Matt Henderson
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START: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome, everybody. I'm really happy to have Matt Henderson here with me. Now, Matt and I go back some years. It's because Matt was one of the early students of me at Inner Circle.
And A very, very successful student . Hey, Matt, welcome to the Easier Said Than Done podcast. I'm really, really grateful that you took some time out.
I know it's the first thing in the morning before you get to work, so I appreciate it, man. How are you? I'm doing all right. Thanks for having me, Zubin. I'm doing pretty well today. Yeah, that's good. You're all ready for your Friday. You got a big Friday plan. Are you pushing anything to production today?
Cause you know, it's Friday. No, God, that's our only rule of thumb. Never on a Friday. Never push go to production on a Friday. If you can have it. Absolutely. Look, man, I just wanted to say thanks so much for taking the time.
For today, Let's talk about your journey, , because you've been through one heck of a journey. . But tell us a little bit about yourself. What are you doing right now for work? Yeah. So currently I am a software engineer.
I'm working at a consumer product goods company, fortune 500 company. I've been [00:01:00] there for Just shy of two years. So I transitioned successfully to this role after working with you. Right? This was my first coding role. I've done quite a bit here, right? I've done full stack application development, front end, back end.
I've, I've led projects. I'm currently mostly focusing on data and analytics engineering. So a lot of ETL pipelines. So been diving into that and that's been my primary focus up to this point. You know, and sorry to jump in there, but you, you've done a lot of things in, in the, I think you, you finished future coders about maybe three years ago and you've done a lot of things in that time at this company.
And you've, you've seen a lot of growth. You've done a lot, actually, From from over the years. I know we've talked about the stack you're working in. It's quite you've had quite diverse experience, which is really fortunate, because I think I remember when I was in New York, I think, and maybe it was. Yeah, I think I was in New York when you were interviewing or something and we got on the phone and had a long conversation about it and we were talking [00:02:00] about the kinds of roles that actually are good for you in the long term.
So it sounds like you landed on your feet. You know, it's been one heck of a growth journey for you, man. It really has. It really has. I was fortunate. To get this role, right. To, to be honest, you worked hard for it, man. Worked hard. Worked hard. And you were fortunate, and you didn't put in a lot.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It definitely just ended up being the right opportunity.
INTRO
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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
START: And I think in a lot of ways, you know, part of it was the opportunities I had, you know, to work in different areas of software development as I joined the company, right, it wasn't just, you're on this one team and you're doing this one thing.
It's, I get to do kind of the full scope of, you know, I've done [00:03:00] application development I've done ETL pipelines, I've done some DevOps work, right? Like I've kind of spanned and been able to grow all those skills, I think being there. And I think the other. The important thing I think people miss on with their first role is being in an environment that helps you grow.
Right. I think that was huge. I mean that was huge for me. You know, I talked a lot about that. I remember cause I, I, I kept telling you and your peers, there's no point, getting the first role and taking the first role that comes your way. If you're going to get stuck in a dead end, cause then you'll get stuck in the same loop you're trying to get away from in your current career.
You know, so, and, and not all roles are equal, man. Like people just think software engineering is in some sort of magical land. It's not, it's like any other country. There are good cities and there are bad cities, you know, same thing as after engineering, right? And I mean, you've been doing this now.
Three, four years. But I remember that, and I was looking through the notes of when we spoke, when you first wanted to join the program, you had done some self study for a while before that. So I I'd say you'd been trying to learn to code for a [00:04:00] couple of years from what my notes are telling me.
Right. Is that right? Before you joined the Inner Circle Program? That's completely true. Yeah. What was that experience like, yeah, I mean, when I, when the pandemic hit, right, that was kind of my, you know, I, I, I've been working at a at a software company that, you know advanced planning and scheduling and, and Basically, I've been essentially a business analyst up to that point.
I wanted to switch into coding. So I started, I started dabbling, right? And I started doing what I think everyone does when they start learning. It's like they, they, they start with something, but then they say, Ooh, here's this new shiny thing. Let me try this. And then they jumped to a something else. Right?
