03 Feb 2025 #career
Last year, I sent out over a dozen of CVs and cold emails within a month.
I was laid off. I went into panic mode. I applied to many companies. Anything with the word “coding” or “software engineering” in the job description. I even applied to a FAANG though I rejected that idea years ago.
But I just got radio silence.
2024 was a tough market. I know because I wasn’t the only one going through layoffs. The entire industry was. I even talked to an ex-coworker and he told me he had sent one hundred applications. I don’t know if he meant literally 100 applications or not. But I wouldn’t be surprised. He only got two or three positive responses.
Today I found a reflection on dev.to from a junior developer.
Last year, she finished a coding bootcamp or something and started to look for jobs. Oh boy! It must have been tougher for her. After the bat-soup and 2023, it seems nobody is hiring junior engineers anymore. And she tried the CV route.
CVs are dead. They’re so last century.
And sending lots of CVs won’t land you a job. Otherwise, someone with a printing business will find tons of jobs just by printing and mailing CVs. Well, sending CVs is a numbers game. Maybe out of 100 applications, you’ll get 2-3% of responses back if you’re lucky. Who knows!
Instead of CVs, I’d try an indirect approach to look for jobs:
- Follow on LinkedIn, companies you’d like to work for and people (especially hiring managers) who work there.
- Start genuine conversations. Ask how working there is and ask for referral programs.
- If you use the company’s product, show up with ideas to improve the product. Or the company website or social media presence. Don’t simply send your CV with an “I do anything coding-related for money” attitude. That’s what I did with obviously poor results. And don’t appear desperate either.
- Go through your network, asking if anyone knows someone working at a place where you could fit. Repeat steps 1 to 3. Or ask for an introduction.
I found my first job because I knew someone who knew someone at a company looking for coders. An introduction skipped the hiring line. And after being fired from that job, I found my next one through my network. I knew someone who knew someone.
If you’re standing in a hiring line or if your CV is on a pile physically or virtually, you’re already screwed. Don’t wait in hiring lines. Look for indirect ways to open doors and skip the lines.
Starting out or already on the coding journey? Join my free 7-day email course to refactor your software engineering career now–I distill 10+ years of career lessons into 7 short emails.
02 Feb 2025 #misc
You don’t know where you will find him next. In a bathtub, a garage, an exotic beach in Mexico, somewhere in Iceland, or his office.
In every Office Hour, Brent shows a small glimpse of his personality and life.
I started to follow him for SQL Server advice. He’s maybe the SQL Server expert. In fact, I took his courses. But I ended up showing up to his Office Hours for career and consulting advice.
After watching Brent’s YouTube live sessions, here are 10 lessons I learned from him:
#1. Stand next to expensive things. Each SQL Server license costs around ~5k per core. Anything Brent charges for his consulting services is way cheaper than the licensing costs of an average server. Stand next to expensive things to charge premium rates.
#2. When planning your next workshop or course, start by writing the takeaway slide first. Then, create the rest of the content around that.
#3. If you ask “when is it time to leave my job?,” then it’s already time. If you wait for a layoff to look for a new job, it’s too late. The best time is when you don’t need a job
#4. If you’re planning to start consulting, start blogging and presenting months and years before to build your reputation. And always finish your presentations by saying “If you need more help, feel free to contact me.”
#5. Work on the smallest change that brings the most impact. This is something I learned from his Mastering courses. Often, we start to turn knobs and push buttons to make our SQL Server faster, without making any noticeable impact. The same applies to work outside the database work.
#6. Take a photo of you in your current work environment. That’s a future reminder of where you were and what brought you to where you are now.
#7. People follow you by who you are. Ok, Brent is opinionated and doesn’t restrict himself from roasting people in his YouTube live sessions. That’s one of the reasons people (and I) follow him. Authenticity.
#8. Impostor syndrome never goes away. The other day, I asked him how to deal with impostor syndrome. And hearing one of the top SQL Server experts saying he still feels like an impostor when working with clients was relieving. We’re all constantly learning and improving.
#9. You don’t have to be THE expert, you just need to know a bit more than the person you’re helping. This goes hand in hand with #8. It takes yeaaars to be the #1 in the world at anything, if you ever reach that point. But you don’t have to wait to be the #1 to start helping others and start making money.
#10. Build a brand so powerful that clients line up. Chances are that if you google anything related to SQL Server, Brent’s website will pop up. You’ll find him in YouTube, Twitch, and maybe TikTok. At this point, he doesn’t need to chase clients. He has a strong online presence. And it takes years to build one.
