Today I will do an honest breakdown of everything that developers can and can't do.
Share my own experience doing that and give you some insights on what to start with in things like career, blogging, business, and startups (if you are a developer, or if you just started learning).
Is being a developer really cool?
Yes and no.
Everything that people say about remote lifestyles, high salaries in IT, etc. IS TRUE.
But you need to understand, that it doesn't mean that you will be just chilling on the beach all day long.
Being a developer means solving complex problems, constantly learning, dealing with stupid bugs that sometimes take days to fix, and communicating with clients and colleagues.
As a reward for that, you are getting a good salary, respect from the employer, remote lifestyle.
I personally believe that programming is one of the best online occupations out there, and if I were to restart my life from 0 once again, I would still become a developer once again.
But you need to understand that it's not easy. It requires hard work and dedication, so it's up to decide if it's worth the effort.
Now let's cover what you will be able to do if you decide to take that route and become a developer!
Developer's Career
The first and the most obvious thing that you can do with the programming skill is of course - GET A JOB.
If you will be working on your technical and communication skills within years you can build a pretty solid career.
Getting your first job in the industry is indeed hard, but it's 100% worth it.
After getting 1-2 years of experience you will be able to start making pretty good money, and searching for new jobs will be way simpler.
Moreover, after 3-4 years, you will be making great money, and getting new and better jobs will be really easy.
Here is the action plan for you if you want to take that route and build a good IT career: Learn everything that's needed for the job and build projects.
Fight for your first job, don't look at salary, the goal of the first job is to get the first experience.
After 6-12 months change the job for x1.5-2.5 higher salary.
After 12 months change the job again for x1.5-2 (initially changing jobs is the easiest way to get a great salary boost, as in one company in most cases you can only get 10-20% promotions).
Start exploring freelance options as an addition to your job OR start taking more responsibilities and move into leadership positions (team lead/tech lead/CTO).
Developer's Blog
As a developer, you can have a pretty interesting life.
You can travel, deal with strange clients, solve complex problems, build cool apps, learn new things, etc.
And you can talk about that publicly!
If you love talking: start YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.
If you love writing: start Linkedin, Twitter (X), Newsletter or Blog.
The coolest thing is that you don't need any specific skills to get started.
Literally, you can do it today.
With time you'll learn how to do it better, and more professionally.
But initially, you can just share what's going on in your life and career.
You will think:
Okay, I will become a good programmer, scale my career to $10k and AFTER that I will start blogging about that!
That's what I was also thinking, BUT IT'S 100% WRONG.
People aren't looking for ultra-successful bloggers, there are too many of them already.
People are looking for bloggers who are in the same situation as they are, or just 1-2 steps ahead because they understand each other.
So the best action tip I can give you right now is:
Even if you are just starting learning programming, or just starting with your first IT career - START BLOGGING and DOCUMENTING your journey.
That's the most interesting part of your journey and it's super interesting to watch how you are progressing, making mistakes, and going.
Moreover, the personal blog will motivate you to be accountable and consistent with your progress and keep going.
Developer's Business
I don't recommend getting to this stage before the Career and Blogging stages.
But I want to quickly share, that as a developer you can start an awesome business.
There are 3 main types of businesses for developers:Service Based - doing services for companies (ex. creating websites for startups)
Educational - teaching and coaching (ex. helping others to learn how to code)
Software Business (covered in the Developer's Startup section)
The first 2 options are a great way to learn business fundamentals.
But you need to understand, that doing good in your career as a programmer and running your own business ARE 2 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT things.
You will have to go through the learning stage from 0 and learn how to do marketing, operations, sales, copywriting, etc.
It's a fun thing to do, but it takes a lot of time and A LOT OF EFFORT.
YEARS OF EFFORT!
Developer's Startup
Do you want to launch the next Facebook?
If yes, you are in the wrong place.
I don't have experience launching a multi-billion company, unfortunately.
But if you want to build an app or website that can generate $1-10,000 per month, you can actually do it as a developer.
Here is the best action plan that I can give you (I'm using it myself right now while building a code-learning app): Find a problem to solve
Build an audience around that problem (a.k.a. start blogging about it)
Come up with the idea to solve this problem via Software (App or Website).
Build this software publicly while sharing your progress with your audience
That's one of the best ways to launch a mini startup and do it together with people.
It will help you to build something that people actually want and have your first users from day one.
Conclusion
I never understood people who are bored with their lives or developers who complain about their jobs/careers or situations.
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS that you can do as a developer.
And the only reason why you aren't doing those things is because you are lazy.
So get your ass out of that comfort zone, and start doing cool sh*t!
Personal Updates + Website Launch
After 2 months of hesitation, I'm finally officially pre-launching my personal website/blog.
I still don't like how it looks and works, but I've been postponing this launch for so long, so I decided to just DO IT NOW!
There you can already find some of my previous blog posts, and next week I will prepare a list of my top articles and send you links via email.
For now, you can just click around the website and please if you want, reply to this email with feedback on what you think can be added/changed/improved about the website.
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