So it's, it's this continuous cycle finding something else. And then, you know. Of course, you're always going to get these, let's say like a Udemy that says, this is like the next best course that you have to take. Otherwise, if you take this course, you're going to be a software engineer, which we obviously know is not the case.
Was it a lot of starting things and never finishing anything? Like a lot of that? Yeah. A hundred percent.
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START: A hundred percent. I mean, there's so much information on the internet. It's hard not to do that. And it's such a big mistake. How much time did that cost you? Do you think? I'd say of at least a year, year and a half of just
you know, not the correct focus of where I'm not being directionally aligned with where I want it to go. And what was that, [00:06:00] what was that like emotionally for you and psychologically, like what impact was it having, knowing that you wanted to do this thing, but you couldn't actually get there. Frustration.
It's a lot of frustration, some, you know, sadness, right. Just kind of being. You know, feeling lost, right? I think all of that, that full scope of just like feeling lost and, you know, not guided, right. It was just, it felt like never ending. And it felt like it was something that. My mental model was telling me like, you know, the more that it was kind of just reinforcing this thing, that this is just something that's felt so unattainable.
Right. Wow. Okay. Model that was feeling like it was unattainable in that time. Right. Until I started to get on the right path, which was, you know. I met you, right? Actually, it's funny enough. I had taken your Udemy course before we actually started working together. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. I pulled that course off the [00:07:00] internet because it was, it was not the full program. Like it couldn't possibly take you all the way there. Exactly. And it was so funny because that was actually how I found out about you was through that course, right? I, I remember I'm like, I get an email. I'm like, Zubin, I'm like, this name sounds familiar because you were emailing about coaching.
And I remember I emailed you right before your, the, the course closed or whatever the time period for, you know, enrolling, right. And I remember we got on the call and, and I got, I got, you know, it's the program and it just, it completely shaped in my career. Right. Just kind of taking that jump.
And why do you, why do you think, I mean, you had, So many opportunities, Matt, like so many options rather, like you could have done a bootcamp, you could have done community college, you'd have continued down, CS 100 or, you know, 500 or whatever they want to call it now. Like you could have done all those things. Why did you decide to get personally coached? [00:08:00] Yeah. You know, I, I looked at all those options, right. And I think, What I realized is that just having the foundational knowledge is not enough to get you in the door, right?
So I think I use this analogy that you told me once I probably one of our early calls, which is that, you know, even CEOs like they pay for coaching, right? They're top of the game, right? And they'll be coaching too, right? So if they're paying for coaching, why are, why, why would I not, right? To get to the top of my game, right?
Right. So it's, it's an investment in yourself, but I think it's also the, the switching careers is not just learning material, right? It's a lot of pillars that you talk about in the course that allows you to get to that next career. Right. Learning to code is like, the easy part because in reality, you can, you know, there's a million
resources out [00:09:00] there. If you're determined enough, you have the right mental models, you'll figure it out, right? You'll learn things. But you said something really interesting. You said the foundational knowledge, you know, the learning to code stuff is not enough for career change. And like a lot of people don't fully understand that.
They just think, Oh, if for me to become a professional code, I need to learn to code, that's the, that's step one. That's table stakes. Everybody that's applied for the job, knows how to code. Now that you're looking back for the career change piece, what do most people get wrong about that? I mean, in just assuming it's only about the code, what, what, what are they getting wrong? I think what they're fundamentally getting wrong. Is that they're forgetting that when they get to the interview process, everyone in some sense is probably qualified for the job, right? But it's about convincing the hiring manager and the team that you are the right person for the job, right?
And even getting the interviews hard, like so hard, so hard. Like, and it's, it's, you know, [00:10:00] to, to make yourself stand out, you really have to put yourself, you know, You know, out there really be hungry for what you want and be able to present yourself that way.
It's possible. You know, it's very possible. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Right. It's any skill, but you know, people think that like, okay, you know, I, I can, I can invert a binary tree in 30 seconds with my eyes closed. Like it's not going to help. It's not going to help you. Right. It's, it's a, it's cool.
