Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode. It's week. It's just
me, no guest, no co hosts, just Charles max Wood coming in
here and talking about stuff. Now. I'm gonna talk more about careers than
I am about iOS development. Basically, I'm going to kind of give a
little bit of an outline for figuring out what it is that you want from
your career and your life. I get a lot of people asking me essentially
how to stay current. It seems like that kind of leads a little bit
into career plans and things like that, And when I answer people, a
lot of times, I'm like, well, that depends on what you want,
and so I really do want to dive in and just kind of hit
this from an angle that makes a lot of sense, so that when you're
trying to figure out what to learn or where to go or where to work
or anything like that, because this is a big part of finding a new
job too, right, A lot of people wind up they kind of coast
through a job until they lose it or until they just can't take it anymore,
and then they go out and apply and whoever winds up giving them an
offer first, they take that job and they just rinse and repeat. And
my goal with devjat Do TV is not just to have a bunch of podcasts,
right, I really want to have podcasts that help people get to a
place in their life that matters to them. Right. We cast a lot
of value judgments on where people end up, what they're doing, what they're
working on, where they live, all that kind of thing, and at
the end of the day, what really matters is what makes them happy.
Right. And So for example, I live here in Utah, and there
are a lot of things that I like about living in Utah, but the
big thing for me is my family here, right, And that's a lot
of the reason why I've stayed here. It's a lot of the reason why
my wife wants to stay here. We've talked sometimes, you know, because
I'm kind of an adventurous soul and I want to go see the world.
But you know, so we've talked about, oh, well, wouldn't it
be fun to move out to, you know, somewhere else. And what
ultimately anchors us here is our families. So you know, for me that's
a big deal. But somebody else may be going, I want to go
move off to the tiniest island in the world that has a village on it,
and I want to do part time fishermen and part time programmer. So
who knows, right, who really knows? So what I really want to
dive into this time is just figuring out where your career is, figuring out
where your life is where you want it to be, right, and then
we can start to sort of build backward from there and build the kind of
career that we want. Okay, So what I want you to do is
I want you to close your eyes unless you're driving or something, right,
but close your eyes and just think for a minute of that place right,
where do you want your life to wind up? Where do you want your
career to wind up? What kinds of things are really going to matter to
you? So so let's think for a minute. Right, Let's go to
a place that's way down the road for the younger folks and not so far
down the road for the older folks, and talk about retirement. Do you
want to retire? Do you want to retire and go do specific kinds of
things? Right? So, my mom, for example, she teaches high
school over here. She wants to retire in like five years, right,
and then she's got a pretty concrete plan as far as what she wants to
do. She wants to go travel all over the world. She wants to
see some pretty specific places and just some places that she you know, probably
isn't thinking of right now that are going to you know, broaden her horizons
and give her experiences that she wants. Right. So, is that what
you're seeing or are you more like me? Right? Because people ask me,
oh, yeah, you know podcasting blah blah blah and build your own
company and eventually you can sell it and retire and be rich, right,
is kind of the idea behind having your own company. But I really enjoy
what I do, right, I really love this, and I don't really
foresee a place where I get to where I'm going. I don't want to
do that anymore. Right, And so the idea of retiring and I see
people retire and then like they become professional TV watchers, I can't do that.
I am not made to do that now. Maybe in another twenty thirty
forty years I'm gonna be going. I'd really like to be able to sit
down and watch TV all day, But for right now, I mean it
sounds nice for a couple of days, maybe a week, where I could
just sit down and not have to do anything. But the idea of retiring
and not having anything to do would drive me completely insane. And even like
traveling the world and things like that, I kind to need a project to
work on, right. My wife's stepdad's kind of that way, right.
He retired five six, seven years ago, maybe more, and he's constantly
working on motorcycles, cars, and you know, he's always got a project
going. And my father in law, my wife's dad, he still works,
right, he's a general contractor. He's actually doing work at my mom's
house I think right now, okay, because my mom hired him to help
remodel her kitchen. So you kind of get the idea, right. Some
people are really wired for that, and some people aren't. So thinking about
that the long term, it's probably not a terrible idea to put money into
a retirement account, whether you plan to retire or not. I'm planning on
doing that, just so that you know, something changes and I can't,
right, or if my project turns into I get a phone call. So
I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ latterday Saints, right, so
I could see in thirty or twenty years, Right, I get a phone
call from Salt Lake and they go, we want you to go on a
mission. Right. I want to be able to afford that and just go.
