There's a MASSIVE Skill Gap Among New Developers

When it comes to breaking into the tech industry, there’s a labyrinth of myths and misconceptions about what it really takes to be job-ready as a developer. In this eye-opening podcast episode, Derek, a seasoned web developer and educator known as Sheriff Derek, debunks these myths and offers a candid look at the essentials of tech education and the reality of coding bootcamps.

Derek begins by addressing the widening skills gap among aspiring developers. He’s seen first-hand the false expectations and underdeveloped skills of those entering the market. The allure of high-paying jobs post-bootcamp has overshadowed the passion and commitment required to truly excel in web development. He expresses concern that many are not prepared for the realities of the job market, which now demands more due to the influx of developers spurred by the pandemic.

In the next segment, the conversation shifts to the effectiveness of coding bootcamps in preparing candidates for the tech industry. Derek stresses the importance of foundational knowledge in HTML and CSS, arguing that a robust understanding of these technologies is critical given their universal application across the web. He highlights that there is a diversity of jobs within tech, suggesting that a broader preparation could prevent disillusionment and career stagnation for those not suited for traditional software engineer roles.

Derek then critiques the coding bootcamp model for often rushing into advanced coding concepts without a solid foundation in the basics. He emphasizes the importance of understanding foundational elements before moving on to more complex tools. This approach is not only essential for mastering web development but also for adapting to the evolving landscape of technologies and frameworks.

Further into the discussion, Derek talks about the challenges coding bootcamps and self-taught developers face in fostering the necessary curiosity and drive. He argues that beyond following a curriculum, developers must experiment hands-on and cultivate a genuine interest in technology to succeed. The tech industry offers vast opportunities for those who are willing to explore and innovate.

The episode also touches on the value of mentorship and immersive learning environments. Derek warns against superficially navigating through computer science programs without true engagement and learning. He compares traditional computer science degrees with coding bootcamps, noting the varied outcomes and opportunities each path presents.

Lastly, Derek examines the trend of developers gravitating towards frameworks that allow for rapid development, often at the expense of essential skills. He calls for empathy for beginners and underscores the importance of understanding the building blocks of web development. This understanding is key to true problem-solving and lo

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Transcript

Don Hansen: 0:13

Welcome back to another WebDev podcast episode where we help aspiring developers get jobs and junior developers grow. So today's topic we are going to dive into are aspiring developers really prepared, what's going on with the market? And you know, do the skills, do the expectations line up? And hopefully you can get quite a bit of advice as an aspiring developer from this episode. But I invited on Derek. We've had him on before. He's a very candid personality. He's pretty active on Reddit as well and so you know, like usual, I like to bring you candid conversations. So, derek, feel free to you know, give a little intro for yourself and we'll dive into it.

Derek Wood: 0:52

Yeah, sure, I'm from San Diego. I, you know whatever grew up skateboarding, went to art school, didn't really find myself doing web development until like 2011,. Sort of took over my life and now I end up in all sorts of different web development roles, from, you know, like freelancing to contracting, to like whatever senior product designer roles and I do a lot of stuff with like education. So that's what I'm up to.

Don Hansen: 1:19

Awesome, All right. So, um, to kind of just be candid, uh, you saw one of my rants. It was a live stream and I was just ranting about how so many people are completely underprepared to enter the industry right now. There are a lot of variables, but I went off on a rant and you had a lot to say on that. So, I'd love to hear your perspective on where you think people are and what they're struggling with right now for aspiring developers.

Derek Wood: 1:51

Yeah, sure, so obviously I don't know everything about everything, I'm just a person but I do happen to have an interesting history. I mean I've been answering questions on Stack Overflow for like over a decade and helping out in discords and long gone forums and all sorts of things and I offer advice to people and I meet a lot of web developers but I don't think I meet as many as you do, don, but I meet a lot of web developers, least a couple of weeks doing portfolio reviews. I talk to people, you know, helping them choose a boot camp maybe, or, you know, help them figure out just where they fit in the field or review their portfolios. And yeah, when I saw your kind of rant, I was, you know, a lot of that stuff was lining up with what I'm seeing. And I mean I don't mean to joke about it. It's not very fun for some people, but I think that, like I mean, you were just talking you had so many bullet points but like false expectations, just like the market right now.

Derek Wood: 2:48

But like what is a boot camp even capable of? Like what are you know what? There's just so many things to consider. And how do you break that down? Like, is it a bootcamp versus student story? Is it an idea of what should be taught story? Is it about what we think the industry needs story? And I don't know. It's just like you have to kind of break it open and talk about all the pieces of it. But I would say, like just to start off with something that I've kind of typed out on Reddit like a hundred times over the last couple of months and then deleted, and I just feel like I have to say it, I've met a lot of web developers lately and I could not pay them $5 an hour or even $0 an hour, because they're really at the point where they're a liability. It's just that it's that off the mark is how I would say it, and that's kind of shocking, like I'm shocked.

Don Hansen: 3:47

Yeah, you know, I've I've noticed a huge skill difference in terms of the majority of what aspiring developers are capable of. So the expectations from companies have gone up a little bit as so many developers flood the market and developers that have been laid off are also trying to apply for positions, and I feel like the expectations for an entry level dev it's gone up and then somehow the skill level of most aspiring developers or at least significantly more it's gone down and so there's a huge skill gap that I see and I think so many people and their mother and their father and everyone they know wants to become a developer. We experienced a pandemic and it made people think about, like, do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life? It had a lot of people rethinking their careers and you had content creators pushing like hey, become a developer. You had coding bootcamps pushing hey, become a developer. This is careers Awesome, and so many people have been trying to become a developer for many years and we had a little bit of a boom around 2021, 2022.

Don Hansen: 4:56

Um, and then that has significantly gone down. So we have a lot of interest in the industry and a lot of people getting into the industry that you know, quite frankly, might not be capable or they're not truly interested in coding, like they're getting in for a career change, but they don't. You know, they don't want to wake up and dig into their project. They don't want to. They're not excited about learning something new, they're just give me the most optimal path to learn so I can land a hundred K position as soon as possible. And so many people want this and I've just noticed a massive skill gap and I think that's the reason. What do you think about that?

Derek Wood: 5:34

Um, I think you could say that it's maybe culturally like wider than this, because I mean, some of the people I've taught and you know, people I've worked with over the years and stuff, it's like, you know, they just didn't really want to do it or, you know, but they they thought they could like the gap between what they thought was a reasonable amount of time or work or what was going to happen, or just like there's just a disconnect.

