Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
Welcome to the podcast that helps you develop your skills, your habits, your network and more, all in hopes of becoming a thriving Software Engineer.
Develop Yourself
Special Episode: Answering Fan Mail
Send a text and I may answer it on next episode (I cannot reply from this service 😢)
Have you ever sent a message into the void? That's exactly what's been happening to listeners who've tried to contact me through Buzzsprout's messaging system.
From a father in Dayton balancing family responsibilities while trying to break into tech, to aspiring developers wondering if JavaScript is still worth learning in 2025, these messages touch on real struggles and practical concerns.
I share personal insights about my own journey learning to code while supporting a family and offer actionable advice for making career transitions with limited time.
Please keep the questions coming!
Shameless Plugs
🧠 (NEW) Parsity's The Inner Circle Program - a highly customized roadmap to take you from 0 to hired. For career changers who want to pivot into software.
💼 Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Google, Brian-look-a-like)
👂🏻Easier Said Than Done Podcast
Already a developer? Check out 👉 Not Another Course
Serious about joining Parsity? Schedule a call with me ☎️
Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast featuring my dad. So this is a special episode because I have been getting fan mail through a service I use called Buzzsprout, which allows me to basically send my podcast out and distribute it across different, you know platforms and things like that. The problem is that some of you have been writing me through this platform, and this is crazy, but they don't allow me to respond through the platform, and this is not a bug. This is actually how they decided this would be the best way to make it, and it's pretty ridiculous. So, one, if you send me a text message through the show and you do that little send text message thing, just know that I cannot reply there. So if you do want to reply, please just write to brian at parsityio. That's the best way to reach me.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to answer these in this short episode here because I feel guilty that people have been writing this stuff and I haven't been answering them. So, without further ado, let's go through some of these and maybe you'll find some of the answers to these questions useful. Or maybe you're one of the people that wrote these and you're like damn, that guy's a jerk. He never even responded to me. So here's a pretty good question from somebody from Dayton Ohio. It says hey, I love the podcast, listened since Aaron started it. By the way, Aaron was the previous owner of Parsity and the guy that used to run this podcast. I've been doing it for the last almost year and a half now. So this person's done free code camp. They took one of those software development places at University of Phoenix. They're now in a bachelor's program for cybersecurity and they're still struggling between wife, kids, full-time job, little time to advance my skills.
Speaker 1:And how do I get mentorship or good experience on a very limited timeframe? How can I get someone to let me get my foot in the door and still afford bills for my family of four, to let me get my foot in the door and still afford bills for my family of four? I know I can make more in the future and I'll start off lower pay, but I'm strapped and I live paycheck to paycheck. How it is? This sounds a lot like what I was going through, honestly, when I first learned to code and you had a family. We had two kids at the time and I was barely just getting by, right.
Speaker 1:What I would focus on is figuring out how to kill as many birds with one stone as possible, and in this case it sounds like you need to get work experience, which can also lead to mentorship. You'll kind of get that naturally and you'll also get some validation for your skills. The way we've seen people do this at Parsity, that is the most straightforward and the most effective is by going down Main Street, meaning your local community. Maybe you're in a church, maybe you're in some sort of organization, maybe your kids are in an organization, some sort of school. Your kids go to school, I assume and reaching out and saying what can I do there? Can I contribute? Now, you won't get mentorship in this way, but you will get some validation and you'll build something for somebody else. Mentorship in this way, but you will get some validation and you'll build something for somebody else. That alone will teach you a ton.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're doing cybersecurity which I'll be completely honest with you a bit of an orange flag for me, not because cybersecurity is a bad thing to learn or because it's not important, but you say software engineering and you did a free code camp and advanced software development and now you're in a bachelor's for cybersecurity. So I think the best thing you can do is one just get really clear on your goals. Is your goal to get a job in software or is it to do cybersecurity? I would hope at the University of Phoenix, where you're paying all this money to go, that they would have some sort of internship or alumni network where you can get an internship, even if it means working 10 hours a week, and you can do that on the weekends. We're doing an internship right now at Parsity and we have people everybody has a full-time job, or most of them do and they're doing 10 hours a week maximum at the place for four weeks. Now that's a lot to ask. Even 10 hours a week is a lot. We do it for four weeks, so that could be one way to go about this. But why is your time frame limited? You know I get that like we want the result quickly, but if you think well, how am I going to get the best chance? The best chance might not be the thing that's the quickest. I really hope that's helpful and I don't mean to discourage you at all. I think what you're doing is great. I know it takes a lot of dedication, and the fact that you're doing this with a wife and four kids, or what with a wife and kids, is commendable. So keep it up. Do the cybersecurity thing, if that's what you actually like to do, and then go to your school, first and foremost because you're paying them and they should be absolutely trying to provide you those kind of opportunities, so hope that's helpful.
