Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 286. The Development Community Is Broken - Let's Fix It

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286. The Development Community Is Broken - Let's Fix It · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I say the term tech influencer to you, what's the first thing that goes through your mind?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is it positive?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: What about when I read the comments under articles or videos on technology?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Are they going to be positive?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I talk to a lot of developers, both in person and online.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen a growing trend of overhyping technology, depression over the future of technology, anger at the direction of technology, and even a growing number of conspiracy theories over what is happening in our field.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode of Dev Questions, we're going to discuss the brokenness in the developer community and how we can not only avoid it, but start to heal it as well.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is a burgeoning career.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a rewarding career with high potential for income and low physical effort.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about why it doesn't feel that way.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions podcast with Tim Corey.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about how to identify and avoid the brokenness of the development community.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as I see it, there are four categories of brokenness.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I will probably step on toes with every one of these categories, but let's get into it.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: The first category is overhyping these fantasy technologies.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that this technology is going to solve everything.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We had this with crypto, where all of a sudden every solution was in some way related to crypto.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: We had NFTs.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what did they solve?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not really anything.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: We are now in the midst of AI where it's the same thing, where it's AI is a solution to everything.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every problem, AI.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Every new application, AI.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Every job posting, AI, every conference you go to, AI.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have influencers pushing things that even they don't believe.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: They admit they don't believe it, but they say, but people want to hear about it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we have this overhype, this idea that it's way over the top.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's one issue in our brokenness era.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just to be clear, when I say overhype, I don't mean there's no value in these things.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: There can be value in every one of these things.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: However, the hype way outscales the value.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Number two is depression.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: This category of brokenness is seen with people saying things like, quit software development.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Just give up.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not worth it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Leave this field.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Go somewhere else.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a good field.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Get out.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every technology is bad.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: The new things are bad.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: The old things are bad.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: No one does it right.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every company is dumb.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's just this idea of depression.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: This everything is bad.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you watch Winnie the Pooh growing up, this is Eeyore, right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the, you know, no matter what you say, there's a way to turn it into, yeah, and that's bad.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the second area of brokenness.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have overhype, overhype.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We have depression, depression or depressive expressions.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then number three is anger.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um people are angry.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're angry at employers who they see is actively looking to harm them.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're angry at AI, which they think is terrible.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're angry, you know, one of the ways it's easy to spot a person who's been in the tech community for a while that's angry is they use the M dollar sign for Microsoft because it's the expression of their anger, the idea that Microsoft is somehow just as big evil corporation, as if all corporations aren't big and somewhat evil.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like what's the good ones, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, there probably are some better ones, but there's also a lot worse ones.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just this anger, the the anger at the pace of technology where things are just going too fast, or things are not going the way they should, or I think that this is just dumb or stupid.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of anger out there.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, the last area of brokenness that I see is that this idea of conspiracy.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that you have to have a reason why somebody's out to get you.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is why people don't get hired, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it's a conspiracy against them.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's, you know, this conspiracy around phantom jobs.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying phantom jobs don't exist.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of do sometimes, but not nearly to the levels that people think they do.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: There, you know, I applied to 200 jobs and and but they were all phantom jobs.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, you didn't.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, you didn't.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: You applied to real jobs, they just didn't call you back.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but as this conspiracies come out, um, everybody I don't agree with is lying in order to get paid.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's an ulterior motive to everybody and everything.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, what's the real reason behind X, Y, or Z?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And again, there are foundations in reality in some of these things.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: There are phantom jobs.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are lying to get paid.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, companies are doing things to steal your data or otherwise, you know, not think of you, but think of themselves.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is true.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there's this real push towards kind of the extremes here of conspiracy theory.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the kind of four categories that I see in the tech community.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is not just a tech community, but uh we're talking about software developers.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, overhype, depression, anger, and conspiracies.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, let's talk about the realities so we don't get sucked down the whole of any of these.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, we can kind of figure out how to avoid it and also figure out a way to enjoy life, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: As a software developer, there's a lot to enjoy and there's a lot of positive.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if you always focus on the negative, always focus on that area and kind of blow it out of proportion, it becomes misery.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: But then you find that there isn't a lack of misery somewhere else, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you leave software development but bring those same habits somewhere else, you're very miserable there too.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the realities that we need to acknowledge.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Reality number one is what you believe isn't going to change reality.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's this is a super hard one because people say things like, Well, I believe.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: You may have reason to believe that, but whether you believe it or not doesn't change the reality of it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning, I could believe that the moon is flat.