[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] So i've been a developer for 24 years
[00:00:03] And then I like to say at some point along this journey, I was tricked into being a recruiter.
[00:00:07] I've done lots of interviews
[00:00:09] as the interviewee. And I've interviewed lots of developers for teams I was building. And I thought, I know how this works. And then once I saw the other side of that fence, when I saw how recruitment teams really work, and I saw all the mistakes that developers make along the way.
[00:00:25] My controversial arguments are trying to get developers to see the other side rather than to get recruiters to see their side. You'll hear developers saying recruiters need to learn more about tech.
[00:00:36] And I'm constantly arguing. they're not allowed to to they're not incentivized to they don't have time to it doesn't work that way
[00:00:41] recruiters are really in a in a b2b2c sort of market They've got clients on one side and they've you know on the enterprise side and then they've got consumers on the other side. They're really a channel You and channels have two sides, you know and you, and you can leverage that channel if you start to play their game.
[00:00:54] When I'm giving live talks, seminars, workshops, and things like that, a phrase I use quite often is [00:01:00] the best developers rarely get the job.
[00:01:01] Welcome to Easier Said Than Done with me, Zubin Pratap, where I share with you the tens of thousands of dollars worth of self development that I did on my journey from 37 year old lawyer to professional software engineer. The goal of this podcast is to show you how to actually do those things that are easier said than done.
[00:01:21] Welcome to the easier said than done podcast. And I'm very excited because today I've got someone here that I've been so excited to speak to for the last few weeks. Ever since he very kindly and graciously agreed to come on the podcast. So I've got David Roberts with me. Now I could introduce him and tell you all about the incredible journey he's had in the last 20 plus years but you know what?
[00:01:37] I think it's best you hear from him because unlike most recruiters He's not your typical recruiter and you'll see why in a moment So david tell us a little bit about yourself and you know your extraordinary journey. Thank you, my friend. It's great to be here Thanks for having me on the show. i'm i'm excited to see where this goes because I think you and I bounce off each other quite well.
[00:01:54] So i've been a developer for Technically 24 years, once a developer, always a [00:02:00] developer, I say.
[00:02:00] So, and then I like to say at some point along this journey, I was tricked into being a recruiter. Like no one chooses this, it just happens to you. But I thought I knew a lot about jobs and careers in tech, having been a developer, junior through to senior leading technical teams. So I've done lots of interviews.
[00:02:20] As the interviewee. And then I've interviewed lots of developers for teams I was building. And I thought, I know how this works. And then once I saw the other side of that fence, when I saw how recruitment teams really work, how to stand out. And I saw all the mistakes that developers make along the way.
[00:02:37] And I think I've pretty much seen every mistake you can make. I, I started to realize I'd been playing this game entirely wrong and that's kind of what led me to where I am today. You know, I'm a developer at heart and I think, a lot of the time recruiters work for the companies because they're the ones paying the salaries, the money whereas I'm always going to be on the side of the developer because I am one. So I kind of sit in this weird little niche in the middle and my, my goal is to try and help [00:03:00] developers to navigate this minefield .
[00:03:01] I don't dislike recruiters. I'm not negative against recruiters. I just teach you how to. Get their attention. And I also teach you how to get past [Mic bleed] So yeah, it's a strange journey. And now today I do that via my courses and books and, and just basically teach people that strategy.
[00:03:16] Yeah. And so, I mean, you've had this extraordinary journey where you, you're one of the few people that's seen both sides and the reason I respect that a lot is I feel the space, you know, the entire learn to code space is quite heavily populated by Influencers who don't have a great deal of experience and credibility on the hiring side and i've been in three professions four countries and i've been on the hiring side of all of them So and I know you know what it looks like it's you know That's one of the things we're going to talk about.
[00:03:39] So a lot of the education material that you put out a lot of the material that you put out a lot of the stuff That you put out on on your on your website you know, it's clearly indicative that you're a person who has the perspective of the other side and I think what a lot of candidates don't understand is that there is An inverse universe like stranger things.
[00:03:54] There's an upside down world on the recruiter side That's a mirror image of what they're expecting to see in many [00:04:00] senses But in in in a very important ways, it's different So, you know, I'd love to talk to you about all of that Yeah, I think more often than not, people associate me as a recruiter because that's the more recent side of things and, you know, there's, there's most developers have a, I was gonna say, normally I say hatred, a dislike, a mistrusting nature about recruiters and therefore they mistrust me.
[00:04:23] Yeah. Not until usually later down the line that they realize. I'm, I'm not on that side of the fence and a lot of my controversial arguments are trying to get developers to see the other side rather than to get recruiters to see their side. You'll hear developers saying recruiters need to learn more about tech.
[00:04:40] And I'm constantly arguing. they're not allowed to to they're not incentivized to they don't have time to it doesn't work that way.
[00:04:45] Hi, if you want a no BS insight into how to change your career, whether to code or something else and how to actually get job opportunities in tech, then please subscribe and like. It's no BS because I have zero incentive to mislead you. I just want to help you and give you tons of value so that [00:05:00] you will consider working with me to get to your next career.
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[00:05:19] Oh, and please follow me on LinkedIn too. I pretty much post there every single day. Just look for my name, Zubin Pratap. All right. So please like, and subscribe to this channel and let's get back to the episode.
[00:05:28] And I always say the recruiter is your customer and the customer is always right 100 whether you like it or not you just that is 100 true and And they're also in a difficult position because recruiters are really in a in a b2b2c sort of market They've got clients on one side and they've you know on the enterprise side and then they've got consumers on the other side They're in an interesting market because they're really a channel You and channels have two sides, you know and you, and you can leverage that channel if you start to play their game in the way that they want you to play it.
[00:05:53] Because, you know, it's about giving them ammunition at the end of the day. 1000%. In fact, this is something I spend two entire modules because I [00:06:00] do a personal coaching thing. I'm an alternative to bootcamps. And I, I do a lot of personal coaching around.
[00:06:05] So many people come to me after bootcamps because they've learned to code, but don't get any opportunities. And I'm like, well, that's because you've kind of done step two and three and you've forgotten about steps four to eight. And now you've got to learn a whole different set of rules about how to engage with recruiters, how to stand, how to help them succeed.
[00:06:18] Because ultimately recruiters have incentive mechanisms that are quite different from how it appears on the outside. Quite rightly so it's actually closer to a sales job in many [Mic bleed] than it is to, you know, other kinds of roles, right? Yeah. So on my course at the minute in the videos, I say this when, when I'm giving live talks, seminars, workshops, and things like that, a phrase I use quite often is the best developers rarely get the job.
[00:06:39] Correct. It's the ones that sell themselves the best that do. And I'm thinking about students who are on my, you know, in various cohorts, there's always someone who's stand out in some way. They've just been coding since they were a kid and. You know, compared to everyone else at the same level, they just stand out.
[00:06:52] Inevitably, those people are the ones left on the shelf at the end of it. Now that's not to say anything derogatory about the people who do get jobs first. [00:07:00] And it's nothing derogatory about that person learning to code. Is, is part of the puzzle, learning to market yourself, learning to sell yourself. It'd be like starting any startup.
[00:07:10] You wouldn't just build the product and then put it on the shelf and hope people buy it. You've got to do the marketing thing. So there's, there's an element of luck and an element of positioning here. But as I always say, you've got to put yourself in that position to be lucky. Absolutely. In fact, you're spot on because I moved to
[00:07:24] coding after my startup was starting to fail. And I learned to code as part of to keep the startup alive. And then I said, okay, I'm going to restart my career. I was 38 at that point in time. And I'm like, okay, there is no difference. Between career change and launching a startup. The easy part is building the product.
[00:07:38] The easy part is learning to code. I mean, it's not easy, but it's the easier part. After that, you've got to get a buying customer, a paying customer. In other words, you've got to get hired. It's the same principle. It's the same product launch strategy. Like everyone gets to launch and then there's crickets.
[00:07:50] And I see the same problem with learning to code. Like so many people learn and don't get a single offer. Well, that even translates then the way we misunderstand learning to code. And then, then you've got to learn to market yourself. The way [00:08:00] developers think about recruitment is they think the recruiter sits there as this passive intermediary and companies ring up and say, Hey, have you got developers?
[00:08:07] And Yeah, we have. And they send someone over. That's not the way recruitment works. Recruitment mainly is a sales game, trying to leverage a position. So we've got to help them in that position. And, but also a large portion of what I'm trying to teach is if you're going to rely on the recruiter, you need to give them the ammunition.