But it's not going to be a permanent thing, right, I come
back and then I'm going to want to be right back into this. Right.
So so that's the kind of thing that you want to think about,
right, is Okay, where do I want to end up? And yeah,
that's not a ton of the programming career kind of thing, right.
I mean, I'm looking at this as a long term I'm gonna die sitting
in this chair with a microphone in front of me, and so I am
thinking of it that way. But for a lot of people maybe not,
And who knows. I mean maybe things will change in twenty years and I
wind up running for a public office or doing something else. Right, So
that you know this isn't the thing, But I'm still not planning to retire,
So anyway, you kind of get the idea there as far as you
know, just thinking ahead that way, And Okay, so if I if
I need to have a retirement fund in place, right so that I can
go do a church service, or I can go do you know, public
service, or I can go do whatever. Right, I can go work
for a chair, I can go volunteer at a charity full time or something
like that. Right. So, if my life circumstances are that way,
or if I just can't work, then I have money to pay bills.
Right, So I need to be making a certain amount now, right to
pay my bills now, and then I need to be making a certain amount
more to be able to save up for retirement. And so those are kinds
of things to think about. And that's really really long term. But I'm
starting way out there in long term and kind of working my way backward because
from there, you know, then maybe we can say, okay, well,
before we retire, what kind of a career do I want to have
or what kind of a life do I want to have? The other thing
to consider, And this is something that I'm kind of getting into right now.
My kids, right my oldest is fourteen, my youngest is three,
and so it's getting to the place where I really do want to get more
quality time one on one with my kids, especially my older kids, right
because I feel like right now is the time where I really do have the
opportunity to be a good influence on them and help them figure out life and
design the kind of life they want to have. And some of the decisions
they're making now are going to affect them later on. Right, if if
one of my kids wants to go to college or have a specific profession that
you have to go to college for, like they want to be a doctor
or a lawyer or something, then I need to be having the kind of
relationship with them now to help them to get through school with good grades so
they can get in right, or if they decide they want to do something
else, they're going, Dad, I just want to be a podcaster like
you. I don't know that. I don't know that I need a degree.
Right, they might need a degree and in whatever it is they talk
about on their podcast maybe, or maybe they decide that getting a journalism or
an English or you know, some kind of fine arts degree is going to
get them where they want to go. You know, we need to be
talking about those things, and I want to have that kind of relationship.
I also want to have the kind of relationship with them and spend the kind
of time with them. I mean, just because I care about them,
but also because you know, maybe there are other things I mean besides career,
right, you know, I want them to be you know, I
want them to know or at least to have thought deeply about the church,
right, and I want to spend you know. So anyway, So the
time with my kids is something that I'm designing for right now, and that's
going to be a thing for the next ten to twenty years, right,
is how do I do this with my kids? I mean, some of
the things I'm thinking about are do I take them to conferences with me?
Do I you know? And I took them to NGI COMF last year and
they really enjoyed that. But they went to the kids track and I went
and did my work, right, So it wasn't time together per se.
But I could see like one of the podcasting conferences or something, right,
especially like the podcast Movement Extension, which is in Los Angeles, right,
So then I could take one of my kids to that, and then we
could go to Disneyland for a day and then we come home or something,
right anyway, So so yeah, so designing life for that, right,
And Okay, well I need to make a little more money, so I
can, you know, do that. I need to be efficient enough with
my time to be able to spend it with them, that kind of a
thing. So just thinking about those lifestyle things that are going to come within
the next ten years, five years, and things like that, and then
looking at your career in the same arc. Right. So for a long
time, I really wanted to be a speaker at the conferences, right,
I really looked up to them. I thought that that was a track that
I wanted to be on. I like the recognition they got, and so,
you know, I looked at those things, and again I was just
sitting here going, Okay, you know, do I want to be a
speaker, or maybe you want to be a podcaster, or maybe you don't
want to be a podcaster. Maybe you want to be a blogger, Maybe
you want to do YouTube, maybe you want to do screencasts. Maybe you
just want to show up at work at eight leave five and go skiing.
