1. Outdated Career Advice
The speaker explains: building side projects can mistakenly categorize you as a junior, while contributing to open-source projects often resembles unpaid volunteering rather than sustainable career growth.
Hear it at 0:00 →Engineering video
1:04 · 23 August 2025
Old Advice For Developers Does Not Work In The AI Age
Key concepts in this video:
2. Focus and Persistence
The speaker explains: avoiding distractions and sticking with your main path, even when it gets tough and boring, pays off with a great career, numerous options, and financial success.
Hear it at 0:42 →Transcript
And so people are saying, oh, do a side project, but in reality, side projects will make you look like a junior hobbyist. If you go to a senior interview and you tell them you did this side project, they'll already look at you like a mid-level junior and most of the times disqualify you, even if they don't tell you so. Now they might be like, oh, this is so cool, but you're already, you know, in the happy meal category.
You're already a junior. The other thing they tell you is to do open source, but in reality to really contribute to a open source project is very high and I know a lot of open source devs that are very poorly paid, they can barely pay bills and then they end up maintaining the open source project while they have a job. It's almost like volunteering. I know people do it for a calling, but I also know people have a mortgage, they need to pay bills.
And so we got to be pragmatic here. So there's going to be thousands of distractions and shiny objects. People will try to stay away from what you're doing. But in reality, if you stick with it, if you get good at it, even when it gets boring, even when it gets tough, it will pay back and you'll end up having a great career. You'll end up having a lot of options and you'll end up making a lot of money.
Then get distracted, get better.