[00:08:25] But if you want to really sweeten this, if you want to. Be proactive and make this happen for yourself. You've got to learn to be your own recruiter, which means it's a sales and marketing job on top of your coding. 1000%. I mean, and it's, it's not unique to coding. I don't, people seem to think that all, you know, they resent that this is the reality of how it is and I keep pointing out to them in any profession.
[00:08:44] Learning the thing has never been enough. You know, it's never been enough to write the book or the manuscript. Hardest part is getting published, right? It's never been enough to learn how to play basketball. The hardest part is getting into the pro leagues. And similarly, exactly to your point, learning to code is not enough.
[00:08:57] Like, I've been using that as a tagline for years now. I'm like, it's not enough. [00:09:00] Stop assuming that that's going to be enough. And you're just going to be frustrated, because you'll get to that point where you felt like Hey, I spent a year or two learning this. Why am I not getting any results? It's because you've literally looked at one piece of a very large puzzle and over optimized on just that.
[00:09:12] So, you know, and, and we're going to talk about a lot. We're going to dig into that a lot more, but I'd really love to know. So what, what made you build out these courses? So I, I was. Working as a, you know, head of department, team lead type in tech, I'd always gravitated towards the more managerial side of things.
[00:09:30] I always ran the team, I think it's because I talk a lot. So I was doing that and then developer friends of mine who were great at doing the job, but not great at getting the job came to me and asked me for help. I was always great at getting the job, maybe not so good at doing the job, but I helped them.
[00:09:44] It was very successful. And then a friend said to me, you know, you should do this. And I thought, what is this? How does that work? And I started doing it then. And it wasn't long. So I started putting myself out there on social media and it wasn't long before I got dragged [00:10:00] in then to this recruitment
[00:10:01] side of things, which I never intended to happen.
[00:10:04] And then I saw the whole other side of the game and it really changed that offering. So that initial offering probably wasn't correct. And then when I changed that, when I, when I did recruitment I always thought I'm not really a recruiter. I mean, I, I care about finding great developers because
[00:10:18] that's me. And so I was never, my heart wasn't in the recruitment side of things. So I did it, you know, three separate teams internationally and then decided, okay, I wanted to go and do something that was more me. So I went back to this and said, well, I'm going to do this all in on the developer side.
[00:10:34] So I get lots of requests to go, why don't you do recruitment? And I'm like, well, that's the bit of me I don't like, but I'll teach you about so I wrote this course, which was very senior developers at the time because that's who I was seeing making all these mistakes. But trying to tell senior developers that they're not great at something is a very difficult sell. Yeah. The people who did then listen to me were the people trying to break into the industry. And that led me to boot camps and where we are [00:11:00] today. Now, a lot of my senior developer friends sporadically come back to me and say, you know, you've done all this for the juniors. Why don't you do something for us?
[00:11:07] To me, I say, you know, I laugh and go, it's the same course. It's just different branding. And it's a nice thing now because. When all the developers coming through my course, when they get a job, they're often kind enough to say, thank you so much. You know, I'll be back when I want the mid level, the senior level, the next step.
[00:11:24] Right. And then I always say, if you've been listening. You don't need me anymore. Yeah, it's, it's always the same. Now, the nice thing is once a customer, always a customer, then don't need to pay with me ever again. It's free for life. That's it. But the, I always say, unless you forget the idea, forget the strategy, it's the same thing.
[00:11:40] Well, I tell my students exactly that. I'm like, there are certain meta principles. And I've learned them outside of coding, like these are metaprinciples I learned in previous careers. The structure is the same. The mechanics may look a bit different. Some of the content may be a little bit different, but the structure, it's all the same metaprinciples because you're in a marketplace and marketplaces have rules.
[00:11:57] And they're kind of the same rules in any marketplace you go [00:12:00] to.
[00:12:00] So now you're obviously making these courses available to bootcamps, which, which raises a really important question for a lot of my audience. Cause a lot of my audience are people considering bootcamps or, you know, personal mentoring with me or other people, et cetera, why do bootcamps need someone like you?
[00:12:12] What, why did they need your service? Yeah. So, I mean I work. Alongside bootcamps, you know, so sometimes I'm the whole careers department, and the people that are usually put into these roles doing the career side of things, they're from kind of three separate fields.
[00:12:27] One, it's some HR. Function that, that utilize or they use a recruiter who, who handles careers saying, I'll show you what recruiters want to see, or it's a developer who says, I know what made me stand out 10 years ago as a developer. Therefore I can show you, and I don't hate on any of these people and I need
[00:12:47] these, some of these people to work alongside me and they've all got something to offer. But a HR person will often give you what I call an old school, like an 80 style resume. And it's, it's that an old school values are great. There's a, there's a twist [00:13:00] here for, for the modern idea. There's a twist here for tech and then the developer knows what they want to see as a fellow developer, but they don't know how to sell to get past
[00:13:09] the recruiter and the HR person, the recruiter knows what they want to see. But if they get past that person and get onto the technical person, then it falls over again. So there's this magical combination of the three. And that's kind of where I sit. Yeah, yeah. And you'd have that experience because you've, you've been all of those three stakeholders in different capacities.
[00:13:27] Right. And so you, you've, which is also a unique position I found myself in, well, apart from HR, I've been in multiple capacities along various recruitment processes, and I know how it's a multi input decision process, and there's a lot of risk from the hiring side because bad hires are so expensive, not just financially your heck recruitment is expensive.
[00:13:44] People don't realize how much. The interview process costs in terms of allocated costs, right? They don't realize that and they don't realize how costly a bad hire is both in terms of culture and productivity Forget just the dollars, but the actual culture and productivity costs are huge Which is why when I was at google, for example, it was drilled into us [00:14:00] We'd rather reject a good candidate than hire a bad.
[00:14:02] That's a very powerful message, you know, and it may not, it may not be agreeable to everybody, but the principle is bad hires are costly. You know, losing a good person is less costly in terms of intake than taking in a bad person, you know, a bad fit. Yeah. And one of the places that I did this, so the HR side of it kind of comes in when you're an internal recruiter and so you're recruiting, but you're hiring for the organization and the developer is going to work with you alongside you, so therefore we care more about that developer because they're part of your organization now that you want to maintain culture. You want
[00:14:35] all that kind of stuff. Whereas, hiring externally, it's just, are you two a fit for each other? Because, you know, I'm going to pass you on. So within this, when you're on the internal side of things, there's this push pull against, we want to find decent human beings with great skills who are a good fit and all that puzzle that goes together.
[00:14:54] And then the, the sales side of the business, who's, even though we're hiring them for this organization, [00:15:00] we're farming them out to work on projects for our clients. That side of the process is speed and sales and you know, that's more like the external side of things. And these two sides of the business.
[00:15:11] Conflict and don't get along. And there's just tension, but David, slow down the process, find great people. And the sales wasn't going to go faster today. Yeah. I've got an external recruiter on the show as well, lined up. I mean, we've already recorded the podcast and it was, I've always known this, but just the difference, especially in the last two or three years, it seems to be the difference between the internal.
[00:15:31] And the external agency recruiter and the, the way the incentives are not quite aligned, it's quite stark. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's a great point that you're bringing up there. And so, you know, speaking about [hiring] generally, a lot of bootcamps and courses and stuff, talk about things like job placements, right? I don't understand how a job placement guarantee works, like how the, you know, that they, that they're going to get you a job.
[00:15:53] Now I've never really worked for a company that would limit itself by saying we'll only hire from you, or we'll hire, you know, people that you spit out, like, even with, you know, [00:16:00] Harvard and Stanford, they're always like, yeah, we'd consider that, but we don't have, they don't have an arrangement saying we'll take in your people.
[00:16:05] Are you seeing much of that? How does that work? I saw lots of that and that, that kind of fell off a cliff. Meaning So I, I reach out, I, you know, I have to do my own bit of sales, right.
[00:16:15] To, to, to generate business. So I'm reaching out to bootcamps and saying, I can help your developers stand out and explain why, my background and how I can assist them. And certainly early 2023 to mid 2023 in the U. S. And in the U. K. There's lots of companies are saying, well, we don't need it.
[00:16:33] We partner with this company. They take all of our graduates. That's the way it works. Now, those companies are basically saying we always want people who can do. X, Y, and Z, right? So that bootcamp just says, we'll make sure we deliver candidates with X, Y, and Z. Therefore they're a good match for that. So I was saying, well, I can help them stand out in the market.
[00:16:49] They were saying, we don't need it all. We get a hundred percent hire rate because they all go here. And then all of a sudden those companies pulled the plug in the middle of 2023. And now they've got no [00:17:00] pipeline, nowhere for them to go. And they haven't been doing career services because they didn't need to.