I mean anything, right, you know, halftime, Fishermen, halftime,
I mean whatever, Right, I want to own one hundred head of cattle.
I mean, I don't know, but you know, just just think
through that and what that really means and where that's going to get you and
then start working backward from that. So some of these ideas that we're talking
about, like, for example, being a speaker, for example, you
need to specialize. You need to specialize enough to where you can. For
example, I was talking to somebody or earlier we did an Adventures in Angular
episode, right, and I was chatting with him and he was like,
well, did you submit any talks to advent or to Ngi Koon? And
I think I might have. I don't remember. I don't honestly don't remember.
But the issue is is that I haven't specialized on angular, right,
and so the kinds of talks that I'm going to give it an angular conference
are going to be much less focused on angular and much more focused on other
skills. Or I'm going to be giving like, hey, here's the beginner
blah blah blah blah, right, you know, the basics or maybe intermediate
stuff. I'm not going to be deep on it because I'm not deep on
it every day. And so if you want to speak at some of these
conferences, it really helps to be really plugged into the community, and it
helps to really you know, have a certain level of expertise so that you
can hit the topics that people are going to want to hear about, or
you've got to have some other unique take on things that they're not going to
get from another speaker. And so you know, usually they have one or
two that's like I think last year they had a talk that was like as
for Angular and you know it was a unique talk, right, and so
it kind of had that. So you've got to kind of figure out what
kind of a speaker you want to be, and you've got to build the
skills to be able to do the talks. And so that may mean going
to toast masters, it may be mean reading books. There a bunch of
great books on speaking out there, practice making slides, you know, going
to the users groups, you know, and so people talk about how do
I stay current or how do I build the skills that I need? And
like I said, you know now that we're talking about speaking skills. It
really depends on where you want to end up, right, And so if
you want to be a speaker, then you've got to figure out where the
swift conferences are or the mobile development conferences are. You know, maybe you
wind up speaking at like Oscon or something that's open source. You know,
and you're speaking at that you know, so you're speaking about a specific,
specific topic at a general conference. But yeah, just kind of diving through
and figuring that out. If you have some other idea, you know,
what I want to do programming part time, and I want to do farming
part time or something else part time, then what you've got to decide is,
okay, well, then you know, how do I allocate my time?
How do I make sure that I'm being effective enough things in order to
you know, get what I want? And it's probably going to take some
trial and error. In fact, a lot of people they tend to,
you know, pick a goal and then they think that, Okay, if
I do all the right things, I'm just going to get there. And
what they don't realize is kind of like programming in the sense that you put
the code in, or in this case, you put some of the work
in, and then you run it. So you try speaking, you try
blogging, you try podcasting, you try youtubing whatever, right, and then
after you've tried it a bit, you realize, you know, what,
I really hate being a YouTube personality, and so you switch or you know,
I really enjoy speaking at conferences and so I want to do more of
it, and so you'd kind of double down on learning those things. And
so the same thing with like the farmer stuff, or you know, with
me spending time with my kids, a lot of me trying to figure out
the time allocation is just trial and error. You know, Okay, do
I have time to sit down and read a book to them every night?
Or do I have time to do this kind of thing with this kid at
this time for this thing. And it gets really hard, it gets really
tricky, but knowing that helps me then decide, okay, well, the
next stage for me then is to you know, in my case running my
company, running a podcasting company, the next stage is finding more people to
do more of the stuff that I'm doing so that I can free up my
time for other people. It may be something more along the lines of finding
a mentor who can help them write their proposals so that they'll get accepted to
the conferences, or finding users groups that will let them come and speak every
month and practice their talks, or you know, so these kinds of things
where you're looking at it and you're saying, okay, you know, what
skills, what opportunities do I need what would really make the difference here,
and then go in finding the people who can give you the opportunities you need.