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I could believe that with all of my heart.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I could have quote unquote proof.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have things that I say that, you know, I know this is flat because of X, Y, and Z.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't make the moon flat.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to this, these ideas, these conspiracy theories, or this anger over this, you know, ways that people are treating you and how they're out to get you, or whatever the case may be, just because you feel that way doesn't mean that's necessarily the truth.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, there are foundational truths in these things, but we've got to be careful to separate what we believe from the truth.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes we have a thought, we think, you know what, I'm betting the reason this company is doing this is probably because they want to steal my data.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: That may be true and it may inform how you make a decision, but you have to separate that from the reality.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: If it comes out later, oh, they were trying to do this, well, you know, did it hurt your life?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Did you did you make yourself miserable because you were believing this and found out it wasn't true, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to careful to separate our beliefs and you know what we think might be the case from reality, making sure we know which is which.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because otherwise, what happens is we start making decisions based upon our beliefs, which are less and less founded in reality, and then we've we make bad decisions.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what you believe isn't going to change reality.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you believe that all the companies are out to get you because they're not reading your resume, you know what?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: That can make allow you to make some bad decisions in your life because you're not acknowledging reality.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't change reality.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: The reality isn't that companies are out to get you.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that you're not giving them what they want.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's if you acknowledge that, if you acknowledge the reality instead of just what you believe, then what will happen is you're you're going to change what you believe and you're going to hopefully have a better outcome because you change that belief to better conform to what is really going on.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Number two in the realities we need to acknowledge is that your experience is not everyone's experience.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is hard because I could say that the economy is great, the job market is great, the you know, companies are hiring all over the place, and your experience may be that you just got laid off and that you can't find a new job.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to hear all those great things are happening because it's not happening for you.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very easy to then put on this idea that that's not true, that people are lying, and it's not really true, it's not really what's happening, and so you know, everybody else is lying, and it must be that you know the job market is bad.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is your experience starts to cloud the idea of what's happening overall.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um this happens all the time with layoffs.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So technology companies lay people off all the time.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we did a just did a video not that long ago about the fact that over 100,000 people in technology companies get laid off every year.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the way it is.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying I love it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I don't love it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what happens.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so people start to see that and say, well, then technology jobs are going away.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, that's not the conclusion out of that because you're not looking at who was being hired.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: How many were hired, how many were hired in other areas.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is the field overall growing or shrinking?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Your specific experience doesn't represent every experience, it represents your experience.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So be careful to acknowledge the reality of what's happening to me or what's happening in my area doesn't mean that's what's happening everywhere.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I used to live in an area where the uh a senior C sharp developer seemingly got paid a pretty low rate, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pretty low rate, and it felt like every company in the area paid about that same rate.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And every company in the area had a very similar working environment.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I looked at that reality and said, well, developers just aren't getting paid that well, and it's just not a great job.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, in that specific area, if I step outside the area by 50 miles, all of a sudden everything changes.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: The income is better, the working environments are better, the types of companies that that are doing work are better.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's because I was in a little bubble.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when I spent outside that bubble, I found out that there were different experiences in different areas.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to acknowledge that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because your experience is not gonna be everybody's experience, which means that when things happen, they don't necessarily happen to you.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: When they generally happen, uh I mentioned, you know, before if I said the economy is great and the job market's great and all the rest, you know, right now the economy is not great and the job market isn't great.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that can mean that there's a lot of difficult circumstances out there, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna have to necessarily be your experience.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: You may have a great experience right now, and that's wonderful.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just know it's not everybody's experience.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, reality number three to accept is that companies don't pay well for easy work.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: The dream is, seemingly, the dream is to walk into work to love your job, to have a job that's easy to do, that has low number of hours, and you get paid great for it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not how it works.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not how you work either, though.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like if if you go to the the grocery store and you look at the food and you say, you know what, I want to buy this chicken and it's super cheap, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you go to a different grocery store and their chicken's more expensive.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Which one are you gonna probably buy if it's the same chicken?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: You buy a cheaper one, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're looking at cereal and you you want to buy a box of cereal and you notice that this grocery store has it for$5 and this other one has it for$10, you probably buy the$5 one, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna buy the cheapest one that gets you the best value, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: We we look at this, we look at you know how to get the best value out of our money because we only have so much.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, companies are the same way.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna pay really great salaries for jobs that anyone can do.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: There is not.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, they're gonna look to see, hey, how can I pay less for this?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a thousand people that want to work for you, it's really a bidding war in the wrong direction, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's well, what if we dropped the job by$10,000 a year?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now we have 800 people that still want to apply to work for us.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if we dropped it by another 10,000, well, now we have 300 people that want to work from that job.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can still find somebody qualified and pay them$20,000 less than our original offer.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And companies are going to do that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so when our job becomes easy, well, then we're going to be in danger of having it eliminated.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is what one of the fears of AI is well, AI is going to replace developers' jobs.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: If the developer is doing easy work, then it may.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, an AI can do easy work or can be managed to do easy work.