[00:17:06] So that all went horribly wrong. And how does that work though, David? Like, I mean, why would a company say. So sorry, let me let me make sure I understand you correctly. So you're saying the arrangement was we want people with xyz skills And the bootcamp would go we would make sure our students have xyz skills Regardless of what they're interested in we'll try and make sure that they have the xyz skills And so that way it's a match for you.
[00:17:26] So at least They're being considered as opposed to, Oh no, you're definitely going to hire them. Like, which was it that they would consider them or they would definitely hire them? They would say, you know, legally they would consider them, but in the, in the majority of cases they would definitely hire, but these were, you know, smaller bootcamps with smaller cohorts where they just wanted those 10 people, you know, and, and they'd hire them whether they, you know, survived longer than.
[00:17:48] A few months while they tried them out, but they would promise to take them on. I think at the end of the day, as, as most developers get upset about, they go, why are you only hiring seniors? You need to hire juniors to keep this [00:18:00] ecosystem alive. Right. And companies do want to do this, but there's this fear around.
[00:18:05] slowing down a team not having the quality room. So they just go spend more money, get a better developer, but they would hire. If, if people came in that could do certain things, and this is one of the things we'll talk about in the course is that what do I need to show you I can do for you to consider me to be a viable candidate because they might say, no, we want someone with three years of experience or two years of experience.
[00:18:24] What does that mean? I know people with five years who are terrible. With one year, who are amazing. What's the job to be done and how can I show you I can deliver on that? And I call it de risking when I work with my students, I'm like, you got to de risk yourself in the eye of the hiring manager saying, hiring you is not a risk on delivery.
[00:18:38] [Yeah] exactly. And this is where. If we, if we don't have that promise between a bootcamp and the company about, we'll make sure they can do X, Y, and Z, then we've got to go out to these companies with our resume, with our LinkedIn profile. And we've got to make them feel confident that we align with the tech skills that they need within their team.
[00:18:56] And there's ways to investigate this and find out how to do this. So you can, you can [00:19:00] investigate that alignment and then present someone who aligns rather than just going. I've got a bootcamp. I've got a certificate because everyone's just saying, look at the, look at this shiny certificate that I've got.
[00:19:08] Isn't it great. No one cares. No one's interested. What does it mean? Yeah. We've got to unpack that and then show alignment. That's the, and so what's in it for the company that agrees to limit itself to only taking those bootcamp graduates? Cause I would have thought it's in their interest to go to the broader market.
[00:19:21] And see the best they can find rather than just limit themselves. But there must be some reason why they're willing to do it. Well, they get them at a cheaper rate. They get them with a kickback. They get them depending on the, on the deal that's done. But then they also know that at base level, they, they definitely get these.
[00:19:34] Two or three things that they definitely want and they get tend to look at, they might employ them for six months and go, okay, we're, we're going forward with you, but it's, it's rarely the, the great deal that the developer thinks it is, but the developer at the start is thinking I've got my guaranteed job at the end.
[00:19:50] But those jobs just dried up and left. Well, I mean, that makes sense because I don't see how established companies that are trying to be super competitive would limit themselves. Like, if I was in the hiring side, [00:20:00] I'd go to market because I'm pretty sure HR would tell me, try and get the best applicants you can find, right?
[00:20:04] But big brands do this as well. Very big brands where a lot of them hiring around the globe, not only that, do they just take from not the bigger brands take from multiple agencies, but they'll have, they have deals with certain agencies and not only, so here's an idea of the kickback. One of the agencies that I was speaking to, they had a deal with a very big, well known brand and they get the student at 50 percent rate.
[00:20:26] Of what they would normally pay and the agency gets a 10 percent kickback on their rate for the salary for two years. Wow. Oh yeah. Which to me is criminal, but who's actually benefiting from this. The agency, to be fair, I don't work with these [agencies] no, I understand. I mean, I'm clearly quite naive because I've, I've never seen that in the companies I worked at, but maybe I just wasn't aware that's also possible, I suppose, because I've worked with really big places, but I'd always thought in the teams that I'd been in, we'd always recruited based on, let's see the best that the market can give us at the moment.
[00:20:56] Yeah. And then it becomes a discussion on salary and fit. You know, but we're not going to limit [00:21:00] and I went to some like the law school. I went to many years ago. It did have campus recruitment and placements. You know, but that was for literally for college grads. You know, after that, it was hunger games in terms of competition.
[00:21:11] Like, if you're either the best or you're not, you know and so I sort of grew up in that world where you learned how to compete. You really learned how to compete. Yeah. But this is where, you know, that those salaries of, of the big name brands are so intoxicating for these developers that they're willing to do
[00:21:28] they're willing to accept conditions that if I can do it for two years, then all of a sudden my life will change. And it's kind of the same when I see all the developers applying on big job boards. You know, everyone, everyone focuses on the fact that someone got the job. Someone does get that job and there are thousands and thousands of jobs on these big job boards, but that doesn't account for the, you 9, 999 people didn't [correct] And they all probably knew. Had more experience coding than, you know, the average outlet. The funny thing was, I, I get a [00:22:00] lot of developers that come to me, they're in a bootcamp and starting to get towards that the, the end, the capstone project, that sort of thing. And we're talking about, then they're talking to me, what, what sort of jobs you want, where do you want to go?
[00:22:11] And I get a lot of people saying they want. A certain thing. So, so much so I decided to put out a poll about this amongst the boot camps that I was working with at the time. And then I put it out publicly 70 percent of students going through a coding bootcamp only want to work at FANG. Yeah, I've noticed that too.
[00:22:27] And frankly from around the world, like people will message me from around the world saying, I want the 150 K job. And I'm like, you're not even in the country where that, that amount is paid. Oh no, but remote work. I'm like, sorry. That's not how remote work works. I'm sorry.
[00:22:41] You know, and that's a huge problem. Yeah. And you know, I've worked for US companies and I know I could argue and say, well, it's because I'm the best. Right. I think we both know that's not true. So I, I know that by being a UK resident and working for us companies, my rate is going to be something I can leverage to sweeten the deal.
[00:22:58] So do I, do I want [00:23:00] someone in, you know [?] Eastern European countries in African nations, in, in India, wherever, do I want them to earn the same as someone in San Francisco? Yeah, of course I do. Like, well, I want this to be a fair world. Is it? No. But it never has been like the price of a banana in India because I grew up in India is significantly cheaper than the price of a banana in Australia and the US, right?
[00:23:19] It's not the same economy. And so we can't lift and shift. There is a reason why we have purchasing power parity and the Big Mac index. It's not the same thing. Why, why remove all your leverage, you know, and the thing is to get the to get the job to, to, to get the experience so that you can then, you know, cause they're utilizing you, they're using you for your skills.
[00:23:37] Let me just jump in cause I'm not sure I fully understand you. So when you say leverage, are you referring to the fact that you are in a slightly cheaper labor market and that is actually an advantage because you are cost effective to the buyer, to the hire? Right. Okay. So people usually go remote for one of two reasons, right?
[00:23:52] It's either for technical excellence. [They] simply mean that the hiring side goes remote. You're talking about the hiring side or candidate? It's like, Oh, the hiring side, so [00:24:00] looking for technical excellence, they simply cannot find that skill in their local area and they're going remote. Yeah. Still, they, they will favor when they go remote, they'll favor within their local area.
[00:24:10] you know, state or within their country or within their then, then it goes to time zone. As soon as you start getting further and further away, it becomes more and more difficult. And certainly if you're trying to break in claiming technical excellence. This is a brave bold move, right? But the second reason is they're going to reduce the wage bill They want to get the same level of skill or you know a good level of skill but for far less Like myself going well, I want to earn a san francisco wage well Am I better than everyone in San Francisco?
[00:24:39] I would say no. And then you go, well, how can I be, you know, someone who's going to beat them to the punch to get that job? And it's going to be, I'm gonna have to leverage something. It doesn't have to be money. No, we shouldn't be just, I think a lot of people are just, I want that salary. I deserve that salary.
[00:24:54] If you're paying it in San Francisco, I should get it. Now the idealism of this, I agree, but I would rather [00:25:00] you have. Food on the table. You have a job, you have, you can pay your mortgage. I want my developers to have and get good skills. And I say to people joining my course, you're going to get to the point where you're going to be offered jobs that [Mic bleed] don't align.
[00:25:12] I'm not just talking about a change in language or a change in framework or something like that, but it's quite often, Oh, don't be a developer. Go and do this. And then you can try and. Convince them to let you code later on now for me personally, I say don't take the job Depending on the person we have to speak to the person individually I want them to go and get a good job hands on coding the job that they came to me for So that in two years they can either say hey i've got good skills now.