So, you know, just just some ideas there now for a lot
of people, especially if you're newer. What I find is that a lot
of folks are I just want to make it to the next level, right,
So I want to not be a junior developer anymore, or I want
to be a senior developer, or I want to make twenty thousand dollars more
than I'm making, or maybe I have a number out there and I want
to get to the point where I'm making, you know, sixty hundred thousand
dollars a year, And so you start figuring those bits out right, Okay,
well, what do I need to do in order to get a five
thousand dollars raise where I'm at? And then you you know, so you
go do some research and it's okay. Well, it seems like people who
take on managing infrastructure like staging systems and get repositories and see ICV setups and
things like that, they tend to be able to negotiate raises because nobody else
on the team does it or will do it or wants to do it,
Go learn skills like that, or you may wind up just going and spending
a bunch of time listening to podcasts, reading books, watching YouTube, et
cetera on the topic, so that you can understand at a fundamental level how
things work, so that you can knock that out of the park, right,
And then you come in you're more valuable to the company, and then
you can make the case to them to give you a raise, or if
that doesn't even work, then maybe you go work somewhere else. In fact,
the first three programming jobs I had, I got a twenty thousand dollars
raise every time I moved. And so you get the picture there, right.
I was writing code at the first job I was writing code at I
wasn't actually on the development team. I was on the support team, and
then on the QA team. But I was writing code and I was maintaining
a system that managed the support staff and helped them get their work done.
And so you know, I did that, and then one of my coworkers
told me that I could make more money if I got a competitive offer and
brought it back. So I got a competitive offer, I brought it back.
They offered me half of that as a raise, and I told them
no, and I went and worked for somebody else, and I worked for
them until they laid me off, went and applied at another job, got
hired there, got a raise, get the picture right, and so,
you know, sometimes that's the path to it. It really helps if you
can find somebody who's been there and who has kind of navigated some of that,
just to give you an idea of how the ropes work right and how
they made that transition. So if you want to be a speaker, go
find somebody who speaks at a lot of conferences and make friends with them.
It helps if they're local, because then you can just hang out when you
need to. But if you can't do that, you know, because sometimes
that's just not possible, then find something you can do for that, you
know, so you offer to you know, help them with a specific thing.
You offer to do some work, write blog, post, forum,
help with documentation on their open source things like that, and get in that
way. Maybe you want to be a big open source contributor or maintainer or
whatever, right, and so you wind up contributing to a couple of open
source projects. You see how they run them you see how that works,
you see how they get the word out about the projects that they're working on,
and then you go start your own You find a problem to solve and
you write a library that solves it. But anyway, there are a lot
of different ways to figure out how to get where you want, and it's
the same thing with the rest of life, right as far as like running
your own business or moving up in careers or you know, getting promoted to
team lead or CTO and if that's kind of the level you want to be
at, be a founder, CTO or something like that, you can do
that, but you're gonna have to learn other skills besides programming in order to
do that, and you're probably again going to want to find some mentors who
can help you step through a lot of that stuff. So it's it's a
it's a road, it's a pros and there are a lot of things that
you're probably going to need to be figuring out as far as how you do
it, how you approach it, and where you go with it. So
I really really highly encourage people to actually sit down, spend a few minutes
and figure that out. And then what you could do is you can say
okay, well, then what's the next step? Right, And it could
be a new job, it could be current job with new you know,
better pay, or different circumstances. And then you go talk to them and
say, okay, well, how do I get a raise, how do
I get promoted to team lead, how do I get senior developer status?
Whatever? And figure out what that means to them, and then if they
aren't going to offer it to you, then figure out where you can get
it somewhere else. And when you do that, and this is all in
the Max Coder's Guide defining your dream developer job is you know, if it
turns out that you do need a different job to get you that, then
that becomes one of the top three things that you're looking for. And if
a company can't offer it to you, you won't take a position with them.
And just taking that next step and then the next step and then the
next step is the way you get there. This is something I've kind of
been thinking about for a while. The only other thing I really want to
add to this is that a lot of people have a lot of reasons in
their head as to why they can't right, I'm a this, I'm a
that they're a this they are, that the community does or doesn't blah blah
blah for people like me. But what I find is ultimately, the people
who get what they want are the ones that work for it. I'm not
saying the system isn't necessarily fair or perfect or anything else. I'm not advocating
any of that, But ultimately, when it comes right down to it,
is that that's the system you have to work in, and the best way
for you to actually change the system is to get get what you want from
it, right because then essentially you can help other people do the same thing.