Awesome. Right. But I'm sure there's at least a 500 other people that will be applying that can do the exact same thing. And that just, what about having, sorry to jump in there, but what about having the right plan? Cause what you're talking about is, is comes down to having a proper end to end plan and knowing which direction you want to hit him.
Cause you know, people seem to think that our coding is this thing or that thing. And there are a hundred different varieties to it. It's like, you know, wanting to be a musician. Yeah. But what instrument do you want to play? Right. And,
REMOVE?
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START: I think their entire plan ends up being filled up with [00:11:00] coding and, and building, you know, a project and, and leet coding and that's it, right? And they just focus completely on that.
Then how are you getting the interviews? How are you building your relationships with other engineers? In the market, how are you presenting yourself? Right. And how you de risking yourself in the eyes of the hiring manager, who's got better options, more qualified options, more experienced options, right.
And you, you sort of represent a huge risk. Like you're, you're working at a fortune 500 company. Yeah. They'd have had a ton of applicants as competitors to you who had more experience. Same thing. When I was at Google, I was competing with PhDs of 20 years experience and I had one year experience. Right.
Right. Have to have a plan to stand out in that situation. Exactly. Exactly. And some of it is, you know, there's a lot of ways you can present yourself in a way that makes you stand out. Right. For example, I think important thing I've learned over the years, and we've talked about this is, is asking the right questions and showing you [00:12:00] show up informed to ask those questions to other people, right?
It's, it's how you show up a lot of the times is how you, you know, One can make an impression on those, on those other people that you ask those questions, you want to build a relationship, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so sort of going back to that time, like you couldn't have known all this then now, you know, with the benefit of hindsight and we, you know, we spend a year together in the coaching program and you learn from the others as well in your cohort, because it's a small cohort.
You can watch everybody and you can see the mistakes other people make you know, all the things that trip people up because we were all human beings and that's normal. Right. So, you know, without the benefit of hindsight, going back a few years when you were deciding to, to work with me and you had all those other options, what do you think made the difference for you to decide to want to not go for a standardized bootcamp but work with someone like me?
What was it that appealed to you specifically, Matt? Right. I would say one, knowing that you're someone that did exactly what I'm trying to [00:13:00] do, right, it's important to follow if you're going to take advice, if you're going to learn from anyone, learn from someone that is doing exactly what you're doing, right?
Because there's so many people have become engineers just by following you. Right. Right. By going to school, some by going to a bootcamp and some are self taught, right? Dude, the worst advice I ever got when I was changing careers, because I was, what, 37? The worst advice I got was from computer science grad and established coders.
Because they had never changed careers. And they did not know what career change was all about. And they gave me the worst advice, you know, like, do this, do that. is 50 course or what? Like it just didn't matter, you know? Right. Yeah. I mean, and how many times are you going to ever use the information you probably learned in that course?
Like, like not actually building anything. Yeah, exactly. Right. And I think one other important note I want to throw out there too, in why I decided that was self reliance, I think, I think that's very important as you. Move throughout your career, [00:14:00] right? Like, you know, as you, you start your first role, right, you're going to progress, eventually you're going to probably come to a crossroads of saying, Hey, I'm going to maybe diverge from what I originally started working with.
Like I did, you know, I'm, I'm now I'm doing data and analytics engineering. And, you know, that's different from what I originally started with. Right. Started with. Yeah. And, and I think. Self reliance is important in having your mental model secure and saying that, like, you can do what you're trying to do, you can, you know, learn this and it's, it's, it's possible to do that, right?
So I think self reliance is important because you're going to continue to go throughout your career and face these new challenges, these new questions of where you want your career to go. And ultimately just aligning yourself to saying, like, I can, I can figure this out. Like I can. You know, successfully navigate the path that I want to choose.
Right. You need to learn how to learn, [00:15:00] which is really what you need to do to adapt at the workplace. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Cause engineering, I mean, as a career, you have to be continually learning. And just workflows, right? Different companies, like when you move to your next software engineering, even within, because you're in a big company, even between teams, they have very different workflows, different processes, different tooling, and it's not just about whether, you know, Java or JavaScript or Python, like that's just.