In my hometown, there’s a saying: build a reputation, then go to bed. Brent did that.
To learn how to make your SQL Server go faster with Brent—and support this blog—buy the Fundamentals Bundle here and the Fundamentals + Mastering Bundle here. I can’t recommend Brent’s courses enough. Learn from a real expert, with real queries.
01 Feb 2025 #misc
Money means different things for different people.
For some people, money is:
- A skill to master
- A symbol of status
- A ticket to freedom
- An exchange of value
- A game with levels to conquer
- What we trade in exchange for time
- A story we’ve been telling as a society
- A differentiator between classes
- A multiplier of our values
- A mindset to practice
- A social convention
- The root of all evil
But, these days, watching Devon Eriksen, an engineer turned fiction writer, in an interview on YouTube, I learned a new definition of money.
He said:
“Money is a measure of f*cks given.”
If you want more money you have to make people give a f-ck about you. And if you say you don’t want money, you’re saying you don’t want people to give a f-ck about you.
Devon’s analogy dates back to our time as hunters and gatherers, when there was no concept of money as we know it today.
In those days, if you were a hunter, you cared (or gave a f-ck to follow the analogy) about the guy who polished rocks to make spears. And you two exchanged money in the form of products and value. Spears for meat or anything else. Caring meant exchange and exchange meant money.
Today we don’t trade goods or services, we have pieces of paper and figures on a screen. Create something people care about and let money roll in.
31 Jan 2025 #misc
Is there ever a perfect time to start anything?
Of course, no. “Perfect time” or “waiting to be ready” means never. And we will never be “ready” for anything in life.
Back in high school, we had two classmates who we all knew had a crush on each other.
And, as teenagers figuring out the new world of relationships, we all encouraged our classmate to ask his crush out. He always said: “Next month, I’m asking her out.” And then, the next month, he said: “Next month, I’m asking her out”. Then “next month…” and “next month…” He kept waiting for the perfect time.
“Next month” became never.
And it works the same for any creative project.
There’s no perfect time to start. You will never be ready. “Next month” means never.
So start that blog, start that YouTube channel, start taking those pictures, start that poetry book. You don’t need to be an expert to start. You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to wait for the perfect time. You just need to start.
So why wait? Start today. Keep showing up and adapt as you go. The best time was five years ago. The next best time to start is right now.
30 Jan 2025 #career #coding
“Focus on learning one thing.”
A coworker told me that every time he got to my desk. At that time, he was the IT/network guy. Years before that, he was a certified Java engineer or something.
I was new at this coding thing. I was trying to learn about everything at once. It was back in 2010ish. I was reading The Clean Code, learning Python, using C# at work (coming from Java), and watching PHP presentations in my lunch break.
Now you see why my coworker told me to focus.
Don’t chase shiny objects, go deep into fewer things
Instead of chasing new and shiny objects (like tools, libraries, and frameworks), juniors (and we all) are better off going deep into fewer tools and concepts.
Me 10+ years ago? “Oh there’s a new framework. A new C# version. A new CI/CD tool. Hey, what’s that new Hangfire thing over there?” Arrggg!
Frameworks and libraries come and go.
Today it’s React with Typescript. Before that, it was Bootstrap with Ember or Knockout.js. Before that, it was ASP.NET WebForms. Before that, it was Perl scripts or something. I wasn’t around coding at that time.
And who knows what AI will bring to the table.
But chances are we’ll be working on a C-type language, still using text files, and writing SQL. That hasn’t changed in ~50 years. And it will remain the same. I wouldn’t bet all my money though.
If you’re starting your coding journey, master the topics that have passed the test of time:
- SQL
- HTTP
- C/C++
- Data structures
- Design patterns
- Vanilla JavaScript
- Clean code principles
- Debugging and testing
- Linux and operating systems
(Not all of them at once, of course.)
I don’t know what other subject to add to that list now. But you get the point.
And more importantly than spitting out code, master your soft skills: negotiation and persuasion. Coding is more about collaboration than cracking symbols on a file.
It took me quite a while to learn that lesson. And that’s why I wrote Street-Smart Coding: 30 Ways to Get Better at Coding. It’s the roadmap I wish I had to go from junior to senior.
Get your copy of Street-Smart Coding here. Because coding is more than chasing trends. It’s about building skills that last.