Derek Wood: 6:04

They're like I want to be a developer and you're like okay, you'll know that then you'll have to go to work and develop things, right, and I mean I think they're just like what's he talking about? Like, you know, that's not how my blurry story that I'm enjoying right now works, so I don't know, but I see it in lots of areas. I mean I go out to restaurants and people don't know how to like bring food to your table. You know it's like crazy. There's a lot of just like disconnect with what I would consider follow through in and, I think, a lot of parts of life. That's not just web development, but that maybe that marketing feeds into that right, like, if somebody says, whatever you're like, you're saying you know, sign up for this thing follow, follow the rules, follow the leader, and you'll somehow get a really high paying job. I think it just might like match up with some other things in society, possibly.

Don Hansen: 7:02

That. Okay, that's a really interesting take. I don't think I've ever heard that before. So you're saying you've seen that essentially culturally in society, you've seen that in other professions and so it's not necessarily kind of a web dev thing which I kind of focused on. You're seeing just a lack of follow through with a lot of people.

Derek Wood: 7:22

Yeah, I mean, it's a weird logic world. Right now. You have your kind of pedantic 4chan people who got their pitchforks out and then they know all the special idioms and logical fallacies and they'll call you out and they'll be like that's a straw man argument. But you'll just say, all right, show me your portfolio, show me your work. You're saying you can't get a job. Show me your work, I'll sit with you, I'll look at it, let's see Can you make a website or not?

Derek Wood: 7:52

And they're just like well, I shouldn't have to have a website. You know, like like that's not fair. You know I hate the government, but I should also get like these things should be given to me. Like there should be an amount of corporate responsibility, and I mean it almost borderlines on. You know whatever it's called. Like the like involuntary celibate people. You know the people who are like I should get a girlfriend delivered to me. Like I'm like what are you talking about? This isn't that serious. Like websites, http, sending HTML files around. You can put things on that page that could make people money. People want to pay you to know how to make websites, can you make them or not? But it's like nobody wants to talk about it Like I'm some kind of crazy cult maniac for expecting people to actually know how to make a website at the basic level, like can I type create React app?

Don Hansen: 8:46

No, well, I can't do it so there is so kind of like. It just sounds like you're seeing a lot of entitlement, so a lot of people coming in expecting, and so let me, I guess, give a couple examples to make sure I understand correctly. Like I see a lot of people that feel like there should be a like companies should provide or they should give junior developers a chance. I think that's a really good example. You hear that a lot Companies should give junior developers a chance and the reality is companies have a budget and a very limited budget right now and they want people to ramp up very quickly and they're going to hire people that ramp up very quickly and they're looking for long lasting developers and I think good junior developers with a great personality can be that good cultural fit for them long term. But you know, it seems like a lot of people expect companies give them a chance and companies don't owe them jack shit at all. They're a business.

Derek Wood: 9:55

I mean, it's nice.

Derek Wood: 9:56

It's nice, I mean the place I worked at last like full-time job I had at Pixel Agency. They brought someone on who was in their computer science degree and had them interning. They had someone from a bootcamp up in Portland. They had somebody who kind of transferred over from the marketing side of the team and she wanted to get on the dev team and I was sort of in like a senior role there. And you know they they were like a really nice company who was like bringing everybody up. I think she's like one of their main developers now and everything. So I mean those companies exist. They still exist today, but I think then that's another spectrum.

Derek Wood: 10:30

Like I mean, I really tried to draw out a chart like this is what I'm going to talk, to talk about, but it's like so multidimensional, it's like and so I didn't know where to jump in on that. Sorry, I think I chose the wrong spot, but like where, like when I started I started like freelancing, started working out a little dev shop, like that's a lot different than going straight in for like software developer to Facebook or whatever. Like those are different worlds for different reasons. Who knows if they actually do harder work there, but there's a reason why they're called like software engineers there because they're they're creating an idea that they have this like hierarchical tiered system that holds you accountable for your skill level and that over the decades they can tell where to keep you and where to use you for for the most benefit. But there's tons of other jobs and I feel like in a way, bootcamps and you know this isn't like anti bootcamp, I'm just saying like there are tools and they have like limits. In one way they're not preparing you enough for like software engineering roles and they some of them have marketed themselves that way. So it's their fault for like putting themselves in that position and some of them have marketed themselves that way, so it's their fault for like putting themselves in that position. But at the same time they're not helping people learn how to maybe round down and work at like a WordPress shop or something, because they only know how to make this one kind of middle of the road, like you know, brittle React kind of app. I mean there are some better boot camps that teach more, like some more backend and stuff.

Derek Wood: 11:59

So again, I'm just saying not everybody is cut out to go for this one particular software engineer role. I mean I'm hardly a software engineer. You know I work more kind of as a UX designer, like UX engineer. You know I kind of always am in between either product manager, engineer or designer, somewhere in between those other areas.

Derek Wood: 12:21

But I think by not preparing people for a wider variety of roles, in a way that's problematic too, because it's kind of like, well, you're either going to slide into this one position or you're just going to basically get depressed and start over, and that's a bummer, because I think that there are a much wider variety of roles that are not in that realm, that people don't know exist and are not applying to and aren't, in a way, aren't prepared for those.

Derek Wood: 12:50

Like you could say, oh, email developer isn't as technically difficult as whatever full stack Martin developer, but in a way it's just as much domain, specific knowledge and time to get good at that. I mean, it's a weird world. I know someone who like runs a email HTML team of people and somebody at that last job that was their main job. So I'm not saying that there's, we should all just like round down to being technical phone answerers because we couldn't get the job we want. But I am saying that there is a wide variety of jobs and that they cross over many areas and that, yeah, I think people could be better prepared for that.

Don Hansen: 13:39

Since everyone's shitting on coding bootcamps so often, I think that's actually a really good place to start. So you had mentioned a lot of coding bootcamps are trying to essentially pigeonhole developers into this specific type of software engineer role, and a lot of people are trying to become this. But you know what they're're producing. You gave an example of like. Well, they kind of build a flaky react app. Um, what are coding boot camps fit like? How are they failing to prepare developers in the way that you would like them to be prepared?

Derek Wood: 14:12

yeah, well, I mean, I personally have had to hire people and help people hire people and I would like. Things like knowing HTML and CSS matter to me. So I think it's interesting that the boot camp always kind of offsets it to like a three week free class at the beginning, like if it was that easy, there wouldn't be a trillion questions every day in like all of the CSS forums, half the websites wouldn't be a trillion questions every day in like all of the CSS forums, half the websites wouldn't be all broken. And I'm not saying that you have to like totally super specialize on that. But I also think that in telling that story of kind of the history of HTML, you start to see, okay, html is a data structure. Like what other ways could we send data across the internet? Data structure, like what other ways could we send data across the internet? Like why is HTML important for screen readers, for people who are using assistive technology, for people who are scraping websites, for people who are ordering on their voice activated phones to order a hamburger from down the street, for AI and things to like read it, like these structures. It's like people want to skip over HTML and stuff, but HTML is a great way to teach about JavaScript. It's already a data structure and if you learn CSS selectors well, you already know how to select everything out of the DOM.