Speaker 1:On to the next one. This one's a pretty short one. It says hey, I'm listening to your podcast. Should I still learn JavaScript in 2025? Yes, you should, and I want to be set up nicely. Okay, what does that mean? Set up nicely, get Visual Studio Code, get Cursor as a text editor, go to javascriptinfo. Go to Codecademy. Do the JavaScript track, start building stuff. Go check out my video on YouTube with how to work with APIs and JavaScript, because I think that's actually the most important thing you can possibly know. It's not learning all these intricacies or weird things about JavaScript. It's learning how to use it practically, particularly with APIs, because learning how to get data and then show it in a page is what you essentially do as a full stack developer or front end developer. It's really all you do, so I hope that's useful.
Speaker 1:On to the next one. All right, from Burbank says hey, saw your show with Jeremy. Jeremy is a guy that I have known for a while. He, all right from Burbank, says hey, saw your show with Jeremy. Jeremy is a guy that I have known for a while. He was doing some sales for Parsity. He's also a software engineer. He didn't even graduate high school and he's worked all the way up to engineering manager in tech. He's in the San Francisco Bay Area and he's a wonderful, really interesting person to get in touch with and know. It says I'm interested in your customized mentorship program. Where can I get more info? This turned out to be an ad for me. Apparently, you can get that info at parsityio slash inner dash circle and a customized mentorship program.
Speaker 1:It's like an anti-bootcamp. Essentially. It's like we get that people want a job in tech and they want to learn how to code. We also understand that's just half of what you need to know. It's so much more than just learning how to code, because if it was all about just learning how to code, we'd have a lot more people that had jobs in tech, and we all know that's not the case. We know that bootcamps in general have fallen short on that promise and what we do is take a much more holistic approach. So, yeah, if you're in the US and you can afford it, then it's a great alternative to a coding bootcamp. It's also more cost effective for now. In the future I don't think it will be. It will have to be priced correctly, because what we offer is something that no bootcamp can ever offer, which is customization and personalization and working directly with us, and to my knowledge, no other coding bootcamp can offer anything near that at all. Okay, on to the next one bootcamp can offer anything near that at all. Okay, on to the next one.
Speaker 1:I want to learn the source code. Help, go on GitHub. I don't know. Most source code is on GitHub if you search hard enough, so you should be able to look that kind of thing up. Yeah, I wish I had an answer for you. I want to learn the source code. Go, get the source code. I guarantee you can find it. You'll find it. I believe in you. I believe in you.
Speaker 1:From Nigeria, someone says interested and my reply interesting yeah, one ton of really smart people in Nigeria and Pakistan that I've spoken to over the years. I've spoken to more developers in Pakistan and Nigeria probably than in the United States in the last three years or so. Ton of really smart people out there. A guy from Pakistan actually designed my website for Parsityio. You might think, aren't you a web developer? Yeah, but I don't have time to do all that. I'm running a business, I work a full-time job, I got kids and all sorts of other stuff. So, yeah, I hired a really smart person it was much better than me at designing to do the whole thing. He's a Pakistan dude, super smart. I've met him on Fiverr and I hired him for more money than you probably would imagine. I paid him over $1,000 to do the site, which is cheap, in my opinion. Now in his country, in Pakistan, I think the exchange rate was really in his favor there and I would hire him Again, no questions asked.
Speaker 1:You're thinking what? I'm in the US. That would be a good price for me, exactly. Stop undercutting yourself, stop shortchanging yourself and believe in yourself. Buddy, there are people out there, despite what people want to tell you or think, there are people out there that are charging a lot of money for a website. People like me are gladly paying and I write code for a freaking living. I suck at design and I don't have time, so I pay somebody to do to be the expert, so that way I don't have to think.
Speaker 1:Anyway, a Nigeria person. I just talked about Nigeria because maybe you're smart like a lot of the other Nigerians I've met and appreciate your comment, even if I don't really know how to respond to it. Okay, on to the next one. I'm so sorry for you. Person from UK and Northern Ireland. It says hi, interview coming up this Friday. Would you be interested in scheduling a practice interview? I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I do this for people at Parsity because they pay to be in Parsity and we absolutely do this and we do a very standardized plan with them and also do a standardized feedback with them on their mock interviews. That being said, I totally suggest you do mock interviews on prampcom, p-r-a-m-pcom. I am not sponsored. It's what I use. I've even shown my history in another YouTube video. I use this thing quite often, or at least I was when I was on the interview grind.