[00:25:35] I want my promotion I want my pay rise or i'm gonna go and get that job. Correct now do I Talk my way out of money. Yeah, quite a lot. But I don't think I could live with myself if I just go, Hey, go and go and take this job you really don't want, which won't serve you well in your career so that I can have money.
[00:25:48] Yeah, I can't do it. Yeah. And I mean, there's so many things. I think you're a much kinder person than I am, because I think When people tell me, well, you know, it's fair that I get paid the same dollar rate as somebody else. I'm like, actually, no, I don't believe [00:26:00] it's fair because your cost of living is much cheaper.
[00:26:01] It's, you know, or you live in a different world where you don't have the same, [Mic bleed] structural cost. You know, you're not paying 60, 000 a year in rent. You know, you're not paying 40 percent in taxes or so on and so forth. Like I get that in principle, people should get paid fairly, but the reality is no two currencies are the same.
[00:26:16] Heck if, if, if it was, if we all wanted to be fair, very few of us would be allowed to buy from Amazon. Not that Amazon's unfair, but it's significantly cheaper than your other alternatives. And that's why we all go there for the same product. Now, from the seller's point of view, that's not maybe fair, but But it is a marketplace and it drives efficiency in exactly this way.
[00:26:32] And you're in a, we were in labor marketplaces and you know what, if people are going to get the same skill for the lower money, they're going to go for it because that's the rational economic choice to make when they can get, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Well, the funny thing is I've, I've been hiring developers all over the world and you're always looking for, where are the best developers?
[00:26:47] Where are these pockets of excellence? And it was actually a strapline from. Arc that I worked for where the best developers are everywhere. I think was the phrase. And I'd seen that in places before them and after them. And I [00:27:00] fundamentally agree. I've never seen this one place where that's where they are.
[00:27:03] They're all there. Just fortunately, I, the place I haven't hired that much has been the UK. And I probably didn't hire that many U. S., but the U. S. was usually because they're so expensive. Yeah, I found great developers. And then you get different cultures within this where it seems like in the UK, and I'm guessing I would have been guilty of this in the past.
[00:27:19] You go, I got a great job and you can't have it. It's mine. And it's like, there's this, whereas you find other cultures, you find you're a great developer. Have you got any friends just like you? And they go, yeah. And then all of a sudden. I get 20 more developers who are all amazing and they all help each other.
[00:27:34] And that's what makes a really good team. This, this camaraderie, this. And the, you know, like Steve Jobs said, A players find like to work with other A players and they didn't find them, you know that that's truly how it works. I mean, I work for Chainlink, which is completely globally remote. We were in all over the, like my teams across 11 time zones and stuff.
[00:27:50] And I agree. Like we have amazing people from around the world and it makes me realize that there's a lot of, you know, hype around the density of opportunity in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle. I [00:28:00] get it because there's tons of tons of, there's tons of, as a marketplace, there's a very rich and dense environments.
[00:28:05] But from, from a talent distribution point, sure, there may be some concentration there just because the ecosystem's concentrated, but from a talent availability point, the world's a very big place and there are some amazing Amazingly talented people around the world who just don't have either the good fortune of being in the U.
[00:28:20] S And you know, I serve a lot of those sort of people or who don't want to be in the U. S But want to access the best opportunities they can get in their local marketplace and they're very happy to make that trade off Absolutely. You know, you speak to some developers and you say, if they got the wage that they wanted, what would they do?
[00:28:33] And for lots of people, unfortunately, it's, well, I'd like to leave the country I'm in and therefore their cost of living would change. And that's why they want that salary and all that sort of stuff. Whereas for me, I'm thinking I've got a family here. I'm not, I'm not leaving. I'm happy to accept a lesser wage to still live.
[00:28:45] A very comfortable life here in the UK earning dollars, you know, [Mic bleed] I think people don't really think it through either. So I've been in a situation. I've been in situations in my past where, you know, I sort of quit the legal world was building the startup six figures worth of investment into my startup and [00:29:00] zero revenue back, right?
[00:29:00] Like lost a lot of money and no income. And so I've lived in a situation where. I was pretty much running on vapor financially, you know, like really on the edge with the mortgage. Like it was really hard. And because I've done that, I'm now no longer terrified of that. You know, I'm, I'm, I no longer have that terror.
[00:29:17] I don't want to be there again, but I'm no longer terrified of it. And so I'm in a situation where I, I, you know, very privileged. I work with a wonderful company. You know, I really love what we do at Chainlink, globally remote, get paid fairly and all that. But if that goes away, I know that if I had to go straight back into one of the local markets, [Mic bleed] would probably earn less.
[00:29:33] And I have to be emotionally okay with that. And I am, you know, but I really a lot, not many people think about that. They go for FANG or they go for the big ones and they don't realize you could get laid off just like everybody else. And then what are you going to do? Because then you got accustomed to this, this level of income that's disproportionate, you know, and out of sorts with everything else around the world.
[00:29:50] And now you've just taken away a bunch of options unless you're willing to let go of that and say [what] do I really want for my career in my life? You know, what do I really value and prioritize, you know? And and I think a lot of younger [00:30:00] people struggle with that because they just understandably don't have that experience or perspective Yeah, money's a strange thing so I remember getting a job which was like double the salary i'd ever had before and I was
[00:30:09] [dumbstruck] over the moon and it was just so fantastic and I was thinking I could just throw money everywhere. It just, it was stupid. And then, you know, three months later I found out that someone doing a very similar job to me within the organization got paid a lot more than me. And I took all the fun out of that.
[00:30:27] Yeah, and utterly devastated. I felt worthless. And it's like, hang on. Yesterday I was deliriously happy. Today I'm upset and nothing changed. Nothing changed. Only you got a piece of information that suddenly reframed your entire world and made you feel it's so weird. You're so right. You're so right about money doing that.
[00:30:43] Right. So, okay. So we know the world's changed a lot in the last, you know, it's not the, the same high growth, hyper growth phase that things were in, you know, in the last 15 years. And just to contextualize it, I don't think people, especially people, you know, who are five, six years into the workforce, I don't think they realize what the world was like in 2012, which was just 12 years ago, you [00:31:00] know, Dropbox, Instagram Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, these are all fairly new companies at that point in time.
[00:31:05] And in just 10 years, they've become the norm, right? So 2024 has been a hard year for recruitment. I'm sure you'd agree, not just for engineering, though, engineering gets a lot of the attention, but across the board, the entire world has shrunk a bit economically speaking. What do you see happening? In the tech recruitment space for the next couple of years, like when's it going to get better?
[00:31:21] What does better look like? So [i] think to to understand this a little bit more, I like to go back to the start of 2023. Mm hmm. And I was working with boot camps and they were looking at the intake of numbers and because FANG isn't hiring no one wanted to spend money on
[00:31:39] a bootcamp because what's the point if you're not going to get a job at fang at the end of it and this literally happened so, the number started to dwindle and cohort sizes at these smaller boot camps went from like 25 [-30] Down to by the time we got to about summer five And which time frame are we talking about here?
[00:31:55] So March, 2023 to June, [00:32:00] July, 2023, now in the UK, they were all going, everything's fine here. Let's have a party. But as always, something happens in the U S it happens here in the UK. So in that summer period, then we started to see the UK drop. Now I got to January, February. February this year here. And I started to see those bootcamps in the U S go back up.
[00:32:22] So those cohorts of five and sometimes zero we lost lots of bootcamps during that time. Certainly wherever they were taking in government funding, all that kind of stuff. But in the U S it started to go back up and it's been steadily rising. So we're not seeing it, you know, it's nowhere near where it was.
[00:32:38] Don't get me wrong, but I can see this. If I was charting this on a graph, it's, it's on the way back up. Cohort sizes are up at 25 to 30. Again, we're close. UK is still massively struggling, but again, I'm looking at that period from 2023, how long it took for the UK to fold. And then. I'm going to see the same.
[00:32:55] And so I'm thinking for the people in the UK, it's more like October, November [00:33:00] towards the end of this year to see the beginnings of it really. Yeah. So interesting. Okay. It is coming, but very slowly now, what does that mean? So you alluded to this earlier saying developers don't really understand the cost of recruitment, the cost of the hiring process, that the interviewing process, and they don't understand the cost of a recruiter, you know, 15 to 20 percent of the salary.
[00:33:19] We're going to, it's, it's a crazy number just to hire these people. So in times of economic downturn, people, Tighten their purse strings, right? We're not just like we would. Yeah. Yeah. You're not, you're not having takeaways. You're not, you're not partying, you know, on these holidays, whatever it is. Right.
[00:33:33] And the companies are doing the same. So in order for those companies that are going to survive to keep functioning, they do need to hire. They have been hiring. They're just not doing it in the channels that We traditionally see when, when the market is very buoyant, when the market's buoyant, we're going, we're making so much money, we'll just throw a job on the big job board and interview the thousand people that come through.