Derek Wood: 15:35

So to me, instead of just like I don't think you have to spend, you know, five months focusing on it, but there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to build an A-plus dead simple 1998 website before you go in and add 70,000 layers of other problems to it. And I like JavaScript, like I like building a website with Nuxt or whatever. I'm not full on HTMX only or anything, but I think that that matters because it builds up the story. And then you say, oh, okay, now let's talk about what do I do when I run into a situation where I'm copying and pasting my header and my footer and my you know, whatever my navigation. Why wouldn't I need a server to make some decisions about a database and then build out some new HTML for me? Like, these stories make connections, which makes connections, which makes connections. So if you dive in and you just follow the Ruby on Rails tutorial by yourself for five weeks, what's the difference between that and a bootcamp? Then Because if you're not getting that storyline and you're not connecting it, and then coming up and saying, okay, so here's where the server side kind of like ends, or here's where we get blocked and like JavaScript comes to save the day.

Derek Wood: 16:55

Here's a really good example of like JavaScript was invented just so that you'd get a validation response from your form, so you didn't like leave the page to buy something or whatever. But these little historical connections, then you know what you're actually doing. Like why am I using React? Like yeah, it's nice and it's easy for teaching to be like oh, it's a component, it goes there. Now they're all in little files or, and I don't know. It just seems like they people like are trying to reproduce an unreproducible teaching experience, and I think that it it's. It's nice for the teachers to teach some of these ways, but it doesn't necessarily have the impact. And I mean I think that there's it's just proof at this point Like there's a lot of smart people with backgrounds in like intense degrees, like you know, biology majors going to a bootcamp, and then they come out like not able to do anything, and so I mean, doesn't anyone?

Derek Wood: 17:59

It seems like we've had plenty of time to make adjustments, like you can make a new curriculum like should just always be evolving all the time, but I, you know, I hear so often oh yeah, we had to quit our cohort or we had to, or yeah, we're still using classes and all this stuff's out of date or whatever. I mean, should things really be so easily out of date that you can't buy a Mac M1 because, like Homebrew, and your entire system is based on those specific GitHub repos? I mean, it just doesn't seem like, yeah, I don't know. All I know is like people should be able to make websites when they spend a whole bunch of time learning to make websites and it doesn't seem like they are able to and it's a bummer. But the other part is they don't seem to care, they don't seem to know and they seem confused and they're like, well, I don't know. I mean, I worked on my website a lot. I don't want to work on it anymore.

Derek Wood: 18:55

Why can't just a job appear? This sucks, but I don't know, they're just disconnected from, like you know, the hard one self-taught route in a way, because you know, I had to stay up all night, I had to, like, learn all this stuff. But I don't know, it depends. I think also it depends what kind of combination people have. You know, have they gone to school recently or have they followed through with things? Do they have a background that's going to connect? Are they good to be around in the workplace environment? Like? There's a lot of combinations that I think can work, and I think there's a lot of bootcamps that are really doing their best. There's definitely some that are like knowingly doing their worst, but I think that you know there's a lot of really good ones knowingly doing their worst.

Don Hansen: 19:39

But I think that you know there's a lot of really good ones. I love this A lot to unpack there, let's Sorry, no, this is good.

Derek Wood: 19:47

You have to talk like every six months, otherwise it just becomes a big mound of.

Don Hansen: 19:53

It seems like you have a lot to vent about, and that's why it's good.

Derek Wood: 19:58

I feel like I did, but I guess I do a little bit. I mean, I spend a lot of time trying to really honestly get people to talk about this stuff. You kind of got to lean people around and say like, well, okay, well, what is the problem? What kind of jobs are you applying for? And I'll even ask, like I went to the JavaScript meetup yesterday at lunch. We have one the first Tuesdays of every month, javascript meetup. And you know there's even there saying I've got to find a job. Or you know I can't find a job and I say, well, what's your deal, what's the thing I should hire you for? And you know, invariably most people can't tell me, can't tell me. And I think that's another problem.

Derek Wood: 20:36

I think people don't need to niche super hard into something and it is the beginning of their career and they're going to have to kind of figure that out as they go.

Derek Wood: 20:45

But I do think it's going to help people stand out if they have a little bit of opinion nerd out on something, a little bit like no matter what it is. Maybe you're just obsessed with learning about assistive technology and you don't care anything about anything but those ARIA labels and you know stuff like that. Or maybe you like these whimsical little button micro animations, like when you push the like button on, you know, youtube, it makes little stars or something. Or you know, maybe you're obsessed with performance or something, but I think just sort of being able to like put together and I think I've heard you say this before Like getting a basic React app working is just a start, like no one's ever going to ask you to do that at work, like that's just getting the foundation ready. Now you have to build out features that there is no tutorial for. That is the job and that is what I don't think people are prepared for you had mentioned something a bit earlier.

Don Hansen: 22:02

A bit earlier, um, going through essentially a story like, for example, when do we actually how do I want to start this? Don't want to start with questions I hate or question. Let's, let's actually do a couple questions that I hate. Um, when, at what point do I master css? I learn JavaScript. I hate the word master. Yeah, that's weird.

Don Hansen: 22:22

People are going into this with trying to get a timeline of okay, I'm going to spend this timeline on this language, this timeline on this language, this timeline on this language, and they're not going into it trying to understand the building blocks, the fundamental pieces. Okay, so what is HTML? Why is it used? Let's use it, let's experiment with it, but it's lacking. Where is it lacking? What do we use to be able to supplement that HTML?

Don Hansen: 22:50

Right, when you learn and you go through a curriculum, a good curriculum is going to essentially tell a story that kind of leads to abstraction and bigger abstractions and bigger abstractions that solve the problems that came from managing, very like large websites and in large companies where you have a huge team of developers and you need to be able to scale this thing. Abstractions are built to be able to kind of help with that. There are a lot of things that are added to that to be able to help, but a lot of these like going through fundamental CSS. You take CSS grid away from someone, a lot of people are going to flail. They don't know how the hell to organize a website. Try taking Flexbox away from someone.

Don Hansen: 23:31

You used to be able to position all of these elements just fine without Flexbox, with CSS grid, and the trick is you still can and you take those two things away and people are done. They can't do jack shit and I think like that alone really highlights the problem. They are just diving into way too many abstractions way too quickly and you try to introduce them to problems where they can't have a nice neat package framework to be able to do a thousand different things to solve their problem because they don't know the steps that that framework takes. They don't know the need and the use cases for that framework. They are lost. Does that sound fair?