That's table stakes. That's the easy part, right? It's knowing all the tools. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone's going to have a different way of working. Right. And you know, it's going to be different from the ways you currently work on your team, maybe different from how you work on a personal project. Right. And it's, it's normal when you, you get to that point and you say to yourself, okay, like I'm not.
Completely sure of this new workflow. It's normal to feel like that, to have that, you know, okay, I need to learn this, this new, you know, people will think that, oh, I need to, I need to know everything, right? Again, it goes back to asking the right questions and, and, you know, asking. You know, saying, okay, I've done my research, you know, I've tried everything I [00:16:00] can, you know, who can I go to that can, that can help me with this.
And this is what is actually meant by problem solving. People think it's about the DSA, the data structures and algorithm and lead codes. That's not the problem solving people are looking for. Like when I went to Google, I didn't know the languages I had to write in, right? They, they didn't need me to know a specific language.
They just needed me to know how to program and solve programming problems, which are not data structures and algorithm problems. They just building real stuff problems, you know so you said.
So the self reliance thing is an interesting thing because I haven't heard, you know, people put it in quite that way, but it sounds like you weren't just looking to learn to code.
You were looking to get insight and strategy and coached on a new, an entire new career that was in coding, right? So it was not just the coding skills. You were looking for all the other meta skills. Is that right? That's correct. That's correct. Right. The metal skills. are often underlooked, but I think they're very important.
Like the learning how to learn aspect, right? If you, if you approach that as a meta skill, for example, I mean, that's [00:17:00] applicable to anything, right? That's a superpower, right? You can do it. You could, you could use that for learning a new instrument, right? Like learning learning how to surf, like whatever, you know what I mean?
Like whatever you want it's applicable to any discipline, right. And yeah, I think, I think just focusing on learning to programming part of things, right. It's not going to get you all the other skills you need.
And, you know, meta skills is, you know, if we talk about that too, it's also the skills of communication, right. I think that a lot of times people. Are coming from a career where they're like, well, this is completely left field to software engineering, right? How do I present myself in a way where, you know, I'm going to be able to de risk myself and convince the hiring manager.
And it's like, well, a lot of the, the careers that people come from, you guys have built really solid, strong communication skills. That's very, very important. Like if you can, if you can communicate very well to. Technical stakeholders, non [00:18:00] technical stakeholders, right? Being able to communicate like that is a massive benefit to you.
Right. And I mean, assuming you know how to code, that becomes a real plus one, but if you don't know how to code, that's not going to help, but yeah, differentiator, right? Like, so clearly learning to code is just one small piece of the puzzle. And now that, you know, you're obviously, you know, come a long way and you, you know, you've been managing projects, which is, you know, effectively, you know, Team lead level work.
And soon enough, you know, I'm sure you'll, that'll be formalized, looking back, I guess, what would you say now, actually, I don't like that question because it sounds like I'm selling myself, so I'm just going to shut up on that.
I'm not going to say that question. I'm trying to actually help people understand how they should make decisions. Right. About your career. Right. Whether it's with me or somebody else, it doesn't matter. It's how do you make the right decision. Right. You had a lot of risk, whether you chose me or somebody else, there's an unavoidable amount of risk.
Cause you can never know. Right. That's how did you go about making that decision? Like if somebody else had to come to you and say, Matt, I don't know what I should do to become a [00:19:00] professional coder. Do I do a bootcamp? Do I join something like Zubin's Inner Circl? Do I go to college? How would you help them guide the decision?
It's a really good question. It's not an easy question. I'll be honest. Yeah. How do I help people make that decisioN? Yeah. Yeah. Let me invert the question. When people are afraid of taking a risk, right? Right. Because
it's not that they don't know what they should do. It's that they worried that what they do won't work for them. Right. Right. And there are many many roads to Rome. Right. So sure. Everything works for some people, but not everything works for everybody. Sure. That's fair. Yeah. Right.
So how do people, how should people think about the risk of their decision or handle the fear of taking a decision? I think when, you know, looking at the fears of things, right. And I think this is something that I did when I looked at all of the Paths that I could go down. Right. I mean, it's, it's a very undervalued thing, but I think first and foremost, just look at it and saying that inherently any decision you make, right.
