teaching students how best to lie on resumes without getting caught"). The standards at companies were genuinely lower because everyone was hiring. All a lot cared about was whether you knew their tech stack, and the lying got people over the traditional hurdles pretty quickly Now those same bootcamps are struggling hard because their students are getting filtered out again - possibly more aggressively than before. Some of those engineers who got in during that time are still doing well, but others got fired for under-performing. But even if you got fired from a company after a year for not being good enough, you likely got a lot more money during that time, and you also have a year of real-world experience
Re: 10k hours topic → I recommend the Ted talk on "the 1st 20 hours" by Josh Kaufman. It's a nicer short goal towards building confidence and proficiency. Won't be a master, but that's the 10k level. You just need a sooner "win" to help get you there.
Prime is right. I went the boot camp route, but I also put in the 60 - 80 hour weeks for 1+years. I generalized and broadened my knowledge base well beyond what was on the boot camp curriculum. At the end of that time, I finally made the right connection to land an interview at big tech, and have had the opportunity to grow and learn more. It's never over. Even if it's not 80 hr weeks anymore, it's still about being willing to learn more about your craft where you can
I believe the passion is one of the most important things. I really don't see how a junior makes it if they aren't passionate, there is just too much to take in and learn. I got in from a bootcamp as well and then within a few weeks I landed my first job (through a friend of a friend), and wow. I was REALLY dropped into the deep end. It was really challenging for me having to pick up and learn so many things so quickly, but I absolutely loved it. I don't see how someone going in it just for the money could of coped with something like that, I would of thought they'd fold if they didn't have that same interest and determination.
Honestly though I do think that there is efficiency that matters as well. I think I spent a lot of time learning but if I had done it in a better way I would have learned faster. Whatever. Hindsight 2020
People have to realize it's a competition. Every extra minute of work you do makes you 1 min better than your equally skilled peers who stopped. To get hired you have to be enough minutes better than the rest of the applications to stand out. How you spend those minutes is up to you. Differentiat your portfolio. Create a killer project. Get involved in open source. Network whatever... Pick your poison. It really doesn't matter. Non of theses are magic bullets. It's all work.
"Differentiat your portfolio. Create a killer project. Get involved in open source. Network whatever" As if every single cs student hasn't already done this. You are stating the obvious and acting like if you didn't get a job it's because you didn't try hard enough which is NOT TRUE.
@@jasonremedios6625 not because you didn't try hard enough, but because you didn't win. The list is just the areas one can focus on to win. Maximizing effort and focus increase your chances of winning. Though there are no guarantees.
I'd also wager a good part of the solution is being diligent in selecting difficult projects to build. If it's difficult, by its very nature it's forcing you to overcome obstacles as a dev some other devs in your position wouldn't have. Each hurdle is another wall between you and the rest of the pack. Just keep building. And don't settle for what everyone can do or is doing. Push yourself until you can get the recognition. Obviously recognition isn't exactly the right motivator here, you'd ideally like to be building what interests you, but if recognition will get your foot in the door and getting your foot in the door is the goal, you already know what needs to be done. Edit for clarity's sake: I don't even mean objectively difficult. I mean difficult for you given your current experience. The experience builds your problem solving skills, which in turn lowers the difficulty of larger and larger obstacles. So don't try to just brute force up the mountain if you don't have it in you -- aim for small climbs.
Who could have predicted that a cottage industry of bootcamps pumping out juniors would be bad for the job market? This is why other professions have some level of protectionist gatekeeping built in - whether it be university degree or other qualification, or even some sort of professional membership. As long as we are so militantly inclusive we are going to have this problem. Pendulum needs to swing the other way - some people (lots of people) just shouldn’t be developers.
"It's not looking good" Dude, it's looking TERRIBLE. I have 6 years of experience, relevant projects, full-stack bootcamp certificate, every day practice, constantly learning a new (but relevant) technology, and can't even land a FREAKING INTERVIEW. What the hell is wrong???
I had to create a reporting application with almost zero programming experience. I spent 100 hrs a week for months. I can hit file new now in studio and actually do stuff. Putting in the hours makes all the difference.
I've been working as a developer for over 4 years now and it was crazy how easy it was to change jobs a few years ago, I remember I was able to opt among like 3 positions just like 2 years ago. I'm currently having a much harder time now that I'm willing to get a new job since the project I was working on for the last 2 years is finished and the company does not need as many devs anymore. Fortunately I work for a outsourcing company and they were able to allocate me in another project that is gonna last a few months...! I cant imagine how hard it is for junior devs, especially the ones who just know React and at most NodeJs
5:35 I have noticed that when you have a cool after-hours project or learn a new language, you regain a bit of energy when you finish your 8h work and start learning the new thing. It's like a small boost, just because it's something new and different. Try it, it's like the cool side of the pillow. Also, nice hair...
@@picleus I agree. I try to use it to learn new things that I know I don't need to go deep, just the tip. Like learn the basics of a new language, just to get the gist of it. You know, to broaden my horizons.
The issue is non paid internships, especially here in European Union. To the point that EU is planning to regulate or even potentially going to ban non paid internships.
I don't disagree with the fact that it actually takes time to get good at something. No doubt that it takes a lot of time to get good at becoming a developer. The problem is the fucked up job market where junior positions where you for some reason need 2-3 years of experience in some super specific tech stack to have even a slight chance of getting an interview.
For those in a university program, go to career fairs! I just had a life-changing job offer given to me from a connection I made at my STEM career fair.