[00:33:51] We'll just go, you know what? I'll save myself that time. I'll spend 15, 000 on a recruiter so I can hire somebody. That's, that's gone. So this is [00:34:00] why everyone's saying, why are there no junior jobs on the big job [boards] Why do the recruiters not care about juniors anymore? It's because that market dried up that they pulled in the purse strings.
[00:34:08] However, developers are still getting jobs. Lots of them are still getting jobs, but fortune favors the brave in this situation. You've got to be proactive in putting yourself out there. And I think certainly for the rest of 2024, probably halfway through 2025, you're going to see that's going to be the way to actually get the job is to be proactive in how you find these companies, how you apply to these companies, how you put yourself out there.
[00:34:30] You've got to be your own recruiter in many respects, because it's not until the market's really buoyant again, that everyone says. Well, we could do that, but we're going to make so much money. If we just go faster, I'll throw it back to recruiters and job boards. Yeah. And I've often thought that the worst time to learn how to find a job is in a boom market, because to be honest, that's not a natural situation.
[00:34:46] Like, and I, you know, I'm old enough to remember the GFC I've been in, you know, multiple countries and multiple careers. It was ridiculously easy, just like capital and credit was ridiculously easy in the last 10 years, same thing with jobs, it's never been that easy. And to me, that was dangerous because we [00:35:00] have an entire generation of folks who thought that that was normal, whereas that was actually the exception and having to struggle a bit for, to, to compete in the market is normal.
[00:35:07] And I mean, I don't do large cohort sizes because I personally coach people. I do literally, you know, eight, 10 people for an entire year, right? Like it's very few and that's why I get the results and my students get the results because of that. I mean, one of my students had 15 interviews in a month, like at a down market, right?
[00:35:20] So, But it's, it's down to this. I've told people, I said, that's stupid, easy apply button on LinkedIn has completely wrecked your life.
[00:35:26] It has absolutely wrecked your life and your expectation of how the job market works. I agree. So in my day, if you knew what this was, you got a job. No, that's, that's pretty much it.
[00:35:36] And I'd say this to people who were at the junior level or trying to break in now, now, if you spend any time, go and look at very senior developer profiles. And I did this within an organization cause we were trying to educate the recruitment team to say, what should we look for? How, what do we want our recruiters?
[00:35:50] you know, keeping an eye out on. And so we decided to go and find the 10 best developers we had within the organization and find their profiles. What's the commonality find more people like them. [00:36:00] So we all met to discuss this came from all over the world to discuss this. And the only commonality we found is that their profiles suck.
[00:36:06] That was it. Right. So we're like, this can't, can't be it. And then through discussions on that, it's about finding those developers who appear on the surface to be proactive, that they're living and breathing it. Those are the ones that are worth the best bet as such. So, This senior developer thing, all you needed to do in my day, all the, you see developers with five or more years of experience right now, they don't sell themselves.
[00:36:30] They don't market themselves. They just say, I've got five years here. I worked in this company these days, this company, these dates done. That's the evidence. Now, I think. These developers coming through right now who are struggling to break into the industry, but they're learning that I've got to do more.
[00:36:43] I've got to sell myself. I've got to market these, these skills of my leverage and all that sort of [stuff] Forward wind three to five years. And these developers are going to be happy. They've got the skills now. And they market themselves in a far better way. And I think the senior developers of today are then going to start to struggle.
[00:36:59] 1000%. And [00:37:00] you know what, could you actually hold on a sec? My friend's dog that I'm house sitting little paper. And she was just asking to be let in. Cause you're a bit demanding, aren't you? Little girl doesn't want to miss out. No, she doesn't want to miss out. She's loving this conversation.
[00:37:10] So the curious thing about what you're saying, David, is I know the world thinks like it's very specific to engineering or developers. And that's because that's the world most developers live in. But that is the nature of the beast in any industry. [You've] got to know how to stand out.
[00:37:23] When I was doing my MBA, I've seen very senior executives. prepare to market themselves like you. And you wouldn't think that we talking about VPs at airlines, like that level. And I saw the amount of effort they put into trying to stand out in a fairly thin marketplace, you know, it's kind of thin out of the top that way.
[00:37:37] And I saw the effort they put on. I'm like, it's. It's a jungle out there, you know, and you've got to learn how to fight it. You've just got to learn how to play that game. Well, you know, we've just had elections here yesterday, as you're probably aware. And you know, it would be nice if we all said, all you need to do is publish what your policies are for your party and everyone votes along which policy you think is the best.
[00:37:58] I think we can all agree. This is a marketing game. [00:38:00] It's got nothing to do with the policy. Most of the time, it's, it's money and marketing and do I like that? No. But that's the game. And I would, I could be stood here saying, you know, fight the good fight. Just, just do it the way that developers seem to think, but that's not going to get you a job, certainly not in this market.
[00:38:17] So I want to help you get a job. And then you can get that, get a good job so that you get hands on coding so that you get the experience. So in two years, like I said, you're getting promoted, you're getting pay rises or you're moving on. We've got to start this journey somewhere. And I saw this at Google too.
[00:38:30] So the very effective, I mean, there was some obviously staff engineers who had just such extraordinary technical brilliance that they would outshine everybody. But those are the outliers and everybody else who is getting ahead and doing well. We're following the same principles I saw in the law. We're following the same principles I saw in management.
[00:38:43] You know, they were basically knowing how to stand out in a crowd and actually being impactful beyond just the code, just like anybody else in any other industry has to be beyond, has to be impactful beyond just the core technical skill. They've got to work with other people, influence them, bring outcomes, understand strategy.
[00:38:57] And, and I remember, you know one of my mentors, she said, she said, have you, [00:39:00] she told me, she said, have you ever considered why the heck does McDonald's still advertise? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Who needs, why does, and I'm like, Oh my God, that's such a great point. Why the heck she's like, cause you need to keep marketing yourself in every brand needs to market itself to be, to stand out.
[00:39:14] And, and I think Robert Kiyosaki said this, he said, you know, everybody thinks about what they, well, they want to be a great author, but really what you want to be is the best selling author. And there's a huge difference and it's true. It's a hundred percent true, you know, my, my whole strategy, philosophy, all that, the business that I've got, I could sit here and say, yes, but look, I've got recruitment and I, and I've got development.
[00:39:33] Therefore I'm great. Right. And everyone goes, don't care. Now I have to put that, this message out and, and if, if you look at my content, if I might say a particular message and you go, maybe it resonates, maybe it doesn't, I've said that message, whatever that message was in today's video, I've said it 55, 000 different ways in the last three years, and I'm just hoping one day, one way I'll say it will resonate with you, therefore you and I will get on.
[00:39:58] So a lot of the boot camps I [00:40:00] reach out to at first, they go, we hate you go away. And then, then they see me repeatedly and they go, Oh, he does seem to know. Okay. And there's a, there's a timing thing. And I always talk about dating on my course and I go, this is like walking over to. a girl or guy, depending on your persuasion and going, Hey, tonight's your lucky night.
[00:40:15] This never happens. Certainly doesn't happen if you're British. But you don't know if, is that person in a relationship? Is that person just got out of a relationship? And now it's the timing thing. So there's not just your skillset. There's your value offering. There's the timing of that offering. This is a puzzle.
[00:40:28] And that's where I say, it's about putting yourself in that position to be [Mic bleed] Oh, so, so true. So true. You know, speaking of people not liking the message one of the things that a lot of the people who come to me for coaching and I'm, you know, the question that always confuses people, I'm asking them one of the first two questions I'll ask them is, is your goal to learn to code or is your goal to get hired as a professional coder?
[00:40:46] Like, what's your goal? And most people will say, Oh, I learned to code, but what's the difference? And like, until you truly understand that difference, you're not actually going to cross that bridge. So those, there was a person on my course yesterday that said. You know, [00:41:00] can we have a call jumped on a one to one and they said, I just, I don't think I'm ready.
[00:41:04] That's the problem. I need to go and become better at this. And it's debatable whether that person needs to get better or whatever. But I said, you know, do you think this is the first time I've had this conversation this week? So the next thing is this person's applying and not hearing back. And so you think.
[00:41:18] Okay. And so many developers say this, I've applied to 400 jobs and heard nothing. And I go, great. What are you going to do about that? Because to me, that means the thing that you're presenting your profile, your resume, whatever, is not selling. It's not, it's not buying what you're, what you're offering.
