You are able to land a six-figure tech job IF you can do this ONE thing.

The question I always get asked from my mentees is am I good enough? There's a bunch of job postings and all those things have a bunch of requirements where it's just a bunch of things that they've never been experienced or been exposed to yet. But I always say if you can build something from nothing from start to finish, you're gonna learn enough things, you're gonna be good enough no matter what. So, you know, self belief is the most important thing. I was like a fuck up when I was growing up, right? My dad was never around so all he knew was like, were like my report cards. And I'm still talking about my dad like at like what, like 36 years old. I don't think he ever had like belief in me. So none of that side of my family ever thought like I would ever amount to anything. It always hurt me. Like not hurt me, hurt me because I didn't really like dig into that kind of thing of like this kind of competition or whatever. But you know, like I always say, hey, I did this or this, you know. You know, he was more excited for me like boxing and stuff than me telling him like, oh, I'm doing something cool like programming or working in corporate or whatever it is, right. Cause I don't think, you know, anyone ever expected me to do that. Now that I believe in myself, it just, it gives me the confidence to really, you know, say hey, I can go to the app store, whatever app I see, I pretty much always see it's kind of like similar. I could probably build something similar out, right? Like honestly it's pretty fun. Like I always talk about like drinking with your friends and talking about like building an app, but it just, just ends up being drunk banter. But if I can actually put it, you know, if someone can actually do something with it and you want to do something with it, then gives you all the self belief you need, you know, like yeah, that's cool ass idea, do it too, you know. Yeah. And you know, I worked really hard. I think around 2016 or 2017 I was learning how to program and you know, I got a job and everything and you know, like I think I was like taking my dad to lunch and stuff like that. But I was telling him like, yeah, like I like a programming job, you know, and he was just like, no, no, no, you're not a programmer. Because he comes from back in the day. He probably thinks like they're super geniuses or whatever. He was like, he kept on calling me like, oh, like the Web design stuff. Yes, you can do the web design stuff. Because maybe he saw me as like more of an artist. Like, because I was always like into music and all this kind of stuff and like I was like kind of had a town. I'm not saying credentials is everything, right? But as I get more and more credential, as in I built this app in the app store, you know, I built this website, you know, I'm, I followed through this promise. It gives me more and more confidence into like, because maybe you don't like when you're first starting a junior developer job, right? I'm sure you have all the network and everything and whatever. And even if someone gives you like a, I don't know, fifty thousand dollar contract, let's say, I bet I, I don't know if you, you wouldn't be confident enough to take that, right? But as you have more experience and people get serious and you're like, hey, like will you do this for 40 grand? You know, it's not about being scared about taking the money and not being able to complete it. It's about being scared about how much time I have to put in, right? And okay, do I want to sacrifice and have this opportunity, sacrifice for the next three, four months, you know what I mean? So there's obviously confidence in me that I, I'm going to execute and complete anything that I need to, especially to feed my family, feed myself, take care of my kid. So, you know, I am telling you guys all this because imposter syndrome will start killing your career before you even begin. Because now if you doubt yourself and think about all the what ifs too fast, you're gonna start, it's gonna beat you over the head too fast. And you know, you just gotta kind of. There's this like saying in Korea, like Woochikage, I think that's what it is. But it's just like kind of like stupidly fearless and sometimes you have to be that way to kind of learn things, right? And arrogant is the right word? I don't know, not arrogant, but naive. You know, the person with anxiety or the person that has too many doubts who take takes thinking and thinks about all the what ifs that probably don't even happen with all those fears you're not going to start something and it's going to cause you to have more anxiety and more of this feeling of imposter syndrome. And at a certain point you just kind of have to just be like, put your best foot forward and just say, okay, let's Go, let's do it. And all you got to do is take it a step at a time, a day at a time, and just progress, you know, and you have to become. You have to show that there's progress from yesterday, show that you're better than yesterday, and that's all you can do. That's all that's in your control. So one of the most important things when you're first starting to program is, am I doing this right? What if I show someone my code and they don't think it's good? Right. But. But with the knowledge you have, I'm sure you could build many things, right? Build what you can with the knowledge you have and then start refactoring it and redoing it later. But get it working first. That's the main thing. And that's one of the things that maybe make people stop coding or stop starting is because they're worried about how to start, right? Like just a second ago, I