And so I really really just encourage you if you're out there and you're
thinking, Okay, well this is where I want to end up, this
is these are the career places I want to end up in. These are
the decisions I want to make, This is what I'm looking at. Then
you can make those calls right then you can say, okay, well these
are the next steps I need to take, And these are the kinds of
things that I need to do, And these are the kinds of people that
I need to get to know. And this is the kind of difference that
I'm hoping to make at the end of the day or at the end of
my life. So that's something that I'm really thinking about right now as far
as like, you know, what kind of impact do I want? What
am I really looking for from life? What am I really looking for to
give to other people during my life? And what kind of I don't really
love the term legacy, but what kind of an impact? Right if I
weren't here, what would the world lack? And you know, just kind
of nail that down so that I know what I'm after and then again and
just work backward from that. And yeah, I've had some I've had some
instances where things just didn't work out the way I wanted them to, where
it felt like things were sliding backward instead of forward. But you know,
when I look at it, the more I look at it, the more
I realize, you know, what I got to get in. I got
to get my rear ending gear. I got to really kick it up a
not your ten and own it and earn it. And so that's that's kind
of what I'm looking at for you. But if you don't have that initial
direction, then you may be doing things that ultimately don't work out for you
in the long run. So anyway, those are more or less my thoughts.
The only other thing I'll throw out is if you can't find a mentor
find somebody who's done and do what they did. And yeah, I get
crap sometimes because I'll copy people's stuff, like not plagiarized content. I've never
done that, but you know, it's like, oh, that approach is
working for you, so I'm gonna do the same thing. And I mean
that's a totally legitimate way to learn and it works. So yeah, anyway,
whatever it is you want, just figure it out, go after it,
and do the work. And yeah, I'm not promising you that you'll
get it in two months or ten months or two years or ten years,
but you can consistently then start saying, well, then this is where I'm
at and this is where I want to go next, and you can make
those judgment calls. So yeah, anyway, I've kind of rambled through this
a little bit. It's a little bit shorter episode than we normally put out,
but yeah, that's really what I've been thinking about. Now, as
far as anything else goes, I am going to encourage you to go get
the Max Cooder's Guide Defining your dream developer job working on the audiobook. It
should be out soon ish. It may already be out by the time this
goes live. I haven't checked dates on this yet, so anyway, definitely
check that out as far as anything else goes. I've got a couple of
picks as well for just things that I've been enjoying. One pick is a
series of books. I read them a long time ago when I was a
teenager. It's a Magician Apprentice and Magician Master. They're part of the Riftwar
saga by Raymond E. Feist, and I really have enjoyed those books.
They're awesome. And then the other pick that I have is a TV series
that I've been watching. It's an Amazon original series. It's called The Man
in the High Castle, and it's a pretty awesome show. I'm still in
the first season, so maybe it doesn't, you know, live up to
it. A lot of shows the first season is awesome, in the second
season, I'm just like, Okay, I passed, but this is really
good. I'm really enjoying it. So anyway, Men in the High Castle
essentially it takes place in the sixties, but it's an alternate universe where the
Nazis won the war, and you know, so Japan basically controls the west
coast of the US and the Germans control the east coast of the US,
and there's kind of a neutral zone in the middle. And anyway, so
people are I'm not going to spoil any of the rest of it for you.
There are a few things that are a little bit fantastic about it,
I guess are the best way to put it. Where you know, there
are things that you know are unexplainable but are semi magical. I mean,
people don't have superpowers or anything, but you know there's a phenomenon in there
that you know wouldn't occur without you know, some kind of supernatural help.
So and it's really just one thing, but it's kind of central to the
entire story. So anyway, go check it out. Really really dig in
this show, and it's interesting to think about, Okay, what if right?
So anyway, check those out. I don't have any other picks,
So I'm just going to sign off, but thanks for listening, and in
the meantime, Max out