If [00:20:00] we're looking at the decision of, you know, which direction to go on to learn how to code, there's always going to be risk involved. Right. There's always going to be risk involved in any of those. If I didn't go with you and I went with bootcamp, there's risk with that. If I didn't enroll in community college, there's risk there, right?
There's even risk in becoming a software engineer or choosing any job or joining any company. There's always a risk. Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, for me, there's a pro and con to everything, right? There's going to be an upside and a downside and you, you, you, you.
You know, can kind of look at those holistically. I think for myself, I created just the pros and cons of, you know, if I go in this direction, how will this benefit me as opposed to what are the trade offs? Right. Also looking at what is the end skill you have, right. Is going into, let's say a bootcamp.
Is that going to get me everything I need? Right. Is it necessary to know all these things that I'm going to learn, or do I just need to understand? Right. The base level, the minimum effective dose, if you will. And, you [00:21:00] know, build my skills in other areas. Right. So I think it was a combination of saying, okay, what are the, you know, pros and cons to each approach?
Cause everything's going to have a risk, right? I think inherently acknowledging that, right. I think asking yourself, you know, what type of a person you are and what type of a person does it take to make that career shift? I think for myself. That was another, that was another thing.
Right. And then, you know, ultimately, yeah, I think, I think just looking at those and saying, you know, there's going to be a trade off to everything. Ask yourself, the people that are doing what you do or what you want to do, right? If you're in the same position as them, right, you know, ask a couple people and say to yourself, you know, okay, You know, this person has done what I want to do and they've had the most success going with this approach.
Right. Don't necessarily say that, you know, it kind of goes back to, you know, you asked people that were in Comp Sci and they gave you a bunch of advice. Right. And you could have taken that advice. They're not [00:22:00] inherently in the shoes that you, you were in, right. Where you were, you know, someone that was coming from a different background.
Right. So I think it's, I think it's important to say, look at the person. Are they doing exactly what you want to do? Look at your pros and cons of each approach, right? You know, and then I think, I think ultimately anything is going to be end up being a risk, but then look at yourself and say what type of person you will be at the end of that, right?
As compared to the other approaches, right? I didn't think that community college or You know, to take comp sci classes or a bootcamp was going to make me any different than any of the other candidates that came out of that. And seeing that you had done exactly what I wanted to do. That was what was enough for me that de risked that decision to say, okay, I want to move forward.
And so that's how I've been speaking from my perspective. That was the kind of thought process that I went through. Everyone's a little different, but I think that's the approach you need to take when you're asking yourself those questions. Right. That [00:23:00] makes sense. And, and, you know, you remember like, you know, Debbie, Alexander, Jay, all the others that you may have met along the way.
Like. Such different backgrounds, and now several years in, you sometimes do coach some of the students in the Inner Circle Program anyway, cause you enjoyed doing the coaching and I bring you into coaching them. So you've seen all their backgrounds.
They're so different. Completely. How can they all have exactly the same plan? This is what always bothered me about the traditional education system is they don't care about who you are, what your circumstances. Do you have kids? Do you not have kids? Do you have a certain background? Do you do you speak English?
They don't care about any of this. The same thing and expect everybody to sink a swim, right? Yeah. I really like that. You brought that up too, because that's, that's another point I didn't think about, and I think it's, it's, it's looking at, you know, not just where you want to go and it has the person done that, but are they accommodating to
your specific situation, right? Because your specific situation will always be different than someone else's your [00:24:00] background, right? Your level of whatever skill you're coming in with is going to be different. Yeah, right. Your inherent strengths and weaknesses will be different. Your market's going to be different, right?
I'm in the States. right? You're in Australia, but you work with people all over the world. The market's different everywhere you go. Right. So one of my students right now, she's doing market research because we spend so much time in that and she wants to go back to Switzerland.
Yeah. And I said, you know what? Take an extra week and do all the research for both using the tutorials and the training that I've given you. And the results are completely different. Like, cause they're totally different markets down to the city. Like, you know, New York is different from you know, from, from Austin.
