Helping a Dev Rediscover His Entrepreneurial Drive • Coaching Session

are you an experienced software engineer but you're frustrated with the hiring practices in our industry companies don't seem to treat you with any respect they ghost you in the middle of the interview process and take no effort to get back to you and you finally get a job and then you're laid off in five or six months well today I'm going to share a real coaching session I did with a client of mine his name is Matt and he's been through a similar situation over the last couple of years I've worked with him off and on over the last two years and he's really done a lot of amazing work himself to bring himself out of some pretty difficult circumstances to where he is today and when I share this session with you today I think what can be really helpful is to listen to Matt's story and listen to our conversation but listen almost like I'm coaching you I think you'll get a lot of insights for yourself hearing your own journey in Matt's story and I hope as part of Matt's Brave to come on here and share what he's going through it'll inspire you to keep going through whatever you're dealing with too hey pretty good to see you again it's been a two months I think it's been a little while yeah it has and last time I talked to you had uh quite a few thoughts about everything you've been through I don't know it's been a little bit what what's going on yeah it's been a weir few months um so it's funny I applied for like two jobs around the time I think we last start we last chatt I think it was like early February late January um pretty much got ghosted it's been like eight weeks uh kind of sucks a job search but the positive side is I ended up getting a new counselor and sort of like just working through a lot of like deeper issues I've kind of had um and it's resulted in like a lot of journaling and kind of really figuring out a lot of what's been on my mind lately and like really bothering me and so it's actually been quite a positive time in a way it's sort of weird but I started to see the value in like sort of this awkward layoff period um where it's like I can kind of see the transition not so much as like uh it kind of sucks have to go from like where you were before to somewhere else but actually very like transformative um to the point where I'm like oh I kind of appreciate it even if it's not some sucky parts so I've put a lot of journaling uh recognizing a lot of challenges I had so for example feeling really burned out and realizing like oh a lot of the issues I was having just in life like oh am eating out a lot or Haven exercising as much um you're like those are actually symptoms of the Birdo instead of like oh these are why I'm feeling burned out it's actually no I'm really burned out it's causing us and so kind of been exercising a lot more I've been going to the gym like two to three times a week uh man eating a lot better I feel lot healthier my mind feels in a much better space uh my partner and I we bought bikes recently uh so we've just been going for little bike rides just perk when you're not working You' actually have time in the middle of the day just to go for a bike ride when it's quiet um so it's kind of a nice change so um yeah it was like oh maybe I'm still feeling kind of burnt out I didn't I think about that and then realizing like actually burnout can take like maybe two years even they get over so yes kind of an interesting observation or realizing like I've been going through a lot of like perfectionism and I would have initially thought that perfectionism was more like an ego thing like I'm so great I used to be really great like a you know I'm I need to hold myself to high some high standard or something sort of recognizing perfection ism is almost like actually self-doubt it's when you're actually not feeling great about yourself and so you're trying to strive for some Perfection that you can't really achieve yeah largely because it becomes avoidance for the facing that selfed out again um and I think that really started the trigger when I had applied for a few jobs in a few interviews back in December and I had grinded for like three weeks an interview prep got into two interviews and immediately lost the first round on interviews and it like really stung and I think what that said to me was like man if you did three weeks of prep and you still weren't good enough like man you gota you got to try even harder like you gotta have an even higher bar of quality for yourself and that became kind of impossible early and really unfair and so sort of to turn out into this avoidance of like I didn't really feel like coding I didn't feel like job searching I didn't really feel like doing much of anything it became like this really kind of crappy burnout