Speaker 1:Now that I'm not, I haven't used it in about six months or so, but yeah, pramp is my number one tool for practicing interviewing with people and, in general, if you're not in Parsity, I'm probably not ethically going to want to just offer free services, because there are people that are paying me and my buddy Zubin to do this stuff, to perform this service for them. So I wouldn't feel right just doing it for free, unless there's some very unique circumstance Now, people that I know, if I have a relationship with you, happy to do that. If I don't really know you, I don't feel like it's ethical for me to do that, because how would I? When would I decide that it's enough? Right? Like, if I have a thousand people ask for me, there's no way I can do that. The number of people in Parsity if everybody asked me, I'm like, yeah, I could do that, I could make time, but if people that I don't know very well ask, it just wouldn't be fair to the others that are paying for that service.
Speaker 1:On to the next one. It says great show, no-transcript of you won't join Parsity. So I don't do it, obviously just for business. That'd be a pretty stupid business tactic, I suppose. But yeah, I do it to hear stuff like that. So, yeah, super happy to hear that person from Brisbane, california, this person from Abuja not sure where that is it says I'm listening and I want to know whether your university is free or paid. It is paid my friend because I pay a lot of money just to have this program running and we actually just are getting accredited in the US, in the state of Indiana. Don't ask why it's in the state of Indiana. Us is a big place. We decided Indiana because we have a person that we work with in Indiana.
Speaker 1:California is notoriously difficult and just not a great state for getting things accredited or doing anything with business. I'm from California not the greatest place to do business or do anything interesting. So, yeah, it is very much paid for sure. Did you know that to get a degree or to get a license for cutting hair, do you know how much a barber license costs in California? Anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000.
Speaker 1:And I'll just give you a big hint here Parsity is very much under that range. Right, we're right under the lowest range. We're cheaper than a barber college right now, which is a problem in my opinion. I know people say well, everything should be free. It's not and you know there's plenty of free resources out there and if you want to do those, I suggest you do those for sure, especially if you're in a different country. It's going to be wildly expensive for you to join Parsley If you're in the US. In my opinion, it's not, and I'm not saying that because I've been writing code for 10 years, or whatever. This price that we're offering is less than what most coding boot camps, or than almost any coding boot camp is currently offering. Again, I think this is a problem, because I think that, in people's minds, they look at us as a cheap option, which is weird, because we should probably be one of the most high-priced options.
Speaker 1:In my opinion, most boot camps they have like a guy or a girl, woman, man that is fresh out of that boot camp teaching you. They're not working full-time, because if they were, they wouldn't have time to do that too during the day. It's just not possible, so what you're mostly getting is people that haven't worked professionally very much, or maybe they're between jobs. That could be your best bet. If they're between jobs, you might have a really good person. Most likely, though, is that you got a person that just graduated from that coding program and they don't know very much in the first place, and now they're teaching you. Not a great move.
Speaker 1:In fact, I was one of those people at a coding bootcamp where I was barely out and I was coming back to teach people and this was 2015, 10 years ago and they were paying $10,000 in 2015 to learn from me. Back then that was not really great. At the time I was naive and thought, oh yeah, that makes a ton of sense because now the knowledge is fresh in my mind. But how could I really teach somebody something I was barely understanding myself? So roundabout answer for saying no, it's not free. We're going to do one more here, and this one I really hope this person is listening. My name is Sebastian and I'm interested in potentially switching careers. Do you have an email where I can send my story? I do and I would love to hear your story.
Speaker 1:I genuinely like reading people's emails and the nice things they have to say. I mean, I get some mean emails, 100%. I get some jerks out there that wanna tell me how much I suck or I'm fake or whatever. They hate the commercials in the podcast. I get it. You know I put myself out there and I expect to get a little bit of hate, but 99% of the time I get a lot of love.
Speaker 1:So, sebastian, if you're listening to this, yeah, please write to me my name, my email, is brianatparsityio. Okay, that's all the fan mail that I'm going to read and I really sincerely hope that, if that you heard this and that, if you want to write me, don't think I'm ignoring you. You know that's never my intention. Please just write to brianatparsityio, and if you just want me to answer a question, feel free to keep using the fan mail option or the send us a text message link that is in the show notes, because I'm more than happy to keep doing that. But yeah, I would have felt really bad if people just thought I was totally ignoring them. I'm not promise you I'm not. So hopefully you got some use out of this and if you weren't one of these people, if you weren't one of these five or six people, hopefully you still enjoyed hearing me go through some of these and I will see you around. This is a special episode. I'll still be back on Thursday with yet another episode, a regular one, not a fan-made one. See you around.