Derek Wood: 24:13

Yeah, I mean I guess I would shift your scale a little. I think, like I mean it's funny because I'm working with some people this week and I'm forcing them to do everything with floats and I'm starting to wonder, like, do I even really do this? But I would say at this point, like Flexbox and Grid are just like core, all right, but I would say that I would replace that with maybe material design, like Next Material Design, where it's seven layers, more than that. You can't do it without. Not only can't you do it without JavaScript and a set of design tokens or something I haven't really used it but you also can't do it without this version of React and you also can't do it without this version of Next or whatever. And you have to use of next or whatever and or next, and you have to use typescript or whatever like, but like where? Because you know.

Derek Wood: 25:02

But I do think there's a certain sort of person who's like that's their lane right there. They, they stitch everything together and maybe they are the mvp type freelance person and good for them. But I'm just saying, if you're trying to, I would hope that if somebody got halfway through the program and they realize like that's all they got. You know, some people are slower than other people that they'd come away with whatever was at that point, as opposed to kind of being like, okay, you are all in react person, or you're just like kind of bad at everything else, um, because you know, why can't we just get incrementally better at things?

Derek Wood: 25:42

I mean, you're writing HTML every day, from day one, so the only way they can be screwing it up is if they never got any of it right to begin with. So they've been practicing the bad habits the whole time. Because what does React do? It just creates HTML. I mean everything. It just creates HTML. I mean everything is just creating HTML. I mean it's just creating DOM, like how it does it, how it gets it done. Who cares? But like it still has to be good. I mean it should be.

Derek Wood: 26:11

I mean we have all these courses and speakers and accessibility for React websites. Instead of just like making a website properly, let's figure out how to fix everything when we're done. And we've used all divs instead of buttons and all this stuff. I mean, luckily we've come a long way. Like all of the framework, people work really hard to keep everything as accessible as possible. But there was a Angular 1.5 time period and it was a wild west there of spa stuff. But yeah, I agree that people need to be able to build the confidence with the core building blocks, whether that be.

Derek Wood: 26:55

Can I just build a to-do app with regular JavaScript or Python or PHP. Can I figure out why I would want to organize my folders in a certain way? Can I just be honest? Can I get to the point where I am not just trying to find the only right way, the mysterious holy grail of finally I'll know how to do everything the right way and then I can relax because now I can make all web apps perfectly Like? That idea I can hardly get it out of my head. I've been like working at it for like 13 years to get it out of there. I mean, like I kind of like start over halfway through my career because I had to like undo all that mentality. But so yeah, I don't know.

Derek Wood: 27:37

And so I guess part of it is is like, what can a bootcamp even do? Like, are they trying to do too much? Are they trying to do the wrong section for the wrong people? Should they have multiple time periods? I mean, some schools in the past have had like three different blocks. You know, yeah, I don't know. That's just another angle is like what, how you know we could could improve, but maybe it's just a time period problem. I mean, maybe three months is too fast. I mean I I think you kind of need time to soak it in. But it depends where you are.

Derek Wood: 28:17

Like I personally think if I had gone to a coding boot camp in like 2015 or yeah, I'd been in my doing like learning myself and I'd had jobs and everything for four years, like I might've been a good candidate at that moment because I didn't know what I didn't know. They would have probably told me more about the bigger picture of the industry, like more about web application architecture, um, like it probably would have like skyrocketed my career at that moment. But for anyone else, like right now, who hasn't like spent a lot of time just getting comfortable with the difficulty of building websites, I just don't know how you could just launch yourself into anything that fast. I mean, I tried to make like a program where I was working with people for six months and I had to extend it to nine months and even then it's gone for like a year and it's still it just goes.

Derek Wood: 29:10

Sometimes I work with people for years and, like you know, it's just a lot. It's a lot of stuff to do and it's a lot of it's a lot of different change in mindset and time management and I don't know, maybe it's maybe you just can't do things that fast, but I know it works for some people, so, but I guess, who are we worried about? We're not worried about the people it works for. We're trying to help the people who, like, it's not working for, I guess.

Don Hansen: 29:36

Yeah.

Don Hansen: 29:38

So I think there is a simple solution that is not financially doable right now. Coding bootcamps need to extend the program. Students aren't willing to pay the extra money to be able to accommodate that, and I think it's because a lot of new developers are giving false expectations of what needs to be learned, and I think there needs to be an initial, just candid conversation that, quite frankly, most people are not going to be good for this field. They're not going to be interested and curious enough to dive into tech and not go the perfect linear path Like you. You want people that come into this industry, that I'm like. You know what. I'm going to waste an entire weekend setting up my Raspberry Pi. I want to become a web developer, but I don't care. I want to do this thing with this thing and I'm going to put JavaScript on it and I'm going to see what it's capable of Like. I feel like more people just need to be incredibly curious and dive into that, because that's like the one trait I see in a lot of people where that habit carries over into it makes the difference between two types of developers One who is just trying to go to the perfect curriculum and learn what they think they need to learn, versus one who is trying to go through a curriculum and being like OK, well, you're telling me that this works, but why does it work? This component, or, like you know, maybe I'm not comfortable with the CSS library or framework and I want to know what the hell is happening to make these components do what they're doing. Like what? What are the? What's the actual code that creates this component, instead of me just pulling it in? Don't tell me that I just need to put it in to build an app. I want to figure out why it's working and I want to like, maybe even try to build my own basic version of it.

Don Hansen: 31:26

Right, and so many people that are coming into this industry don't have that curiosity and that drive enough. They're not interested in it enough to continue digging in. Like you know, when we kind of got into the industry and I you have more experience in the industry than me you're probably curious of just building shit and solving problems and diving into tech and this is interesting. Oh, this is interesting and you you had the curiosity, you explored it and it's like and it's not just coding bootcamps I think coding bootcamps are also dealing with this because they're having people come in that are not like they take their foot off the gas after the coding bootcamp. The coding bootcamp is like, look it's, you're going to spend the next six months like I'm going to heavy project work. Here's probably what you should learn, and I find a lot of people are not following through.

Don Hansen: 32:11

So coding bootcamps are having trouble with students graduating their program and self-taught developers are not getting the right mindset to start with to actually dig deep into this career. That's going to give them cause you have to be curious because the foundation that's going to give them, because you have to be curious, because a foundation. There's so much to learn. People want to skip over, but there's so much to learn. And even just understanding why the subtraction exists, what problem does it solve? Okay, why does this abstraction exist? What problem does it solve? They're not taking the time to do it because they don't give a shit enough about this industry. They're not curious about tech, and I think that mindset can shift. I think with the right teachers, the right content creators, you can really refocus that and get them to think about critically, think about what excites them about tech. What problems do they want to solve? But I think a lot of people are just saying you know what Buy, my course You'll become a developer in this timeframe.