[00:41:31] Yeah. Exactly. And they go, well, I think I should learn some more algorithms. Did anyone ask you if you knew any algorithms? So that, that, that might help you. If you get into the interview and you go in, we're rejecting you because you didn't know this algorithm. Learn it. If it's, I applied to 400 jobs and I got ghosted and didn't hear a thing, it's probably got nothing to do with the level of your ability, which is where we talked about earlier.
[00:41:51] The best developers rarely get the [jobs] Fun. That's how themselves. Correct. And it's the same thing with startups. I mean, how many times have people said, Oh, you know, if I build a, if I add [00:42:00] this other feature, I'll get more buyers. If I add, no, it's because they're not buying what's already there. It's not the lapses of a feature.
[00:42:05] They don't need probably know about you. That's the problem. You know, What wasn't it, you know, the iPod, there were, there were Far greater mp3 players on the market at the time with more features with more everything and they just went well strip out all the features make it look pretty and sell it 100 percent you know and and that's and it works it just you just have to understand the core job then to your point earlier you have to understand what it is that the hiring manager is trying to achieve and then show them Yeah, and just as you said about the great developers, some of the real standout developers that you have, you know, there's still that element in the hiring process.
[00:42:35] It's, are you technically good enough? And then there's the, are you a fit? And something I say on my course is nobody ever hired anyone they didn't like, unless it was some, you know, very strange contracting skillset for three months, get it done and go away. Like we don't want to talk to you ever again.
[00:42:50] Nobody hires people they don't like. No, and the problem has never been the technical skills. There's plenty of applicants with the technical [Plenty!] There's never, I've never been on the hiring side in any [00:43:00] job. And I've said, Oh, I wish I'd, you know, stronger people. That's never been the issue. The issue is, gosh, I've got a bunch of strong people.
[00:43:05] How do I choose the right one? That's always been the problem. You know and people think it's a unique thing to this market. I'm like, no, it's not. It's really not. This is age old. You know, and that's where these juniors are going. Things will be better when I've got 2, years experience as someone who was hiring very senior developers for many years when everybody has
[00:43:23] five, seven years of experience, whatever it is right now. How do you differentiate and it still comes down? And this is where I said, you know, I say to those developers, if you're listening, you won't need me in the future. The problem is the same. It's about the presentation you've got to show, you know, and people talk about.
[00:43:36] I think people get missold the message where they say you've got to show passion and enthusiasm. So they go on there about section on LinkedIn and say, I'm passionate about, I'm enthusiastic about. You can't say I'm passionate about something. You've got to. You've got to evidence it. It's the whole, if you think about the developers, like the build in public strategy, it's like market yourself in public, you know, present yourself in public.
[00:43:57] And that's where he gets [Mic bleed] It's, it's a [00:44:00] lesson I actually kind of learned in the law as well. You know, there's an old joke in the law, a good lawyer knows the law, the law, a great lawyer knows the judge. And it's, [Mic bleed] very true. It's very true. Like, it's also not just who you know, it's who knows of you.
[00:44:12] That really matters, you know, and that's the question of building credibility. And people think it's hitting the LinkedIn apply or a hundred applications in one month. And I'm like, you know what? I'd rather you did four applications in two months. That was super high quality after you got to know those people.
[00:44:25] Like my, when I moved, when I was, 38 and I got my first coding job. I didn't do the mass application thing. I went I rode my bicycle around melbourne Looking at agencies with high attrition and thinking these guys have a lot of code clients Therefore they write a lot of code [and] they have a lot of attrition because they don't pay that Well, and it's you know, it's client is billing work, which means it's a bit high pressure And a lot of developers don't like that They have high attrition.
[00:44:47] They have a lot of work. They're going to want, they're going to be desperate enough to hire someone like me. And so I didn't end up taking one of the offers. I had three of those offers. I ended up joining a smaller startup. But that's how I got three out of the four offers that I ended up getting.
[00:44:58] Was by figuring out who wants me as [00:45:00] much as I want them and then literally pounding the pavement, like literally showing up in their reception saying this is what this is what I think is going on here. And this is I can help you like there was no easy apply business. There was no, [Mic bleed] indeed. com sending an application.
[00:45:12] I went and showed up face to face. And it worked. There was a discussion in, in the course on the VIP version of the course of the day, we're all talking about mixing it up, try, try something different sometimes just to keep yourself sane, you know, and, and so inevitably the discussion of turning up in person, the game up, obviously this is a wildly unpopular idea.
[00:45:29] A couple of people went, okay, I'll try it. And Two people tried it. One had a, you know, [Mic bleed] into this, went into this company, turned out they knew lots of people within the company and had, you know, sat down, had a great discussion. And then the other person literally, I think it was two out of the six companies that went to visit that day they got interviews out of, and ended up getting freelance work out of.
[00:45:47] And so when you look at that as a percentage, it's a powerful move. Now, does it scale? Maybe not, and it's not for everybody to turn up in person, but if we can take that learning and take that direct approach and try [00:46:00] to leverage that in some, you know, more scalable way, that's when it comes down. And you know what, I would even argue that for the first couple of jobs, maybe you should, I posted this recently on LinkedIn, I'm like, maybe you don't need to look beyond your own backyard.
[00:46:11] Maybe, maybe you don't need to scale because you need one job, you need the opportunity and you need the right one directionally. You know, sometimes you just got to go out there locally in your backyard and stop assuming that the remote roles are the best because you're competing against everybody. So I've always looked at this statistically.
[00:46:23] I'm a big fan of going, what's the tech job, what's the stack. And then we present you being immersed in that. So I'm normally saying, go and find these companies around you that, that already hire developers like this. And then we can kind of infiltrate and try to attract those companies.
[00:46:38] And I've looked at the stats and it's 100 percent in the last few months, 100 percent of the developers who've got jobs, it's been local small companies because they care more about the human being, the person. So lots of these companies, when they're hiring, they're saying, we don't care about what you know, we care about you.
[00:46:53] We think you're a great fit and we're going to teach you from scratch anyway. And then the real kick for me was pretty much all of them. I think except for one [00:47:00] was in different tech. So now there was a a guy on the course who's been my nemesis in many ways, because he, he just seemed to live in this geographic region where I just struggled to break that barrier.
[00:47:12] And. So about a month ago, five weeks ago, we had this discussion because we've been changing the geography. We changed everything else. So I said, what are we going to change? So I said, change the tech and he's like, no, I don't want to. And that's okay. No, it doesn't want to. Now through the networking strategy, through this bizarre twist, next thing, he ended up in an interview and he was reluctant to go to the interview.
[00:47:32] And You're going like, we're doing this right. And it was in a completely different tech and he's got the job. It's, it's, it's a great story in the end. It got the job. So then I go, okay, where is this job? And he's like, I can walk. It's so scouring the nation, right. And it's, it's local. It's a small company, different tech.
[00:47:52] So then that, that was. Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday. And then yesterday, another guy on the course who's also, this one's in the [00:48:00] UK. Again, struggling with that. Got a job. I said, go on and tell me what tech? Completely different tech. And I was like, okay, where's the job? And he's like, literally at the end of my road.
[00:48:10] I'm a big fan of local work. Who's more likely to want to invest in you? And when you're at that junior stage, it is someone who's investing in you and training and teaching [Mic bleed] And this is why I also encourage people [Mic bleed] the junior roles, when you're starting out, I know you want the remote work. I know that's great.
[00:48:26] And I know a lot of people say, Oh, it's a sign of a good company. At the end of the day, you shouldn't care about all of that. [Your] best training will come from in-person, especially in something like engineering, which is a really a bit of a craft as well, between remote and in person, you're going to learn a lot more in person.
[00:48:39] You're going to feel better about your work in person. Your performance is going to be better. And then you can set yourself up for remote, you know, don't just make this about your short term needs. Like play the long game of this career. There's such a beautiful career to get into. And you as an engineer know this.
[00:48:51] People are often astonished to know that I didn't know the languages I was going to write code in when I moved to Google. What do you mean? I'm like, it's not about that language. It's about knowing how to program [00:49:00] machines. It's about knowing how to write software. Language is a tool. It doesn't matter what instrument you play.
[00:49:05] Somebody has written a beautiful song for that instrument. Doesn't matter which language it is. There is a bestseller book in that language. Language doesn't matter, you know, [Mic bleed] what you produce with it. So in that vein, I guess, David, what are the things, what are your pet peeves?
[00:49:20] What do people get wrong about job, job hunting strategies? What is the thing that you see very often that you really wish you'd stop seeing? Oh, interesting. So I mean, first of all, start off whenever someone comes to me and says I've applied to hundreds and hundreds of jobs, I always ask them the same question, where and how have you been applying and I've never had a different answer to this question.
