Being laid off is not the end (tech lead in Korea)

I am like a new father, right? So I have like a son super young. I mean, you know, your job as a father, you know, as a husband is to kind of provide for the family. And it was, it was so scary. Right when I got laid off. I do know like working in startups, right? It's super volatile, it's high salary, but it's volatile. And I did get laid off. I accept it. And at that time I just felt this like overwhelming, like defeat I guess. But we filmed that video and one thing that really like brought me up was the comment section in that video. There are so many good comments. And that comment section evolved into the Discord community. I don't, I hear like the Internet is like always so evil and like there's like trolls and all this kind of stuff, right? But it just felt so wholesome. Nobody was out there to be like bad and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, that time at the end of June or beginning of July, it was scary. And at the time I didn't even know like if this YouTube thing was gonna be vi valuable. I remember like I uploaded a video and my friend was like, you're lucky if you get 100 views, right? So I upload that video, guess what? You know, it got a lot of views and kind of validated some things. But I mean, I thought like at that time I would just do like part time YouTube or part time job or maybe a full time job and kind of do YouTube on the side. So I remember like the first decision I made was like, oh dude, I'll just do outsourcing. And outsourcing is very. You have to have a lot of responsibility. And I was trying to do YouTube as hard as I could and I was doing the outsourcing on my free time. It was like taking a lot out of me. But I completed those projects. I made a couple thousand dollars or whatever and it gave me some kind of cushion. And then I kind of like. We kept on making videos and I saw the YouTube getting bigger and better and we opened the Discord community and one that really kept us going was the mentees. And you know, like in the beginning you don't know like really how it's going to go. But definitely like, I think even the mentees, they put responsibility on themselves. They knew we were a new channel and they knew like, you know, they're taking a chance but you know, I'm never there to kind of like not try. And you know, the better they do, the more their wins become our wins. And Our wins become their wins. So I was just trying. We were trying all super hard and going into like unknown territory. And even scarier than getting laid off, because at that time when I got laid off, maybe I had like more of a direction, like, okay, you know, just time to start applying, get a new job. But now we're really going into places like, you know, no one around me has ever been. You know, it's scary and you don't know the benefits that are going to come out of it or anything like this. But I just thought like, let's, let's try and like the Discord community has been great. That's one place where I feel like I wish I had that when I was like growing as a developer. And that's something like, you know, like somewhere that I can be held accountable. I do think we need to flesh out like goals and stuff a little bit more, but somewhere where you can just ask questions, talk to other developers and just everyone there just super friendly and super down to just talk. And I think that's a cool place. The things that have come out of the community, like the projects that I've been able to work on, brushing up on older stuff, I've learned it's all fun for me. Definitely that first video's comment section kind of, you know, got the ball rolling and it snowballed into a Discord community and making like over all those videos and, you know, we're at five, four and a half for five months now, you know, like what's gonna be coming, like the next seven months after we've been doing this for a year. I'll see the seasons change from like we started in summer. I saw fall pass already and now we're in winter. Now we gotta let winter pass and spring will pass and then it'll be summer again and my kid will be older and hopefully I'll have something. I know I'll have something, you know, I always want to show him. Like I'm trying, you know, I'm gonna try my hardest at whatever. I think people can attest for that, you know, Like, I don't just do things as a hobby. And that's something in my personality that I like, I like about myself. So I want to find other people like that, you know, like, it's not just I sometimes do it, I do it all the time. If I want to be successful, I have to go all in. You have much better chance to be successful if you go all in than 50%. Because the reason why you fail is because you didn't love it enough. You gotta be persistent, diligent, and try and stay malleable, you know, like it's all effort and you know, like with coding, honestly, like, it's like learning a new language. It just takes time. Sure, your confidence will get beat some days. Some days you won't get anything done. Some days you'll like, feel like quitting, right? But you know, just every time you hit some kind of bump like that, I feel like when you get past it, the next time it happens, you'll realize, yeah, I've been here, done that, and learn how to pass that kind of block, mental block in your brain. And once you had, you know, hundreds and thousands, because, I mean, like, coding is something like that's very stressful because you hit maybe 100 errors a day. You get like a big red text saying with your computer yelling at you and you don't know what you're doing, but that's why it's so stressful. But, you know, getting used to rejection, getting used to the errors, getting desensitized is. That's a skill in itself. And it just takes time to read through them and not let them surprise you and kind of learn how to fix those and search for the errors and stuff like that. So, you know, like, just, just stay diligent, stay. It takes time. Nothing comes. You're not going to get like information uploaded into the back of your neck like the Matrix. Like, it's going to take time and it's going to. And if you go too fast, you're going to have a whole bunch of holes in your knowledge anyways, right? So just take time and, you know, learn at your own pace. Do what you need to do to understand and you'll get there. When I go into the Discord community, it's like I see a bunch of people like that were my age just starting in 2024, 2025. And it's like I can see, like that's where I was and I can help them do what the next steps or whatever they need to do. And like, I wish I had that guidance and like, whoever reaches out, I think I've always tried to explain as like the best I could and like, honestly, like, what I really have to realize about like this YouTube thing, another thing is like, I put myself out there through YouTube so everyone I talk to knows me way better than I know them. And I'm super curious about everyone as well. So like, you know, like having someone reach out and just say, hey, this is me, like this is what I'm doing. That's pretty cool too. I want to learn about everyone there. And, you know, if I can, if I see something, like, maybe they reach out because they see some. Something in their life that's very similar to me. And then we can start relating because we have something in common already. It's like hitting fast forward on like, a friendship. So, like, like, don't be afraid to, like, reach out. And like, I'll. I'll do what I can, but I just gotta remember I do have one body. It's not like I have five arms or something. Although that'd be freaking sick. But anyways, let's just keep going and, you know, I'll keep put, putting myself out there. And whoever reaches out, just reach out.