Derek Wood: 33:03

Well, and I, you know I feel for them too, because it's like what do you sell it on? Like they, they. I you know I feel for them too, because it's like what do you sell it on? Like they, they do. The bootcamps do need to have like something. People want to have some outcomes. Um, yeah, but, but, yeah, how do you? Yeah, I mean that's something I've struggled with. I'm like, hey, we're going to hang out and make stuff together. But, like, people are like, okay, then what? Then I'll be done? Uh, but like, I think what you're saying is a big deal, the creativity, but also, I think part of what that creativity needs to connect to is the outcome. Like the user using the thing.

Derek Wood: 33:40

Um, like I, a lot of like a while ago, a lot of people wanted to get into like ios apps. Like a lot of people were just like, yeah, I want to build an app. I excited, I want to have my app in the app store. I want people to use my app. But most of the people I've been seeing over the last couple of years because I mean, I'm a little embarrassed about how much time I spend in the. I mean a lot embarrassed about how much. And now they're saying, okay, well, I got to go to college now and I'm like, okay, I don't think it's going to work for you either way, because you're, you're not, you don't like this stuff.

Derek Wood: 34:17

What about making something and showing it to people and like seeing if it works, not just how it works behind the scenes, you know, but how it works in society? Like, how do these apps, like they are our ability to have ultimate power over any sort of corporation? Like anybody can build anything these days with hardly any anything. It's kind of amazing. Like, if people are so good at programming but they can't find a job, they could, they. I mean, you know, I know it's hard, but you could, you could make an app, you could start a business. Like there are, there are lots of opportunities. If you actually have that, um, you know that interest and that, what am I looking for?

Derek Wood: 34:57

that when you are having, you know you feel good about yourself, confidence confidence yeah, I, I think that people need to be yeah, they need to be inquisitive and tinkering and they need to want to do it. And then, yeah, if they can find somebody who can mentor them or who can, or a school that is in alignment with what they're doing and it can get them around more people doing it and it can invigorate them, then awesome, you know great. But a lot of people are just asking, okay, well, this one takes longer than this one, this one's a little, this one's more expensive than this one, or just my least favorite, it's not worth it. Like they're they've just looked at like an $8,000 or $15,000 price and somehow decided, like I don't know, like the cost of that building they probably rented and the five teachers that help you, like it's it, like it's actually really inexpensive if it has any value at all. So I don't know.

Derek Wood: 35:51

I think that. And then the whole idea with the computer science is the same. Like I have people I'm friends with in computer science right now in their fourth year and second year and I see in their discords in there, like they're all just phoning not all of them, but a lot of them are just chat GPT-ing their way through. They're not learning anything Like. I'm worried we're going to have like a 10-year gap of thinking just in general, across all realms. It's going to be weird. I don't know what to expect, but I don't think those people are going to find jobs either, or a lot of them, like a shocking percentage I don't think are going to be hireable and I think that with the changing I mean I don't know. I guess the other part is like what are we talking about? Are we talking about web development here? Or are we talking about like I just wrote a post the other day like are we talking about the other like 30 industries that you could be like getting into as a computer science major, like these?

Derek Wood: 36:50

are not the same thing. I'm not saying that one is better than the other. I'm saying they're both totally different things that have different importance. Like you can't just be like I guess I'll go to computer science school for five years and not know that that's different than going to a boot camp for six months. That might get you a job within a year. That might have you working for many years. That might have you meet that guy who you start a company with and changes your whole life and you move to that other country who knows what's going to happen.

Derek Wood: 37:17

Or I mean, I have these, I just happen to have these books sitting around. But like this computer science book, you know, every time I open up this thing I'm like I'm going to do it, I'm going to show them, I'm going to learn everything in computer science. It's so boring, like I absolutely have no interest in this and it's just me, that's just me. What I like to do is I like to build user interfaces, I like to make things that work really good, because I'm frustrated about when I try to go find a doctor or I try to book an appointment. Like I feel like there is this digital gate of terrible designers and terrible developers that are ultimately going to make it so that, like, one day I die or I can't get services I need, or it's going to be some walled garden of abilities, and I personally I think that that's like a really important thing to consider as well. But yeah, I just don't think. I think people just really want to have this mysterious software engineering job. They have no idea what it is, they have no connection to like, oh, I want to build something for my friend or for me, or this thing I want to solve, or I'm interested in whatever, and then also I think that everyone is ignoring how some of this technology is going to go away. Like we're not going to need to write as much boilerplate, and I think that people need to start getting more crossover roles, like in this book, this one Continuous Discovery Habits you know she's got this chart here of like the product trio and it's like you know it's like product manager and designer engineer. But I think that like people need to be crossing over those things. Like you might go to school and you might learn how to build the full stack web application, but maybe your favorite part was like documenting the design system. Maybe you're really kind of more like a project manager, engineer, crossover, or you know, whatever it might be. Maybe you're really kind of more like a project manager, engineer, crossover, or whatever it might be. Maybe you ended up spending more time in Figma and you liked kind of helping the front-end developers understand and kind of cross over that design system.

Derek Wood: 39:22

Kind of language, and especially at these big giant organizations there's so many weird roles and like hundreds of people, when at a little agency it'd be like two of language, like, and especially these big giant organizations there's so many weird roles and like hundreds of people, when at a little agency it'd be like two of us and they've got like hundreds of people running meetings all the time about this stuff. So it depends. I think people aren't looking at. I think there's a lot of people who shouldn't be software engineers but maybe should be a different role and aren't looking there. Should be a different role and aren't looking there.

Derek Wood: 39:46

So maybe what the coding bootcamp is is not to make you 100% nailing that. Maybe it's just to help you explore all that and then to come out the other end and say, okay, now I understand what it's like to whatever build a Rails app or build a Mern app. Or I learned Python on the back end and now I learned whatever JavaScript on the front end. I can see this thing when am I going to fit in? Maybe plan for a timeline, maybe you know, instead of saying I'm going to immediately jump into, this're just a really fun introduction to the industry, which is like what I've kind of forced myself into saying, but you know, it's not a good sales pitch. Well, you know it's not a good sales pitch. I'm like I won't teach you anything, but I'll introduce you to everything there is and show you exactly what you need to do to learn it, but that's, you know, again, not a good sales pitch. You can't say 90% of people work at logo you've seen before, or whatever people are doing, you know. So, yeah, sorry, tangent, um, yeah, I think I think that, uh, I think people need to get a little more realistic, that's for sure. Um, but also they don't need to be such crazy haters Like just, let's just narrow down.