And it's, it's quite different from Vancouver. Like exactly. Different places have different markets and people don't realize this. They just think it's about learning this language and learning that framework. And they're like, nah, your market's totally different. You know, you're selling yourself in the market.
Ultimately you're the product. If you do [00:25:00] not know your market. Like any other product, you will fail. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So I know that everyone's got their journey. You had your good days, you had your bad days, and there was a lot of, you know, individualized, personalized coaching that needed to be done for that.
Right. Just like everybody else, you know, and, and that's why That, you know, that's why I think different people need different kind of help. I'm glad we talked about that because I think a lot of people just assume there's a formula to career change becoming a coder and there is no formula. There's no secret trick. There's no, "tip" yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
You know, just inherently making that decision of like, all right, I want to switch careers like takes a person with a lot of courage to do something like lots of courage, right? To completely Just disregard everything you've done up to that point and say I want to completely switch Right. So I think when you're when you're scared with that decision think remember that to yourself to say like, all right This is inherently a really [00:26:00] tough decision.
I'm making Yeah. Right. What does this say about me? You know that I'm, I'm even considering all these, these, you know, options and, and whatnot. And I think, you know, that should be kind of your first, like, you know, battle you face, you, you accomplish, you, you make that decision, you take the leap, you go in the direction that you go in.
And I think there's something admirable about it. And I think it's, it's, you know, and ultimately, you know, I can't emphasize enough just being directionally aligned with where you want to go. It's so important, right? It's like, it's like direction is more important than speed, right? We talk about this all the time in the program directions more important.
Don't rush. Absolutely. If you're going to rush, make sure you're a hundred percent in the right direction. Otherwise you're wasting your time. So yeah, man. Yeah.
Hey, so, so it's interesting. You raise this thing about it's a courageous thing and it's not an easy, it's not a walk in the park.
It's, it's a, it's a bit of a battle, right? It is. How do you feel about all this marketing BS out there and all these social media influencers sort of [00:27:00] talking about, Oh, 90 days, become a, you know, 150K coder or work two cybersecurity jobs and, you know, earn 300K . What do you think of all that?
Like that marketing rubbish? I mean, okay. I've said what I think, but what do you think? Yeah, I mean, Honestly, there's a lot of, a lot of garbage out there. Right. I'll say that. Right. I think there's a lot of, I mean, you have to look at it from this way. Why are they pushing this so hard?
It's because when you enroll, they make money, right? Yeah, truly. Right. It's, it's, it's all motivated by someone at the end of the day is making money, right? Do you think that that person is going to give you completely personalized coaching on exactly where you want to go. No, they might answer your Q&A in a forum, right?
But they're not, their prerogative is to reach as many people as possible, right? They want to just get as many people to see it, then to pay for it. Again, they're speaking also what worked for them. They said, Hey, this works for [00:28:00] me. Right. Maybe, you know, maybe they have the best intention. They say this worked for me, so I'm going to put it out there.
Right. And you guys can follow this too. And in 30 days, you'll get the exact same results. That's not true, right? It's the same thing as like you go to the gym and then you say like, all right, like, you know, follow this exact workout plan and this exact, you know, everyone's body is different. Right. Totally, totally different.
Yeah. It's funny. Cause there've been a couple of bootcamp folks that reach out to me and say, Oh, you know, why are you doing it this way? You can't scale your business. Cause you know, it's nobody coaches somebody for one year and calls it a business.
That's a long time. Like 90 days, three months. That's a business, right? Like for a year, that's a long time to spend with people. And it's, you know, it's extremely hard to do. And so I started calling myself the anti bootcamp because I liked that the bootcamps don't like what I'm doing. Like, I really like it.
But also now it, it turns out that I mean, I'd said this back in 2017, 2018, when I made the transition [00:29:00] that tech's hype and boom cycle was lifting all the boats. Right. And I've been around 25 years now in the, in the workforce.
START: I'm like, I know my history. There's never been any market in the world, any industry in the world that had what tech did in the last 20 years. You know, between 2010 and 2020 and the pandemic, right? Those 10 years were unprecedented in human history. But what was always there in human history is that every industry goes through these massive growth cycles and then the growth is a bit slower.