[00:49:37] We're all applying in the same place. LinkedIn, indeed. total jobs, et cetera, or big job boards and or recruiters. So normally that leads me then to say, okay, you're probably going to be one of more thousand applicants. If there was a thousand applicants, are you the best? And most people go, probably not statistically speaking.
[00:49:55] No. And I go, congratulations. You're a decent human being. Right. So moving [00:50:00] away from that is one thing. Secondly, When people then say, I don't know what I'm doing wrong and I say, send me your LinkedIn profile, send me your resume and I look at it and go, I have no idea what you do or what you want to do.
[00:50:11] And they go, well, you know, where's the value? Where's the proof? Where's the evidence? And they go, well, if you do this and click here and go here and scroll down and do that. I'm like, no one's ever finding this. And I normally talk about it saying, let's say you've got a shop and you go, where, where are the products?
[00:50:24] Like, what are you selling? Oh, do you want the products? You go down the back stairs, right? It's dark down there, but you speak to the guy in a mask, like you're never going down these stairs ever. So we've got to put the products in the window. We've [got to] entice people. Yeah.
[00:50:37] And I'm always trying to ascertain where is the problem. Now, if someone comes to me and says, I'm getting to the latter stages of the interview, and I always fail on this technical part, then, you know, we've got to fix that, that never happens. Almost never. Most of the time it's, I'm not getting interviews.
[00:50:51] I'm not getting noticed. I'm not getting the attention. So let's fix the top of the funnel. And then we get down the funnel and then we'll fix the next problem. Exactly. And, [00:51:00] and, you know, I often ask people in this, I'm like, why is it that there are so many free and paid learning to code courses and so many free and paid crack the coding interview courses?
[00:51:07] Have you, I asked people, I said, like, have you ever analyzed that? And most people haven't. And I'm like, those are actually the easier pieces to teach at scale. Because it's it's the same for everybody you write the same line of java or javascript We get the same result as me you and i'd write the same, you know data destruction algorithm problem We get the same result.
[00:51:21] Those are deterministic outcomes The problem is the job market is made up a lot of non deterministic probabilistic Pieces, parts of the funnel, as you said. And those are the bits that you can't teach at scale, right? Because you, as you said, you have to look at that individual, say, what are you doing?
[00:51:36] Where are you looking? Like geography matters, personality matters, presentation style matters, communication matters, skill combination matters, what the local market is asking for matters. And this is why I do the personal mentorship and not the big, I used to do courses and I sold more courses, I guess, than I've done the mentoring, but I got much less results.
[00:51:51] Yes. I do the same. So I sell the course, I sell the information on a course, the standard course, as I call it. So when you do the VIP version with [00:52:00] me, it's the same content, but then I say, I force you through it. It's, it's more of a mentored or it's, it's a fully mentored approach. Now, when they joined this cohort, their first four weeks is about LinkedIn, GitHub resumes, portfolio websites.
[00:52:12] The evidence, the stuff, and everybody thinks that's the course. And it's like that, that you will work together as a group. And it's just, I just need to race through this, make sure everything is, if someone does take a look, everything looks good. Right. And that's the easy bit. So I used to run this course when I run it for bootcamps over four weeks and I'd get to the end of it and people start then to get a little bit more attention on, yeah.
[00:52:35] Social media on from recruiters and they run away like, yeah, I win and I'm like, no, no, no, stay, stay, it gets better. But then they disappear and they come back three months later going, I've applied to 400 jobs. I've heard nothing. What's happening. So then I go, right, I've got to break you first before we're ready to start.
[00:52:49] So then that next 12 weeks of the VIP course is going. Okay, where do you live? What job do you want? What, what's your skill set? What's, what's your past that we're going to [00:53:00] leverage in some way? What, what's your value offering and where do we need to tweak it? And then it's much more one to one. That's the real value.
[00:53:06] That's the hard bit. 1000%. And that's the bit that's inherently non scalable and inherently extremely personalized to the individual and mindset matters. Like, you know, yours is 12 weeks and yours is focused on the, on the, you know, getting the job aspect. I sort of include that bit because I'm helping people career transition because of my journey.
[00:53:23] You know, and, and, That's why I do 12 months. And people are like, why the heck is it going to take me that long? I'm like, in which world do you think getting advanced skills that are going to pay you that much, that are highly technical is going to take you to less than that, like 12 months is really short, you know, this is an interesting thing at the minute because, so the guy who just got the course where I said got the job where in different tech so on my course, if you don't get the job in 16 weeks, I give you all your money back, right?
[00:53:45] So that guy. Is in that week 17. So I gave him his money back and he got the job and I mean, but it's a great guy. And you know, he's been adamant that he doesn't want the money back, but to me, deal, you know, that's the way we go now that the [00:54:00] thing I've got other people who are in the course going, okay, what if I don't get that job?
[00:54:04] And then you give me my money back, but now what I'm stuck, I'm like, I will still work with you forever. Like once you're in, you're in and then we'll go in. So like, so when people get to that, I've only got, you know, eight weeks, six weeks left of this, they start to panic and they almost start to shut down going, well, what's the point I'll just give up now.
[00:54:22] And I'm like, we're going to get to the deadline. You're going to get your money back. Yeah. And what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've still got to break this problem. We've got to fix this. So let's forget the deadline, the imaginary thing, and let's just work on solving the problem. We've got to be strategic, try different things, see what works, what doesn't work.
[00:54:39] Yeah. And you got to get there. And yeah, he, that guy on the course, he's the area was so difficult. I've got other people in very difficult areas, but he's been that shining example. If he can do it, anyone can do it. Anyone can do it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just about solving that problem for that. Right. Right.
[00:54:54] And knowing what they need. And, and I'm, I'm glad that, you know, people like you, a few of us, you know, there's Brian, Jenny, and a whole bunch of [00:55:00] other, we always try to think about the longterm. Yeah. Cause I know, you know, you, you know, Brian as well. And Brian and I were actually talking a couple of days ago, I think about [this] obsession around the DSA stuff and how that's not necessarily what most of the job market looks at .
[00:55:10] And we're like, yeah, but people are going to want that. Like they, they think that's the secret sauce, just like you said, people think, you know, doing X, Y is the secret sauce. And they forget that there's A, B, C, D, E, F, you know, around it as well that needs to be done. But people really are convinced that that's the missing piece when what they don't realize is that's literally the table stakes That's literally the ticket to the dance That's the starting point not the ending point and when I tell people look think about 12 months like you I I go over if they've been working consistently i'm like I'm going to keep working with you, but if you're not working consistently, I won't, because I'm not going to waste my time pretty upfront about that.
[00:55:39] But if you're working consistently, I've had people come to me for that third job after I helped them, you know, three years ago, they're now moving into a third job and they still come back to me for, you know, can we have another long coaching session? I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to charge you for, of course you're, you're part of the family because I'm trying to tell people the market doesn't have a deadline the way you do.
[00:55:56] Okay. This is not a bus. This is not a bus that comes on schedule. [00:56:00] You've got to be prepared. You've got to have your ticket fare in your pocket. You've got to have the right wet weather gear in case it's raining. You know, you've got to have all of that while you wait at the bus stop and do the work to flag down the bus because the bus is actually not stopping.
[00:56:09] You've got to flag it down. You know, and that's, and you don't know how long that's going to take. Anybody who tells you it's going to happen in four weeks and guarantees that is probably not able to do that. What they're actually saying is if you do the work, you should get the result. And then if you don't get the work, we'll work with you.
[00:56:21] Like that makes sense as a guy, because no one can actually predict when you're going to get that breakthrough, you know, at least of all you, because I think one of the things I've noticed over 12 months is. Most people who commit will commit, but there's always a few who life will get in the way or they'll run out of steam or they'll just plain simple, change their mind halfway through.
[00:56:39] There was something there, I forget where I saw this yesterday. They were talking about politics at the time. They were saying about choosing a party to vote for. And it's like, not everyone thinks it's like a taxi. You choose the taxi and the taxi is going to take you to the. Destination to the door, right?
[00:56:52] It's not like that. It's more like a bus. It won't take you to the door, but you need to choose the bus that's going to get you as close as possible. [00:57:00] And I think that's the same with a job. It's like no job is going to be perfect. It doesn't matter whether it's the Google's or Microsoft's world. It doesn't matter, but we need to choose something that's going to get you as close as you can to where you want to go and then choose the next bus and next bus and the next bus.
[00:57:14] Absolutely. Evolving that out, but going back to the data structures and algorithms thing. I don't know why people lump data structures and algorithms together. It's a, it's a weird, they're two different things. I posted that on LinkedIn. I'm like, they're actually not even the same thing. We sort of bunched them up together.