Derek Wood: 41:22

What is a bootcamp even capable of? When? When is when? Are you going to like really squeeze that out, right, squeeze every piece of value you can out of that thing, and when are you going to go there? And maybe you're. Maybe it's just going to cost a bunch of money and people spend money in college all the time. Like how many people who go to school for english, like, what do they do? Do they become englishers? Like like you know, english engineers, like like, well, there's all sorts of jobs out there. So maybe maybe the idea of a boot camp is just changing. I don't know or what I don't know. I don't know what it is. I mean, in the army you go through the boot camp or you like get kicked out and then maybe you're ready to be in the army at all, for, like you know, you don't go straight to like corporal or whatever. I don't know anything about the army, so wrong words Fair enough.

Don Hansen: 42:23

So I really understand and I agree there's this. There's a shift of what a coding bootcamp should be and what it should provide, and I don't think coding bootcamps are able to sell what and I've talked to different staff. I know what they want to do, but they know how they need to market and there's definitely a misalignment and an uncomfortable feeling in some staff when good teachers know what needs to be done at coding bootcamps there are a lot of really good teachers and instructors that have been helping aspiring developers for a long time and then the executive staff knows what needs to be sold in a market that's very rough right now and they're already struggling to get students. How do you shift that mindset into you know what. We're going to give you a lot of exposure to what's out there, what's available, and we're going to give you that template. We're going to give you that confidence and then you continue learning, depending on what path you want to choose. I think that's actually way more valuable and I think that's worth even over easily $10,000.

Don Hansen: 43:26

But to get people to understand that you're not going to understand that until you're in the industry you're not going to. It's really hard to understand what you're supposed to aim for and what price you should be looking for things and what the value of different types of education is. You don't know when you're a new developer and you just hear a bunch of surface level advice and like stay off reddit, stay off twitter, like it. Just there's this whole and there's this negative spiral of people just being depressed because they're not finding jobs, they're tight, they're getting a reality check and I've said this before most aspiring developers that are trying to become developers right now they will never become developers. They're going to give up, they're going to burn out, they're going to get sick of what they did and but also, most importantly, because they don't really have that curiosity and enjoyment in tech, like you said, you show this picture of, like, what the hell do I want to build? What do I want to build for my friend? What do I think would be really cool or what solves a problem that I know would benefit other people? How can I do that? Through technology, I have the power of technology. I am not at the mercy of companies. If I want to, I can launch a product and I can gain financial freedom from that. Like. There are so many avenues that if you just understand the power of what you're learning and you're willing to take the time to truly dig deep into this learning, you're going to have so many options.

Don Hansen: 44:51

But there's I think you're just seeing a lot of anger from people that just you know they didn't get a dev job as quickly, the market is rough and it's taken longer. They're having to go back to old jobs, their money is sinking, they're going into debt and there's just so much anger. And how the hell do you navigate all of that noise? Like I said, easy solution to stay off Reddit, stay off Twitter. Like you do those two things and you build meaningful connections in the industry. Go to meetups, participate in hackathons, meet other successful developers that aren't getting caught up in that noise, that can become good mentors, that can kind of expose you to what positions are available, what you can do in tech. Like, I think a lot of the noise is just coming from a lot of very upset people and I.

Don Hansen: 45:41

There's one other thing and I'm curious what your opinion is of Nextjs. I see Nextjs as a tool and Nextjs you could look at any other framework and we could talk about it like a CSS library, like Tailwind or something like that you can. This is pushed by so many content creators and so many courses they are setting. I feel like a lot of these courses. So you have content creators that push the popularity of stuff like this on the front end and courses get created out of it because content creators and coding boot camps, different institutions want to create things that people are asking for, even though they don't need it. They're like how can we survive? How can we make money? How can we pay the bills? We got to look at what's popular and teach what's popular need it. They're like how can we survive? How can we make money? How can we pay the bills? We got to look at what's popular and teach what's popular. But I see so many people and this is my gripe with Nextjs.

Don Hansen: 46:39

Nextjs is a tool I think it's an interesting tool for front end developers to create essentially kind of like very basic full stack applications and get a product out there. That is an awesome tool for that. It's optimized and it's very SEO friendly. Like you have these abstractions that make it so you could do this quickly and you don't need to understand all the building blocks that make up Nextjs. The problem is, it's a really cool tool for experienced developers, but I've seen an excessive amount of people that pick up Nextjs so quickly in their journey and they could build all of this stuff with it and they could build it very fast, this really cool application, very quickly, and I can feel confident.

Don Hansen: 47:32

Like, why the hell am I going to invest time into diving deep into the fundamentals that make up this framework? I feel stupid when I dive back into those fundamentals because it is a long and grueling journey. You have to have grit for it. You have to feel stupid. It's going to challenge you in so many ways. It's easy and fun and gives you a dopamine reward. When you could build something with the framework as a new developer, you feel like shit when you realize how little you truly know and someone tells you you need to go back into the foundations. No, screw this.

Don Hansen: 48:02

I felt better with NextChance but, like you said, they don't know how. They know how to build like one specific niche type of application and they are lost. They're not hireable for so many different positions where, like next just isn't the most popular thing. Like you should be learning scss, like get a pre-processor, like that's one of the most popular things, just basic CSS, not Tailwind. You don't bring in Tailwind. You should be learning like fundamental JavaScript stuff. Most companies don't use Nextjs. Why is this so prevalent among aspiring developers, where they're getting the message they need to learn Nextjs. They dive into it so quickly. What I feel like?

Derek Wood: 48:42

there's a huge disconnect with what content creators are pushing for new aspiring developers and what they need to do, but it's frameworks like that that I think are breaking people's minds yeah, I agree, or I think I've kind of been through this a few times Like you can probably find me back on Stack Overflow, like trying to like ban bootstrap discussions in the CS, like, and stuff like that, because I was like this is just going to create more questions. But yeah, I don't know what it is exactly and I feel like this is maybe a sweeping generalization. That's unfair. But in my experience, going to meetups, working with people you know, anonymous people online, real people, real instructors, course creators, famous course creators that we all know and um, I just I think that there's something that like the sort of person who's who's good enough to like really learn all that stuff. Also, I think often that doesn't have the same sort of empathy or the ability to remember when they didn't know something, and that might be one of my for better or worse superpowers, because I can go back to like well, we have an empty text editor. What are we going to do? Like that's just how I just love breaking things back down to the beginning and like rethinking them and stuff. But yeah, I don't know, I was in that position myself. It was like I had kind of learned jQuery enough to like copy things. I could not even have told you what a JavaScript object was. This was many years into my career, getting paid as a developer.

