4 Harsh Truths To Make You A Better Software Engineer

The most important truths in life are also the hardest to hear. That's because growth, it's never comfortable. My name is Daroosh. I've been a self-taught developer for the last 10 years. I also mentored over 250 other developers helping them reach the senior level and beyond at the senior dev. And today, I'm going to share with you four harsh truths that if I had accepted sooner, I would have avoided years of getting stuck and burn out and got to where I am now, much, much faster.

Truth number one is that no one is coming to save you. For the first five years of my developer career, I lived in hell. I didn't like the people or the tech stack I was working with and I hated, I hated the stuff we were building. I was building applications for corporations that would throw away three months of work in a split second. All because the CEO wife felt like the user interface was a bit dry.

And guess what? She wasn't even the customer. Most days I had to work extra hours until late in the evening. Sometimes I even had to work the weekends. We did extra hours without extra pay because hey, we are a startup. Meanwhile, my personal life was crumbling. I was getting weight and I was getting sick. The only thing I would do after work is to numb my pain with fast food, Netflix series, and video games.

I was in a very bad place. And guess what? What do you think I did to change it? Nothing. Nada. I just hoped things would get better. That one day some cosmic force will pull me out of my misery and throw me into something better. And that was the problem. Hope, hope is a shitty life strategy, especially when it's not followed by a plan. Just like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, who after waiting months to be rescued, realized that if he wants to be saved, he needs to save himself.

After over five years of barely surviving, I also realized that no one will magically teleport me out of my misery. I had to do it myself. No one will magically realize my value and pay me more. I had to ask for it and learn how to get it myself. No one will make a career plan for me. I had to do one for myself. No one will do technical interviews for me. them I had take the risk and no one will drop good advice on my lap I had to search for it myself.

Accepting that you have to save yourself, it's not easy, but you really have no choice. You either save yourself or give in to a life of mediocrity. Working a developer job you don't like, writing mindless code for mindless people just like I did. Getting back home to frozen food and video games, jumping from mindless developer job to mindless job, hoping that one of them will take you out of your misery.

Just to realize that you are forever stuck in that cycle. Then you might tell yourself that, hey, all the jobs are the same and stop trying all together. That hope becomes bitterness. Now you don't even hope for things to improve. You just hope for them to pass on so you can retire. One day, you do retire. Luckily, before 67, a few years later, like all of us, you are on your dad bed. What will people remind you for?

What will be your legacy? The Netflix series you watched, the video games you finished. Even if you don't care about how people remember you. What will keep you alive in those last years of your life? Why not just give in? What will make the struggle worth it? Exactly five years ago, I asked myself the dad bet question. I couldn't close an eye for the next three days because I could not answer it.

That's when I decided to replace hope with something much more powerful, action. Yes, getting things done and changing my situation. I replaced Netflix with self-improvement books, video games with code challenges and technical interviews. Here is what I realized. You have a choice. Yes, you can save yourself. You only need to replace hoping by doing. Realize that as a developer, you have almost infinite freedom.

You can work from anywhere or anything with almost any tool or framework. But that freedom has a cost. You have to pay for it with your skills. Which brings me to the second hard truth that I had to learn. You are only the fruit. The fruit of your labor. Here is a hard pill to swallow. Society doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about how nice of a person you are. It only cares about what you can do for them.

This is nothing new. In most ancient religions, people recognize that the tree is judged by its fruits. Being an amazing person, it's great. As long as it motivates you to do something. something useful for the width. And before you guys end up calling me a selfish capitalist monster, let me tell you something. They don't care because you don't care either. Do you really care if the Starbucks barista, it's a nice person on the inside?

Sure, until they spoil your coffee. Then you get pissed. They can be the nicest people, but if they mess up your coffee, they are not. Maybe they donate to NGOs and they help all people cross the street. It doesn't matter. They messed up your order. You paid with your money for that order. You got that money in exchange for your time. That time is now wasted. You won't ever get it back again. You have the right to get pissed.

And that was a barista. Now, imagine if we are talking about a surgeon, a pilot, or why not, yourself, a software developer. Tons of amazing people graduate fine arts just to realize that their job prospects are worse than the ones of a college dropout. I'm sure most of those graduates are passionate, kind, and have good intentions. But they can't really produce much for society, so the market doesn't care.

And here's a funny meme, which if you've been doing tech interviews lately, you won't find very funny. Do tech companies really care about how much of a great person you are? No, they don't. Unless you are able to pass their tech test. If you can't, there's the door. Oh, but tech interviews are messed up, Dragosh. They test you on stupid things that you'll never use at your job, like data structures and algorithm.

Yes, I know. I know tech interviews are broken, and I'm fair. But guess what? This is the game that's being played. There's another hungry developer next to you who is willing to jump to the hoops if you are not. If they don't find the one next to you, they will get it from another city, country, or even continent with everyone hiring remotely these days. And I know this can hit very high, it hit me very high.

Especially when growing up, our mama told us that we are special, that we are a unique piece of snowflake and that we deserve only the best. I was born like that. You were born like that, too. They call it primary narcissism. Is what babies have to stay alive. They only care about themselves. Now, the baby is an adult, but pop culture made sure that inside, we are still babies. The harsh truth is, just like Mike Twain said, that the world owes you nothing.

It was here first. You have to earn it. to I need it with the fruit of your labor. This can make you feel disposable and disempowered. It might get you mad and angry. But once you understand this, you won't get mad when people don't call you back after a technical interview. Better get mad now when watching this video and do something about it. Then later, when it's too late. In my 30 years on this planet, the best way to work around this is to reframe the reality of having to do the work and being judged by the fruits of your labor as a challenge.

