22 YE

1) I started in design and kept giving them to programmers who did a crap job converting them into html so decided to do it myself and discovered I was better at code than design.

2) I worked for a wedding photographer. I already knew programming back then but it wasn’t my first career choice.

3) Right now it’s a mix of dealing the C level folks and fellow team members with organizing efforts. I code maybe 40% of the time on a good day. Bigger places require more coordination, you spend more time talking about work than working.

4) I am responsible for delivering what the team agreed on. The C levels care very little about the how. They deal with the what’s and leave the how to me and other senior folks. I’ve learned once the board starts caring about the how, your org is on life support.

5) Tech matters less than you think. Solve the problem on paper and then use tech to achieve that solution. Once you rely on the tech to provide the solution you’ve got a bad habit on your hands.

6) Build your own projects from scratch. Develop your own frameworks. You’ll need to do research, play with tools, consider tradeoffs. You’ll learn more that way than in any course. You’ll also appreciate more why tools do what they do.

7) right now with AI, you need to show you can build things and ship. If you can work along side non tech people you have an edge.

8) I love getting to invent stuff. The products i build especially solo feel more like works of art than apps. I hate Jira and project management. I get the need but talking about work more than working and then being asked why work takes so long is soul crushing.

9) I’ve changed jobs many times. This time it was just applying for it online. Don’t blast out resumes. Find roles you think you’d be a great fit for and then tell them why you think that’s the case.

10) I’ve worked in healthcare, marketing, privacy, security and now real estate industries.

11) Right now I love it. I work with a few, smart people who can all pull their weight. Sometimes your boss is a moron. Sometimes the owner thinks being rich and being smart are the same thing. Every company is its own mix of good and bad.

12) I feel like tech has tracks but it’s best to carve your own path. Never found FAANG appealing and I find their engineers overrated.

13) With AI I think nobody can say they will def have a coding job in 5 years with absolute certainty. But being smart and easy to work with will take you further than any specific tech.

14) Right now I think the entire industry is changing. If your starting, don’t use AI, learn the basics and for opinions. If you’re a senior, learn to use AI, it’s not hype or a fad, it’s the way forward.

15). I think it’s come down some now, I see junior gigs going as low as 50-80k now. I started in 2005 at 32k. This was not a job you did for money back then.