Derek Wood: 50:24

Angular 1.1 came out, or whatever original Angular. I got into it enough, but just was staying up all night making these directives. I had no idea what I was doing. And then Angular switched to Angular 2. And I was like no, it's like a complete rewrite. Like I have no idea what's happening at all. Like they just took away like six months of me staying up all night, just ripped it out from under me, you know. And so then I was like I was doing all of the research and I was like Ember, you'll never let me down. And so I dug really deep into Ember and I still love Ember, but, yeah, like a ways in and this, you know, maybe 2014 or something, a ways in.

Derek Wood: 51:10

I was asking questions in the Ember community and just getting kind of these responses like let's see, like, and I started to realize, okay, I'm asking questions that are way off the mark, because I don't even understand what this class is that you know they brought in way before classes were even around. Uh, you know natively and everything, or you know, I just didn't. I didn't understand anything. I didn't understand the very like, so I get it.

Derek Wood: 51:32

You can be in a position where you think you're like pretty good and you can seriously know like nothing. And because we are, we're just creatures of habit and we fill in the gaps, we type stuff out. And you know, I'm working with some people right now who went through full boot camps and I'm teaching them HTML and they're like wow, I'd never thought about any of this stuff like this before. It's amazing. Like they're like wow, I never thought about any of this stuff like this before. It's amazing. It's amazing how much crazy HTML they're writing. Sorry, guys, but you know I was there, I get it and that's I mean I empathize and I had to tell myself I had to go back.

Derek Wood: 52:15

I literally said, okay, I have to get out of this Ember thing. I thought I was making a lot of headway, but I have to actually go back and just learn JavaScript. Luckily for me, I was obsessed enough with HTML and CSS and I had found a really good video series from Chris Coyier, like right at the right time, that it all made it click. So that was pretty lucky on my part, I think. But I had the HTML and CSS down, like I built sites.

Derek Wood: 52:42

Every night I copied a site you know Starbucks site. Copy it. Oh, they changed it. Copy it again. This famous site. Copy it, copy it. Copy it Like MySpace, copy it, like everything.

Derek Wood: 52:52

So, but I never did that with JavaScript and I had worked at a place where there was like the PHP guy and he did that. So I like wasn't allowed to do that and nobody else there was like better than me. So that's the other thing. You got to work somewhere where you're going to be around people who are better than you at some extent to learn from. But yeah, I had to go back and basically just be super humble. So I think people should just start there and not waste all that emotional time of doing that. And like, another thing you said you mentioned was like the I don't know something reminded me of this. But people, they mistake their passion sometimes for the like excitement when they see that green light turn on when they do these coding challenges. And coding challenges and building something that a user can use are so far apart, and I think that's another confusion people have. They feel like they've been putting years in but they haven't even started and yeah, it's a weird part.

Don Hansen: 53:53

Okay, this is true, it's really difficult no-transcript, until you dig into building the stuff and being curious or like figuring out what you're curious about and building things to solve real problems. That's where the real growth is going to happen. And a lot of people are looking for dopamine hits, and coding challenges give you a lot of those and that's why you know it's simple and you don't have to think like you don't have to think about what, like you don't have to identify problems that exist in the world Like that. As a professional developer, you are capable of taking your knowledge of the world and now you have this new power and now you could take that power to solve these problems, and that's the link that you need to establish.

Don Hansen: 55:06

But instead you want a very curated problem. You want to be told what to do. Essentially, you want to be a code monkey. Companies don't hire code monkeys anymore, they hire problem solvers and you're coding as a tool to be able to do that. But it's easy to get those dopamine hits with coding challenges and to me it just sounds like a. It just sounds like a mindset shift is needed, but I think like a lot of people are never going to get this mindset shift and like if you force it too hard on them they're probably just going to quit, so do you let them continue.

Derek Wood: 55:42

Yeah Well, I kind of skipped over your question about the Nextjs people. I don't think that there's a secret behind the scenes, nextjs people. I think people just get excited about themselves and they're like I know Nextjs really good, I'm going to teach it. But yeah, like that they are not connected to it as far as they're not connected to what's best for the person they're teaching. So in a way, they're getting their own kind of dopamine hits too and all of the you know the social media of it all and the upvotes and things like that. But I think people need to get. They need to get honest with it. Like you can't blame, like the concept of a coding bootcamp. Like you signed up, you should check it out. You should have some developer friends look at it. You need to be serious about why you chose that place and you need to be honest. But maybe they need a little more information too.

Derek Wood: 56:43

You're going to have to go to work and be a developer. This isn't a job where you clock in and you gossip. I mean it can be where you clock in, you talk shit on Slack and then at the end of the day you leave an hour early and whatever. You just make lots of money and hang out. That's not what this job is. If you don't want to design, like, if you don't want to build web applications, at least enough that, like, you can try to enjoy your work. I know that everyone hates it when I'd say that you could enjoy your work, but I don't think this is the type of job where you can just totally leave it at, where you just like I clock in and I move the database back and forth and then I go home and I do like some totally, totally, totally different thing. Like I think people need to plan on like and I say this about any project, personal project like if you don't want to spend two years doing it, don't even start it. It's not going to happen, it's going to die on the vine. Like you know you I've started a lot of projects when you're serious plan on taking a while.

Derek Wood: 57:42

A bootcamp might be a way to do that. You know, finding somebody who could mentor you, or you know there's tons of things there's like mentor crews, mentor code, mentor zip. There's the one that starts with a Z. You know there's people like you. There's people out there, there's lots of people out there who kind of like offer other alternative, like personal, like connections too, and there's community college and there's uh, there's also there's local meetups. Like there's so many different opportunities out there.

Derek Wood: 58:11

But you need to know what you want and stop putting all of the onus on this. Like school, you paid them. They're not evil because they're a business they're. It's like you have to draw the line somewhere, like we can't just throw up our hands in the air and say, like there's, it's evil, the corporations, like the government. Like everyone's screwing everyone.

Derek Wood: 58:33

Like if you signed up for a 13 week bootcamp and you came out the other end and you can't code at all and you're not, and the thing you're mad about is getting not getting a job. Like you're, you should be considering like what you're supposed to actually learn there. I don't know there's just such a wild disconnect. I'm like it makes me here I don't know if I'm crazy or not Like these are supposed to be problem solvers and it doesn't seem like we're doing basic math here. You know you can't get a job building websites if you can't build a website. Or if it takes you six weeks to build a website that should take 10 minutes. Like it's just unreasonable. So I don't know, I feel bad for the good pony boot camps and I feel bad for the people who who meant well and got kind of the raw end of a deal, and all the other people. I kind of just feel like, hey, you're the middle ground people.