think someone didn't know how to start something, Set up the node project, set up jest, set up some tests, and it's like, okay, get to work. Set up the functions. And then I was kind of like, doing it. And then all of a sudden he was like, get the fuck out of here. You know, And I was like, okay, that's all you need. You need. Just need to know how to start, right? I did buy a whiteboard. If you look here, I'm going to start explaining a lot more about code in the future. Probably something about like, layered architecture or something with, like, there's a database, you know, there's a server. You can talk about a server. Maybe we'll put this. That doesn't look like a cloud. Cloud, right. This is your server. Then you have your client, right? And then we can talk about, like, how the client asks for stuff from the server and the server gets it from the DB and the give us back. And we're talking about some layered architecture yesterday. And my mentee mentorship, we're doing like, microservices. So maybe you're going to have many, many, many, many, many, many servers like this. And then you have one API gateway that handles all your requests. And that's kind of how I built my things out. Yeah. So there's many ways to do some the same thing in coding. I feel there's many different architectures to choose, different folder structures to choose. Like, I remember maybe one time, I didn't even know REACT at the time, but this guy came up to me during like a meetup. And he was like, can you look at my React project and tell me if my folder structure is correct? Like, okay, if it works for you, it's fine. You know what I mean? I didn't even know React at the time. It's like it looks good, you know, but don't worry. But I mean, later on, like, you kind of have to code. Like someone's gonna look at your code all the time. But in the beginning I wouldn't worry about it too much, you know, don't be afraid of the requirements. That's more of a wish list than an actual need. Because how are you Gonna have a junior developer position with eight plus years of JavaScript, right? Impossible. Like a junior developer position with knowing Angular React and Vue and Svelte and knowing Postgres and Mongo and knowing Kubernetes and Docker Terraform, it's impossible, you know, it's a wish list. But if you check some of those things off, check some of those things off. And especially if you start a project and finish it to the end, you will have experience with, I don't know whether it be a JavaScript framework, some kind of server, some kind of deployment thing, and you will know how everything kind of works. Coding is not just about programming skills, it's about your personality, it's about your communication skills. Let's say you're an introvert or an extrovert. You need to kind of. I think for my position I needed to be very extroverted. That was kind of like my very, my characteristic that I could bring to a team. I could kind of campaign and kind of like be like, hey, let's all do this or whatever. But maybe you have a fully like very introverted team where you, they just communicate. I'm sure the extrovert is not going to fit in there or something like that, right? Or maybe you need the balance or something, I don't know. But it's not just about, you know, you have to be one certain way, you have to adapt to like that team. But being adaptable is super important as well. And you know, like my first job, it did not take the hundred resumes or 600 interviews or whatever, right? I just networked my ass off. I went to all the startup meetups I could, I went to the startup expos and I just networked, got a whole bunch of phone numbers, just, you know, had fun. And you know, through the grapevine you get a phone call, all of a sudden I text message and they're like, hey, can you go, come here for an interview. I'm starting something. And yeah, that's how I started one of my interns at Let Fill. He's looking for a job. He is trying to run away from left field, but I don't know. No, I think he's gonna do it at the same time. But I told him, like, just go network. Go to every single dev meetup. You can, do everything you can. And he's getting interviews left and right. Yeah. And you know, friends of friends will get higher priority than just random job posting, like applicants. Right. Unless they need something super specialized. And you're a super specialized person, as in, like, oh, I know this map service really well. Right. Or I know this elasticsearch service very well. And then you can kind of market yourself. But you know, the person with this recommendation or this good word will probably, you know, get some kind of like, yes, this person's good. Because not everybody's a programmer. Right? Especially the CEO and usually the person that's signing the paycheck. It's not going to be like a programmer, but maybe it is, but I don't know. Yeah, but as a programmer, you are the person that's bringing the money to the company. So, you know, the only metric, like I said in the beginning, is, you know, being able to start a project and finish it all the way to the end. So I teach this in my mentorship program. We have a protocol called the personal project protocol where we have a project ideation time and we take your personal project and I show you how to finish it. And this method has worked for all of my mentees and it's worked for me. And if I can do it, you can do it too. You know, coding saves lives. If you guys didn't notice. I put the cupcake here. This is bringing it back to the talking heads that we used to do back in the day, but hopefully it's good. And now we have a full arsenal of the cupcake and the whiteboard coding tips left.