[00:57:26] Everybody knows data structures. Once they learn a language. You've got to. You've got to. That's how the language works. And then the algorithm is using it in a certain way. It's just, it's just social media though, right? Like, yeah, that's the problem. It's entirely social media that makes them think that the only thing worth going for is a fang job.
[00:57:40] And to be honest, I know for a fact, fang jobs aren't the highest paying jobs out there. Yeah, they're not not in cash, maybe in stock. Okay, but that depends on a good year. But you're also paying real cash in tax on something you didn't get cash for, which is your stock. You know, people don't think about all that.
[00:57:54] And so at the end of the year, you're poorer on cash, but richer in stock. And a lot of people sell their stock to pay their tax bill. But in terms of [00:58:00] share cash, a lot of other companies pay more than Fang do. Depending on, you know, the kind of in the U S at least. And, and, and in other places as well.
[00:58:06] So I'm just like, don't let social media tell you what your career plan is, that makes no sense. I think it's like you said, though, it's about those, the tangible things. They think that's, that's the answer. And it's like, I remember working at a company where they were saying the culture here is terrible.
[00:58:18] Can you fix it? And I'm like, [Mic bleed] to be a tough one. But then you talk about, you know, how the teams interoperate, how we're communicating, how. everyone feels about deadlines and working together and have we got each other's back. And you know, the, the answer is always like, couldn't we just get a pool table?
[00:58:31] You're like, you can't solve it with things. It's, it's got to be, things are okay, but that's not solving the problem. And it's like, whenever you say about. how to get somebody a job in tech. They're like, well, can't I just learn another algorithm? Can't I just get a pass this Udemy course to get a certificate?
[00:58:46] Can't I just people who are self talker, do I need a bootcamp? People who've got a bootcamp, do I need a degree? People with a degree, do I need a master's? When does this stop? And it's got nothing to do with, you know, Things, it's got everything to do with unpacking the knowledge you've already got and how you're trying to get more right.
[00:58:59] And just [00:59:00] understanding the marketplace is demanding is looking for something supply that need. It's, it's just economics. It's, you know, that's really what it boils down to.
[00:59:06] I love riffing with you because, okay. So that's the stuff that we wish we saw less of. Okay. I get it. What are the rare things you saw you wish you saw more of when it comes to sort of job strategy?
[00:59:15] I, remember when I talked earlier about going in person, things like that, anytime somebody puts themselves out there on the course, we do videos and we do, and we talk about our outreach emails and we changing them to be a bit more cheeky and we do other ways to get yourself out there.
[00:59:30] Notice to get in the door and it's, it's, it's about a networking strategy. It's about marketing strategies, but job search strategy. And whenever I'm trying to convince or encourage people to do something outside of the norm, outside of their comfort zone, obviously I met with a lot of reluctance in 95 percent of cases.
[00:59:49] You know, 95 percent of cases, it usually comes to fruition. Why do you think that is? What, where, where do you think that reluctance is coming from? when I tell developers to do this, the majority of the questions are, what if [01:00:00] people laugh at me, what if people see I'm not very good?
[01:00:02] I'm like. You think people are reading your posts? Like, believe me, I've been trying for years. No one reads my stuff ever. Right. It's just a few people. It's so true. So. Everyone says, Oh, I'm working on this project. I'm working on this you know, app or something like that. And I go, great. Where is that? And they go how can we let people in to see this?
[01:00:22] But then people go, well, it's not ready or is it good enough? So putting yourself out there, that's when things start to change. It's not unique to engineering in any again in every profession I've been in people are afraid that they're not going to be seen as being good enough At all levels, like I've seen the imposter syndrome at in CEOs, right?
[01:00:38] It's just a different problem at a different scale, but it's the same worry. It's the same human experience of am I actually up to this task? Am I actually going to embarrass myself by putting myself out there? Everyone's feeling it at different levels of the continuum. It does not stop.
[01:00:54] Like there is no right answer to this. Oh yeah. I mean, imposter syndrome didn't hit me until I was about 15 years in when I realized I knew everything [01:01:00] I needed to know. That's when it. It kind of hit, but also if you look at I've had very few posts that have gone big in some way and all of a sudden I start getting abused in the, in the comments and fear this abuse.
[01:01:13] Is someone going to uncover that I'm not very good and all that kind of stuff. And over time, I've got to realize now, for some reason, it's always Friday night when I'm finished with having a beer, all of a sudden it starts to go ding, ding, ding, and I'm getting abuse. And now I've realized when I get abuse, it means that post is doing very well.
[01:01:29] So now. When I'm not getting abused, I'm like, Oh, I [Mic bleed] quite managed to resonate with people. It's only when I start getting abused that I'm like, [Mic bleed]
[01:01:37] It's so true as human beings we've not evolved to take that many opinions and be neutral like we've just our brains are not evolved for that We take feedback very seriously because we all have thin skins and it takes effort to get thicker skins, but we never evolved for that, you know Yeah.
[01:01:50] So you were going to say, well social media, when I first started, I'm starting to talk about documenting the journey. Most people will say, I don't like social media. I don't like LinkedIn. I don't like [01:02:00] whatever. I'm like, you think I like this, but this is where I say to document your journey. We're not doing this for fame and fortune.
[01:02:06] We're doing this so that if we drive somebody to our profile, they'll take a look for five to 10 seconds. They see that we're passionate and enthusiastic without us having to say it. So it's got, it's got nothing to do with that side of things. So I always say to people, right? Like nobody's reading because they're really not reading, no one's reading.
[01:02:23] You know, absolutely. And I think, I mean, you've, you've summed it up beautifully. We don't have to like all parts of the journey.
[01:02:29] But we do have to recognize that there's no point being perfect in silence. You know, you might as well be imperfect out, out in public because you're, you're in a world where you depend, whether you like it or not, on other people to take a chance on you. And they're not going to take a chance and if they don't know you, they just all, you know, I've never heard of you.
[01:02:44] There's no point. Like so many, I remember reading about, you know, how many patents are sitting in the patent office that never saw the light of day. Great inventions. What's the point? What a waste. And then we have really rubbish stuff like fidget spinners. They go the world, you know, five years ago.
[01:02:57] And I'm like, that's, that's the [01:03:00] difference. You know, that's the difference right there.
[01:03:01] Anyway, look as always man, it's been look it's been a great conversation I know we were way longer than we expected.
[01:03:06] I mean I have to split this episode down into two, but thanks for your candor. Thanks for your incredibly fresh insights and you know Thanks for doing all the work that you do in the space you know people like you, Brian, you know a few a few of us that are had on the show You People who sort of, obviously we, we, we're offering products to the market, but we're also trying to do it in a way that's realistic, that are steeped in realism and helping people actually understand what the reality is.
[01:03:27] It's not just about the promise of it. It's about the process and who you need to become in order to actually succeed in that kind of market, not just for the short term tactical goal, but Presumably people want these results because of what it gets them in 15 years and 20 years and down the track and who they become in that process.
[01:03:40] And that's very important. And we've lost the ability in this day and age [to] think long term because everything is just coming at us every 30 seconds and 30 second videos and shots. And we forgot that this what we're actually here to do is build a meaningful life and that takes time effort practice and craftsmanship Right.
[01:03:54] So thank you for everything you do, man Really really love it. And thank you for coming on the show as well. Where would people find you [01:04:00] and your courses and and explore what you know? What they can learn from you because I think they'd be crazy not to Oh, thank you.
[01:04:04] So you can find me the website is crushing dot digital and it's at crushing digital on most social platforms. I'm probably more active on LinkedIn and maybe TikTok at the minute. I should really branch out a little bit more, but at crushing digital in most places And there's, there's a various courses there.
[01:04:20] There's a standard course and a VIP option if you want mentorship and all that sort of stuff, but I just wanted to say thank you to you. I really enjoy our chats. I think we, we always go a little bit off where we started off and I think that's the best part of it. So thanks for having me on. No, a real, a real pleasure.
[01:04:33] And I look forward to, you know, looking, I know we talked about it previously. Looking for opportunities where, you know, I can connect you with with my students as well. So that, you know, in, in addition to what I teach them, they can also learn from you because I think there's no, there's, there's no such thing as too much mentorship from when, when you're learning from people have actually done
[01:04:48] what they try to do. Like, I think the big difference is people like you and I have actually done it. And there's lots of people out there who, who have read the books, but not actually done it. And so, you know, I think there's a real value to what, you know, people like you and I are trying to do. So thank you so much for your time and I hope [01:05:00] your wrist heals.
[01:05:00] I know it's you know, come off the cast and, you know, you can get back to playing that, practicing that guitar a bit, but really soon enough, I hope, I hope, but again, thank you, David. It's been such a pleasure. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Speak to you soon.
[01:05:10] Just subscribe, you know you gotta do it.