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that might eliminate easy jobs, but you shouldn't be doing just easy work.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are, your days are probably numbered.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't think that means junior developers.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that junior developers can be doing real work and hard work.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that it's easy to slack off.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy to think that that simple tasks are all you need to do to get by in life, and that's not going to be what companies pay well for.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Number four in our realities to acknowledge is that everyone wants the most amount of value for the lowest amount of cost.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about the grocery store example.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everyone wants to pay the least amount for the most value.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: If if I offer you, if you're looking for a Toyota Corolla to purchase, I've purchased a number of Corollas in my life.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're looking at Toyota Corolla, well, what are you gonna look for?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: The lowest price, the most features?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Probably a mixture of both, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you may have a budget.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: You may say, I want to spend no more than let's say$20,000.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So these are just fake numbers, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: But$20,000, I'm gonna go look around.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna buy a, let's say, a used Corolla.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm gonna look for what has the lowest number of miles, what has the most features in it, what's the newest car available for that budget range.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna choose the one that is the cheapest that has the most value.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the same with companies, that's the same with our industry.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: We look for the most amount of value for the least amount of cost.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's just how this is.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, number five, developers get paid more than almost any other profession and yet require the least amount of formal training.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is an objective reality we need to acknowledge.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Too often I hear people say, get out of development, it's a dead field, you need to go to X, Y, or Z field.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm gonna read for you some numbers.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, be I'm gonna I'm pulling these from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics from the US, so it's US-based numbers, and it's based upon a whole bunch of people that they have have monitored and tracked and figured out what do they make, et cetera.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with that, we're gonna look at median numbers.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not familiar with math, there's average, that's not what we want to look at.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh average would be if nine people got paid$100,000 and one person got paid a million dollars.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now that number is way skewed.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: The average is like, I don't remember what it would be, but like$200,000, let's say, average salary.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: But nine out of ten people aren't making that.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Only one person is making actually a lot more than that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not gonna work.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that is gonna be the average, and that's gonna be skewed by, in software development, it's being skewed by Amazon, Google, Microsoft paying these very large salaries, two, three, four hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And also people working in large cities that have much higher expenses and you know have a much larger pool of technology companies that are trying to pull from them.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a supply and demand issue where the demand drives higher uh uh salaries.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't want average.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: What you want is median.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So in our previous example, one person makes a million dollars a year, the other nine make a hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the median would be number five or number six person.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you put an order from a million dollars to a hundred thousand dollars, and then you say the middle person, what's that person making?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: $100,000.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in our example, that's you know what all of them are making except for one.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: But what that does is it says the middle point.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So half the people in the category are making less, half the people are making more.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the middle point, the median.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Median is a very good indicator of what an overall field pays.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at, I'm gonna just talk them through.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna show you, but I'm gonna talk them through, um, various fields that you might think, well, they they pay really well.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end, I'm going to, well, let's let's start with software developer.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with software developer because that kind of gives us our baseline.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the median salary in 2024, 2025 is$133,000 a year for a software developer.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's the, again, median.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're thinking I get paid less than that, absolutely.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Reality number two is your experience is not everyone's experience.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: The median salary for a software developer is$133,080.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: The job growth, as in how fast, how many new jobs are being added every year, is 15%.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's$129,000 job openings every year for software developer, and that's growing.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So$133,000 a year, it's a 15% growth rate, it's$129,000 open jobs per year.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look at some other categories.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go quickly through these.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Auto mechanic, median salary,$49,000.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Electrician,$62,000, plumber,$62,000, construction worker,$46,000.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh doctor or physician,$239,000 plus.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually low because they don't go above that in their scale.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um nurse, though,$93,000.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyer,$145,000.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: High school teacher,$64,000, college professor,$83,000, accountant,$81,000, marketing manager,$161,000.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Restaurant owner, franchise owner, between$82,000 and$130,000.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the range.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So as a software developer, the only categories in that list that I read to you that are above software developers in terms of income, median income, are doctor, lawyer, marketing manager, and that's it.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So of those things, only those three categories.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So doctor, uh, marketing manager.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Doctor, you gotta have a lot of uh schooling behind you, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if if you want to go that route, you'll make more money.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um but when it comes to and here's the growth thing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So software developer in this list, uh, 15% growth.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's faster than any other category I listed.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mechanic, 4%, electrician, 9%, plumber, 4%, construction worker, 7%, doctor, 3%, nurse, 5%, lawyer, 8%, high school teacher is in decline by 2%.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: College professor, 7%, accountant, 5%, marketing manager, 6%, sales representative, 1%, and restaurant owners is variable.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got a field that is paying near the top more than a lot of more educated people.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: For example, nurses have a lot more education requirements than software developers do.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we get paid about$40,000 a year more.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, they're all smaller or even in decline.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to actual numbers, we can actually look at the reality of our field.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: We are one of the highest paid fields in at least the US based upon US numbers.