Astronauts don't complain about gravity. They build rockets to escape it. It took me seven years to escape gravity. Seven years of coding the weekends, no social life and barely seeing my friends. I coded when I was bored. I coded when I was sick of it. I coded when I didn't want it to code. This was partly because I wasted too much time following bad advice. Yes, I could have gotten here without hustling so much in the process.

But even so, all the mistakes were avoided because they got me where I am today. So, the best advice I can give you is get last in doing the work. Good things will follow. By the way, if you are interviewing right now and you don't get the results you want, make sure to check out our interview questions serious at the end of this video. The third hard truth is that most developers never make it because they don't even try.

Back to my story, why have I spent almost two years and a half in a job I hated? A job that was killing me. The answer, it's simple. I didn't know any better. I told myself, it's all the same. Big company, small company, it doesn't matter. The management over promises, product managers try to deliver on that promise, developers get squeezed and push into doing the work. And I was specially right. That's how bad software companies operate.

But not all companies. There are great companies where product managers and software developers work together as a team and manage the expectations that businesses is putting on them. But I didn't even try to get a job at one of those good companies. Because I didn't believe they existed. Oh, wait, I did believe they existed and I did try to interview with one of those tech firms. It was humiliating and traumatizing.

I failed to answer basic react questions. This was an onsite interview. I remember going to the bathroom to throw up in the meantime. is, no joke. After that, you might think I went home and made a plan to improve and I had an epiphany and tried again and made it here. I did not. I went out to the body and sank my frustration into alcohol. I told myself, life sucks, being a developer sucks. So why even bother? Why even try to improve?

If everything is so bad, why even try to improve? Remember the elephant story, how it won't even try to break the rope, even if it could? That's because the elephant got used to the rope when it was still a baby. Because then the rope hurt. Baby elephant learned that it shouldn't try to break it. Now the elephant is big and strong. But that limiting belief, it's holding it back from breaking free for a very long time.

Just like this elephant. I was trapped into negative beliefs that I formed around being a software developer. I told myself I don't have the talent to become a great software engineer. People who had the talent went to computer science university. I didn't. I told myself I'm not passionate about this. I compared myself to senior developers that I saw every day. And I was barely surviving. All these negative thoughts stop me from even trying to get better.

Every failure I encountered would just make me believe them even more. It was a vicious cycle. Until one day, at a random meetup, I met a senior developer who changed my mind. I was actually there for the free pizza, but anyway. This dude was already a tech lead. Despite being very, very young. He was in great shape and most importantly, he was happy. Most senior developers I knew were grumpy and old, complaining about everything.

Out of desperation mostly, I grabbed my courage and ask him to grab a coffee and tell me and give me advice. That coffee became a monthly lunch. Every time we talked, I would get more wise learning from his experience. But even more importantly, I would get the motivation to keep on going. Because now I knew it was possible. He was the living proof that I can also make it. The point I wanted to make is that sometimes all you need to know is that it is possible.

In my case, now that I had a clear goal and I knew it's possible. When distractions appeared in my life, I would just get back to getting focused. No more waiting for things to happen, no more Netflix and chill. There was still one major issue. Even though I knew where I was going, I still struggled to actually do the work. job in my personal life, I couldn't find the time, which brings me to the final point of this video.

The final, hard truth is that it will never be easy. And that's a good thing. Ever wondered why you can't do the work? Even when you know the technical skills you need to master and the steps you need to get to the next level, you still can't sit down and just do the work. Something always comes up. Is it because you are defocused, demotivated, lazy, because you don't have what it takes? No. It is because what the world didn't told you is that while you chase your goal and do the work, you have to take care of everything else.

You are trying to climb the mountain, but your backpack is full. Because while you're busy coding and learning, you have to make breakfast, pay your bills and your taxes. Brush your teeth, cut your nails, clean your room, call your mama and your papa, tell them you love them, and take your best friend out for dinner. Oh, wait, you also have to spend time with your partner. And if you don't have a partner, you'll have to put time into finding a partner.

Oh, maybe you get a dog instead. Now you have to walk the dog and to take it to the vet. Then you must work at least 35 to 40 hours per week, only to pay for your house, food, clothes, insurance, dog, and of course, taxes. You must do all that stuff in seven short days of around 14 hours between your sleeping and taking care of yourself. Doing weekdays, most of your time will be sucked into work. And even if you have time left, you might not have the energy to put into climbing the mountain and reaching your goals.

And God help you if you have kids, because you'll have to do all this by 10. If you ask yourself, why can't I reach my goals as a developer? Here is why. Because daily life sucked you in, just like it sucked all of us. Society is constantly demanding stuff from you. They told you you can be a superhero. You can achieve anything you want. What they didn't told you is that while you'll be busy being the superhero, you'll need to take care of everything else around you.

Those extra 30 minutes you need to improve your front end skills, you must fight for them with your teeth. To win this battle, you need to chase that extra moment. That moment you can squeeze in the day and put into moving forward towards chasing your goals. And remember, winners find a way to win. Winners find the time. The world will always want things from you. all of us. But if you succumb to his demands, you'll wake up one day asking yourself how it all went by so fast.

Besides going from place to place, doing errands or playing other people's games, I had to fight and squeeze every few minutes every day to practice life coding after my failed interview. Those extra minutes allowed me to escape a table job and get my life unstuck. Without that extra push, I would not be here today. I would be refactoring some legacy code, lasting a corporate for an average salary.

So find the time to do the work. Find the time to win. Trust me, it will all be worth it. One day, the code that paralyzes you today will be a joke you will laugh at. One day, technical interviews will be as easy as brushing your teeth. But you'll never get there if you quit now. So get back to doing the work, be kind and amazing things will happen. I will see you in the next one.