The fact that the chat just exploded when Prime said "if you put in 80 hours a week you will be far better than the people putting in 30" is just so indicative of where we are right now. Everyone wants the experience to be handed to them without having to work for it.
mate, it is literally impossible to put 80 hours a week, even 30 hours a week ¡when you work a 9 hour job shift + 1 hours transportation, there is not enough time
"Then I don't think dev is for you" - Well first off there, buddy, is that this bootstrap garbage has no cred when you don't have an income from doing actual development work. Those lucky enough to land a long term jr position out of college have an enormous advantage over someone who gets stuck bussing tables while doing codecamps in their freetime. I really don't have any patience for this bootstrap garbage coming from the development nobility, and I really can't come up with a better analogy other than to say that it smacks of nobles calling peasants lazy or uncommitted. I don't know what its going to take to make developers cut the BS and look inwardly to see that we are literally the problem. Its not that jr developer's resumes aren't impressive enough, its us. Hi. We're the problem, its us. We're not supposed to be impressed with a jr developer's resume. Can the developer do the work that you have in mind for the position, after a little bit of training?? Then hire them. Thats it. Stop thinking that you should be impressed by a jr dev's resume, your majesty.
no its not. You had 4 years of college to get good. Find the thing you like , research if its actually pays your bill, start doing projects on your 2nd year, try for internships in your 3rd year, by this time you wouldve had roughly 10k hours of effort put into it. Also cs degree will teach you basics of SDLC, programing, UML designs etc to help you further advance your career.
@@joshbasnet3014 its a rule of thumbs from one paper decades ago. It has no scientific value and is just repeated everywhere because its a nice round number. That should have been your first clue - scientific numbers are never that nice and round.
@@bullpup1337 if you put roughly 10k hours learning new skill that pays your bill, Do you or do you not have better chance to get jobs/interns in this competitive climate? If learning 10k hours on new skill id not your thing then you can focus on other stuff that you are great at.
@@bullpup1337 you are missing the point here. You don't have to put 10k hours but putting it the work helps you get a job/internships. Right now competition is so fierce on tech , to get that internship you really need to stand out from other 500 applicants. That's why i said to start early on that 10k while in college so that you get ahead of the competition . You're focusing on 10k as in a raw number but look at this way "How beneficial is that skill to your skill growth and financial stability in future?", if you can learn it by 2k hours and be better than the competition then the Scientific Paper doesn't matter does it ?
Honestly, talent tends to just be unconscious relevant hours of experience. Those puzzles that increased your problem solving skills that you were obsessed with when you were 5 years old, finally paying off.
I dunno, I feel like I work with tonnes of juniors, some of them have been programming 15+ years :) I think you have to love programming and like thinking about it, and love making stuff to get any good at it. Most people don't. Most people read a stupid book, take it for gospel, and never learn to think or make anything useful their whole careers.
I think something worth mentioning is that there has been a lot of layoffs in tech in the last 3-4 years, simple supply and demand issue. There is less demand for devs meaning only the best and experienced get the roles. But this can change as it has before many times.
So what the fuck do you make lol? In order to be a junior dev I have to also be a designer and own a startup and create some magical new project that no one has ever seen before lol
I just don't want the fight. I know I could eventually get a job, but I kills your soul to know your heart isn't in it, and theres 1,000 other people more game for it then you.
Lol I was just thinking the same thing. It's like the famous Ronnie Coleman quote: "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but don't nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weight".
2:31 thank you for pointing this out, not many people in the software space is pointing this out ! And it is directly caused by companies and influencers telling beginners to contribute to open source to increase job prospects..... How about contribute to an open source project because you actually care about that open source project?
Serious question, do you need creativity or a creative project to "become that engineer" or is it enough to build a clone of an advanced tool? Say like a GitHub feature clone? I also think some engineering projects are not technically challenging but the business logic is crazy hard and sometimes that gets overlooked. Like I may not need to use multiple workers and manipulate buffers and stream them to the client, but the business logic is complex, does that make sense?
I think what matters most is whether you have strong, compelling engineering stories to point to and talk about during your interviews. How have you struggled? How did you overcome hard technical challenges? Engineering rigor can pop up in a lot of surprising ways, and the project you thought would be easy could actually be really hard - but you'll be able to talk about that confidently if you actually build it out How exactly you put yourself into those challenging situations is up to you. You could make something super original, or you could make a clone of something, while trying to make it as feature-complete as possible (or even shoot for going beyond the original). But you're almost definitely not going to get this stuff if you follow a tutorial, because they've done the thinking for you. That's the point
I mean...I work because money exists, I probably wouldn't otherwise. So the jobs I had where I worked less than 40 hours were the healthiest for me, I stayed fit, played video games, went out, had some time for myself AND time for mu girlfriend.
Right now i feel optimistic. I can hold out for 2-3 years. By then i think the "just learn to code bro" mentality will be dead, many people will have given up, the market will be better, companies will NEED to hire and train juniors.
First he was talking about all of these new bootcamp grads having the same projects thus making it hard to stand out which means its extremely hard to get your first job. people ask how to fix that, and it goes into "it takes time" and "10,000 hours," "60-80 hour work weeks" but i dont have a job.. where is this 60-80 hours a week coming from?
The dev culture is that of toxic one-up-manship. That spills over into interviews and suddenly theres no such thing as a jr developer anymore. Its not that jr dev positions wouldn't be profitable, theres always work that jr devs can do, they'll just never get hired because devs use interviews for showing off rather than for hiring