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we're one of the fastest growing fields out there.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we have one of the largest pools of job openings every year.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to reality, developers get paid more than almost any other profession, and yet require the least amount or one of the least amounts of formal training out there.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the realities.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So now we've kind of identified those realities.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do we avoid becoming just another broken developer who's miserable?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Step one, we need to find the joy in your situation.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Every situation is going to have its downsides.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Every situation.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: There is not a job that I've worked for where there wasn't something I didn't like about it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the nature of work.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Work is hard.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there's always going to be something about work that isn't pleasant.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even in your ideal job.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are things that I just don't like about my ideal job, right?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if you always find the negative, if you're always the pessimistic side of things, then you're going to be miserable because you're going to find a problem with everything.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everything.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Conversely, you can find something to love in every job you work for.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, yes, there are miserable jobs out there.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: There are hard jobs.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are jobs that you know are just difficult.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: But especially as software developers, there's a lot to find joy in.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of my things that I find joy in is I try to remind myself, because I'm again focusing on trying to be joyful, finding the positives.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: When I open the door to go outside and it's raining, it's cold, it's hot, it's, you know, the outside is miserable in some way.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I just tell myself, man, I am really thankful I work indoors.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a big deal.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've worked outdoors.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: I've worked in construction.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've worked in other areas where it's hard labor.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's really great to be able to not have to do that as my day job.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Finding your join your situation might be just, you know what?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: My job pays the bills.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty awesome.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't love it.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't love my coworkers.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't love my employer.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't love a lot of things.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: It pays the bills.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a pretty valuable thing because if I didn't have this, then I'd be in a world of hurt.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: So find the joiner situation.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, identify your shortcomings and work to improve them.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is that that acknowledgement of uh of reality versus what I wish or what I believe or what I have faith in.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um acknowledging your shortcomings and work to improve them.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's super hard.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's super hard to say I was wrong.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's super hard to say I fell short.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, but if you can do that, if you can identify your shortcomings and work to improve them, that's a superpower.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to take you so much further in life.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because here's the reality.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is if you ignore those things, if you don't acknowledge them, if you don't work to improve them because you don't acknowledge they're a problem, then you don't progress, then you don't change, then you know what, you're going to have worse and worse situations because you're stagnating.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to acknowledge the reality of things.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, you need to identify how you can provide more value.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I have been blessed to have done.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I will not say that I did this intentionally, but more as I was eager and just started doing and realized just how much that helped me.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: So when you identify how you can provide more value, then that will be seen.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, not always, not every situation.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes your boss is going to take the credit for things you did.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are negatives.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are times when it's not going to work.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But in general, when you identify how you can provide more value and continue to do that over and over again, then what happens is you are increasing your chances of getting ahead.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're increasing, in some ways, your luck, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're making your own luck.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're identifying how you can be just a bit better, which means that your employer finds a little more value in you.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the things that we can do to avoid this being just another broken developer, finding the joy, learning how to identify and improve our own faults, learning how to provide more value.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not listed in here is being miserable, being angry, you know, trying to figure out how people are out to get you.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: These things aren't going to improve your career.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're not going to make you happier.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, if you're not careful, what happens is you rob yourself of a better life because you sit there and just stew and be miserable and angry and depressed and all these other things.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not making you better.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's not making you happier.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you might say, well, yeah, but it's everybody else.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can't change reality.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can't change what other people do.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can't change the situation that sometimes affects you.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: But what you can do is figure out how, in that situation, to have joy, figure out how to do your best to change yourself and be a bit better, provide more value, because those things you can control and those things can make your situation better.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: At the very least, you'll be a bit happier.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, we work in a great field.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: We have great potential on the horizon all the time.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have a great salary typically, and we have the opportunity to make that great salary.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of great things about this field, and there's a lot of fields that aren't as great, that don't have as many positives, that don't have as much things to be joyful about, and yet people still find a way to advance in those careers, to still find joy, and still have a positive and blessed life out of that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if they can, so can we.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So learn how to identify extreme positions, because anything that's extreme is going to be a problem.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then learn how to cautiously evaluate those.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you hear an extreme, it's the overhype, it's the uh anger about this horrible situation, the you know, the the uh oversensationalization of the negative.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: All these things.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: When you see those things, there is truth there.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just usually not nearly as uh skewed in either direction people are trying to pull you.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Learn how to identify those extreme positions and how to cautiously evaluate them, find the joy in your situation, and realize that you have some great opportunities in this field.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for listening.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.