It's still growing, but it's just slower. And at that point of time, the markets already got a strong supply of really good labor. Right. And so it changes. And I was like, maybe it was possible to do it in 90 days in 2012 and 2013 and 2014. I don't know, but that is not a sustainable way. So from day dot, even before the market started to turn, I was doing one year, right?
Like, like I did with you guys, because I'm like, there is no way you can get professionally good at anything in 60 days or 30 days. It's not possible. 90 days, not possible. One year head down, bottom up, yeah. Just [00:30:00] go, just go for one year, you know but people don't like it. And maybe I should do the marketing thing that maybe I should tell people ahhhh 90 days you can go what you want.
I tell people, nah, it's probably going to take you a year. If you're not ready to do a year, don't join the Inner Circle Program. Like it's going to take you longer than you realize. And a lot of people don't like it. They're like, Oh, I can do it in 60 days from this guy. Like, good, go do it. Go do it. Yeah.
Right. And that's why now 40 percent of my students are from bootcamps. Yeah. There you go. Right. It's going on. You go in one direction and I think it speaks to, if you want to be a professional at anything, you're going to keep doing it and you're going to have to keep setting your head down, right?
It's like, okay, say you're going to take 90 days, 120, whatever. It's like, you're still going to be coding. Every single day after that. Yeah. Do you think that in three months, like any professional you see around you has become a professional that quickly? It, it just doesn't happen?
It doesn't happen. It doesn't. I mean, there are very rare exceptions where you'll have exceptional talent that will, you know, might, that might [00:31:00] figure out everything exactly the way it needs to be figured out. Right? But if they're doing that, Matt, the only time I've seen somebody do it in less than six months.
Yeah, is they doing it 12 - 16 hours a day? Yes, exactly. It's a, it's a function of the hours, not the days at that point in time. Like they're just going all in, they're doing in six months what other people do in one year. Sure. They're still doing one year's worth of work, right? They just compressed it like that.
I mean, and then you give up your job and stuff. I mean, but it's, I've honestly never seen that happen. And I think increasingly. There's so much distraction on the internet that even if you spend 90 days working 16 hours a day, you're probably working, as you said, going in the wrong direction. You're probably working in the wrong things because there's so much BS on the internet now, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, a lot of programming people are like, you know, you have a tutorial or you'll have a bootcamp course or whatever. And it's like. It's going to give you the results that you want initially, right? It's going to say like, Oh, okay. Like everything rendered perfectly and it deployed [00:32:00] perfectly.
And Oh my God, everything worked perfectly. And like, I've got two routes on the server and they both returned a response. I'm a genius. All right. Yeah. It's like, I know what I'm going to do. And then it's just, you get to industry and that's, you know, I don't remember the last time I worked on the first try, you know what I mean?
It's like, it's always, it's always going to just be this continual cycle of figuring things out. And I think that's where the engineering part comes into play. That's when people start to be like, Oh, it's not as easy as it looks on the surface. And it takes, it's a craft, man. Like everything else, you know, it's, it takes, you know, you've got to be honing that craft for years now.
I know you've got to get back to work. So I have one question. Cause I remember, I still remember our first conversation ever met first conversation ever, where I asked you someday you're going to be a programmer, you know, by the time I'm done. Coaching you, you're going to be, you know, in programming and who's the first person you're going to tell?
And you said it was your dad. Yeah. And you said it was going to be your dad because he's a programmer for a long time and he believed in you. And I remember, I remember how your voice sounded. Cause you said you were kind of choking up and you're like, [00:33:00] I really want to do this. And I want to see the look in his eye.
. So. How is your dad and, and how, how are you liking the fact that you and him are probably talking shop, both of your programmers now, like speaking the same language. How does that feel? I mean, he's doing great. He's later on in his career.
So he's done a lot more than I have at this point. You know, but he is, he's doing great. And it's fantastic to to talk shop and to be able to, you know, relate. Right. It's all the same. Like I can relate way more heavily now than I did before.