Derek Wood: 59:30

We all went to college. I didn't become a famous artist, you know. I didn't want to draw pictures all night long every night. I didn't want to go to art parties. I didn't become a famous artist. It's okay, but that's just part of life. Things also cost money. Sometimes I pay so much money I've probably paid for like six boot camps worth of money for, like you know, working with like an Ember core team member for like a six week, two hours a week, for six weeks and, like you know, like four thousand dollars, like these things. If you don't think it's valuable and then you're just going to like turn your head and say, never mind, I shouldn't have done it, not worth it, like you didn't, you didn't, you don't know what the value is and you're choosing the wrong things and I don't think, like you can really blame everyone else for that either.

Don Hansen: 1:00:21

So, the wrong things, and I don't think like you can really blame everyone else for that either. So there's a huge lack of accountability, self-accountability, and I, you know you've really highlighted that I've. You're also in the reddit world, where that is significantly higher, um, but I I actually want to ask you one question because I I don't want to take up too much of your time. I realize we're 10 minutes over.

Don Hansen: 1:00:40

Sorry, I've just been like going off on tangents. No, I appreciate it, it's interesting. That's why I kind of just let you go off. But if you had to make one post on you know, like a few different programming subreddits, maybe like CS career questions, r slash coding boot camps and you would have, like 90% of people that are trying to become programmers read that Reddit post Like what's a solid message you just want to get through people's heads.

Derek Wood: 1:01:10

Yeah well, I write them all the time and the problem is the audience is so all over the place. There's not a message. I have to just try every angle I can. I have to say like, hey, yeah, it might cost $20,000. But if you make $60,000 now and then you make $100,000 for the next five years, like how is that even a why are you even talking about the money? Get to work, like, get in there building stuff. Like that's one angle.

Derek Wood: 1:01:42

The other angle is hey, maybe you should actually talk to people who've gone to the school, or go talk to the people at the school. If there's nobody, you can go to, if there's no one responsible. Like I've been trying really hard not to name any schools or anything. But like you know, there are schools that are run by real people, where you know their name and they have a track record and they have serious, well-known developers who help develop their curriculum. Then there's a bunch of other ones who are just some VC, who knows who, license, license, license, license seven levels down, and then you're going there because it's cheaper. But what are you going to get what you pay for, man, and so I don't know. That's another angle. The other angle is like I don't, I don't know, there's so many angles, I just I just drive myself crazy over it.

Derek Wood: 1:02:35

I also just the other angle is I just don't think you stop thinking about it. Is it a boot camp or a? Is? I just don't think you know? Stop thinking about is it a bootcamp or a computer science degree? If you want to study computer science, please do that. Go study it. Spend four, five years studying it, get out there, get internships, figure out a career, a real cool, interesting career, doing all sorts of stuff.

Derek Wood: 1:02:58

We have no idea what it will be, because you're not even going to find out for five years. You're just getting prepared. This is like you know. Going into a career in politics is going to be your life. If you for some reason want to learn how to build web applications and you think you can take that knowledge, get in a job somewhere and then start your career that way, do that. But stop pretending like there's some magical choice you make and then the winners get like a little crown and they get like an easy web developer job, because that doesn't exist either. So I mean, just take some time to consider this. You know, build a website that's what we're here for, right Building websites. If you can't build a website, you don't want to build a website, go somewhere else, but I don't know. Anyway, I could go on forever with that. I know you're trying to round things out in a smart way because you're a good host, but I like it.

Don Hansen: 1:03:53

Um, I appreciate you just venting. I feel like you just took like a lot of your Reddit posts and you just set them, and that's awesome because people need to hear them so I do try to keep them formal, like organized, when I can.

Don Hansen: 1:04:07

But yeah, I got a lot of thoughts well, you know, like even with my live stream, it was just a random rant, I ignored chat and people listen and I think people want to listen. I think people just don't know what to do. There's just so much noise and I feel like you can really formalize a lot of things. You can really try to think about the personalities that are going to listen to this. So I have to curate this advice and I found that sometimes you just need to vent, sometimes you just need to yell and literally whatever you were thinking, you spit it out raw.

Don Hansen: 1:04:46

You might piss some people off, but I I've noticed people want that feedback because they are lost content creators. They are giving them this perfectly curated feedback and they're pushing them. Everything is going to be okay and they don't like their. Their discussions aren't really critical of the industry. They're not. They don't dig deep, they don't really say what they really want to say. It's just all curated and people are tired of it. And you vent, people listen, people want to hear that raw feedback. So, like you know, you do you with the Reddit posts, but feel free to get a bit unhinged. You know like you got to think about self-branding and all that, but that's just, I guess, my perspective, and I will probably do more live streams where I just rant and I piss some people off and I get called a gatekeeper and a bunch of other labels and okay, that's fine.

Derek Wood: 1:05:43

You could always have some feelings at a time too. It doesn't mean they're cutting stone for life. You know, as soon as you guys just get some ideas off your chest and then they kind of inspire some other ideas, you know it's good.

Don Hansen: 1:05:51

Yeah, I like that have feelings and show that you're gone. I like that. So I think we covered quite a bit. Um, I'm actually really happy with this conversation, Pretty broad conversation. I don't know what I'm going to title it. I'll figure that out. Um, but I'll listen through this again and that should be fun. But, uh, before we end this episode, uh, feel free to shout yourself out and you know anything else you want to shout out?

Derek Wood: 1:06:14

Yeah, okay, um. Um, my name is Derek Wood. I'm Sheriff Derek on the internet. If you can't see me, it's because I blocked you, because I block like tons of people on Reddit now and it's way better. So yeah, I do this thing called perpetual education. It's been evolving over the years. I'm not really sure what even to call it right now. It's kind of like an interactive education consulting experience. It's kind of like an interactive education consulting experience. But I'm also building out some curriculums for some other schools also and I do consulting on the side. I recently was working with Better Life on like a social network type of thing. So I do a bunch of stuff and I'm always open for chats. You know I do the open office hours on Sundays on Encoding Bootcamp so, and you can find my website because you know how to use the internet. So if anybody wants to talk to me, let me know. Awesome.

Don Hansen: 1:07:09

All right, yeah, you do offer free sessions, just open office hours. And I remember seeing a post where, like people won't sign up for it, you offer it.

Derek Wood: 1:07:18

They complain but they don't even sign up and take the action. Sometimes I've had quite a few cool people sign up or quite a few interesting people come. It's good, but it's never the people who are saying I can't get a job because I have a great portfolio. They won't show up because then they have to kind of face the music.

Don Hansen: 1:07:34

I like that. I actually really like that. All right, cool. Well, let's end it there. You know, if you're watching on YouTube, let me know what you think in the comments. Agree, disagree, but like, ultimately, I actually just want to hear, like, where you're getting stuck. What's your frustration? Like you guys hear a lot of advice, information from different content creators, I feel like it's really noisy. What do you think about all this? Let me know in the comments. But, derek, thank you so much for