Right. And we talk about a lot of the same problems that are a lot of the problems that we deal with on a day to day basis, like are the same flavor, right? It's, it's different language, right? He comes from a different background. He does a lot more, you know. Like COBOL and all that stuff from, you know, way back when he won't, he won't like hearing that if he sees this, but but you know, right, right.
But [00:34:00] it's, it's, it's incredible how the, the problems kind of stay the same, right. No matter what, I mean, like I mentioned, he's been doing this decades longer than I have, right. And the problems are like the same, you know, and the problems are the same. And again, this is an interesting insight. You've got there, Matt.
It's the same insight I had that made me launch the Inner Circle program, which is, it's not actually the code. It's the human beings trying to learn. The problems that they share tend to be quite similar, right? Which ends up being around mindset, confidence, psychology, direction, planning, time management.
How much time did we spend on managing your internal state, managing your time, auditing your time, looking out for time leaks, tracking these things. Like, nothing to do with the code. And you fix all those little pieces and suddenly the orchestra starts sounding balanced, you know, like things start happening, right?
It's because there are these common problems in every domain, every domain in the world, there are abstract common [00:35:00] problems. And it doesn't matter which era you're in. You know, I mean, a lot of the Buddha's teachings or Christ's teaching or take any sort of, you know, periodic philosophy are still valid today, even though we live in a completely different world, it's still valid today because a lot of the themes and the problems just recur through time.
And it's the same thing with programming, you know, the same challenges your dad will facing the language and the implementation detail may be different, the same principle. You know, and once you understand the principle, you can solve all classes of all, all problems within that class, regardless of the implementation detail.
Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, Once you understand the problem at a higher level, I'd say, rather than just saying like, Oh, okay. You know, I'm just trying to implement like X new feature. Right. I think once you start to understand this as like a set of business problems that you are tasked to solve, right.
And, and you start to see the parallels and the similarities between [00:36:00] them. Right. Then you start to say, okay, well. I understand what type of problem this is, how it needs to be approached to solve it. And that's where also creativity starts to come into play and saying like, what different approaches have I learned from a previous implementation that I can apply here?
. Right. So ultimately cross pollinate. Yeah. A hundred percent. Exactly. And you start to see like, okay, this is, You zoom out and you say, okay, this is bigger than just like, okay, this small technical problem we're trying to solve for a business need.
Right. And you start to see how those business problems need to be approached. Strategy plays a huge role. Man, you have grown so much in the years that I've known you. Like it's such an honor. And I feel so proud to have sort of been part of that journey.
So, you know, good on you, man. Like, like beginning for you, this is just the beginning. You've got, you know, long and, and, you know, difficult, but prosperous road ahead of you. And I think you should be super proud. You, you, you showed up, you, you spent that year just working so hard, [00:37:00] being so committed, not making excuses.
You got hit. in the face a lot of times by life circumstances unrelated to what we were doing, you know, you fell down, you picked yourself up, you just showed up and did so well. So everything you've got today is a testament to who you chose to be. And I'm using those words very deliberately.
It's not who you are necessarily, it's not who you could have been. It's who you chose to be day to day. So, you know, keep, keep going. It's, it's a pleasure to, you know, to know someone like you and to watch your growth. And thank you so much for spending your Friday morning with me, man. Like that was, I super appreciate it.
I super appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. for having me Zubin. Thank you for all you've done and what you continue to do, man. You still are in my corner. Always, always giving, you know, giving me support in what I'm doing. So really appreciate, you know, the time that And, and, you know, obviously since we've been working together, you know, really, really shaped my career, really put me on the right track and, you know, can't say thank you enough.
So it's my pleasure, dude. It's such an honor. It's my pleasure. And, you know, once part of the inner circle, you know, we're all part of the family, [00:38:00] like everyone just gets to know each other, such a small group anyway, like it's such a family. So anyway, man, you have a great day at work. You know, try not to break anything today before the weekend.
No problem, man. Said like, spoken like a true engineer. No problem. All right. Have a great Friday. Say hello to everyone at home and I'll see you soon. Yep. Catch you soon.
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