depression State sure but um been working through that with like a celor and like doing a lot of journaling and actually my mindsets kind of becoming a lot more optimistic I'd say and so I think that's actually been a valuable time even if it isn't like the most productive time so to speak but it's something I think I've needed to work through and process um see yeah so a few things I kind of been processing was like realizing I'm still kind of burned out realizing I got a lot of perfectionism self-comparison a lot of self-doubt um uncertainty not really knowing where I'm going trying to find like oh man if I keep rating I'll find that perfect plan eventually and I recognized I had written like 26 journals each probably like 10 pages long in like the span of two months and I thought about a lot of things and it was really helpful but eventually realizing like okay at some point I need to convert this to action um and I the journaling almost started to become avoidance for me in a bit so only in the past week that I really recognized that so I've been trying to be like huh I'm avoiding this because I'm trying to like do it perfectly I want the perfect answer for where my career is going to go I want certainty I can um I want some stability I wanna I want to know that when I'm working on something it's gonna payoff and when you're job searching it's a lot different than showing up to work every day and just picking up a and do the ticket and then you get done move on and your job search CH there's a lot of ambiguity you don't have a very clear idea of like is this the right thing to do it might be but at the same time maybe you just randomly walk into somebody while you're out one day and then they become a connection and they lead you to a job like you don't really know what's going to be the thing that works out but you sort of have to try things imperfectly and for that so I'm kind of try to move towards action and I'm trying to set the bar for myself like really low is to act and then you have momentum in your role from it yeah so yeah any no that's okay I haven't talked you in a while so I wanted to give you a little space to just kind of let me know like really how you're feeling really what's going on so I remember last time we talked I think you had told me about your new therapist counselor and that you were making some yeah really good progress and definitely um you know and I'll try not to like you know speak to the audience too much but just as a quick background um you know Matt and I have worked together I think off and on for a little bit maybe not quite two full years but over the a little bit a couple times over the last two years um maybe year and a half and yeah you you know you used to when you were a little child kind of want to run your own business I know we talked about that was kind of one of your dreams uh as a kid and and that didn't come out I think until the second time you and I work together because mostly we were just talking about sort of like where to go as an employee at the beginning um and I know you had um without getting into all the details you've had some really big UPS some Downs um and you know more recently I feel like you've really been questioning where do I go from here and you know we did that I don't remember if it was called healthy Dev map when we did it but career Compass package where we try to kind of figure out what direction you want to go and I know at that time you know you wanted to do more back end you wanted to move in kind of like uh you wanted to widen sort of your skills to be considered more of a full stack Dev and if I remember correctly you know some of the reasoning for that was genuine interest in wanting to learn some new skills but also it was like there was a person that kind of had given you a suggestion that like Well if you really want to be valuable you know this is what you need to do and I know we both talked back and forth about like how much of this is based on what they said versus what you really want um and then we started talking about well what would it look like if you maybe went a totally different direction you'd already done some team leadership um I gave you some comp Ms on when you'd shared like when you were sort of in a lead role at two companies ago you know how you really cared for your team you were doing one-on-ones with a lot of people you weren't even asked I thought wow this is really a guy who cares a lot about his team um he has a lot of care for the culture and making sure that everybody's working together you know feels seen and obviously that's really important in these software engineering positions where it's knowledge work anyway you know through all that I think it's really

great what I'm hearing and what you told me last time is like you've you know correct me if I'm wrong here you know you've kind of recognized hey career is one thing but I've also just got some sort of like just personal needs to kind of take better care of myself sounds like you were really making some great progress there you know you're going I don't remember if you said you're going to the gym or what you're doing but you're basically exercising more off when you and your partner got bikes that's great um yeah now since we're talking about career uh today but you know as I well as people will find as I record more of these and put them out um you know this bleeds from career into life in a lot of ways as we talk where are you sitting today with you know the prospect of continuing to find employment and putting um sort of a judgment on the next job like it's got to be the right stepping stone for me in sort of the progression of where you should be from a corporate standpoint versus are you looking at it as a well I need to get a job to pay my bills but maybe I'm balancing that with something else that I might be doing that is more entrepreneurial I don't know if you're still even entertaining that or if that's something you're wrestling with yeah so let me feeling about that there there's um the job search side and then there's like the entrepreneurship side to it um so it's actually interesting like I really like the entrepreneurship side that gets me really excited I think part of fullstack development that really excites me is actually building my own product or building my own service or being able to just build anything put it together and soad just kind of like doing like one small side of it it's really exciting to see the entire thing I really like the system design I do really like the leadership side I get a lot of value out of like mentoring other developers um contship side like really speaks to me and it goes back to like I know grade seven eight like high school I really want to start on company in fact actually even kind of why I started programming in the first place was I wanted to start my own company and I started like oh can I make my own little web apps like and try to sell them or something like that's was kind of a cool idea um I think where I'm at is there's a pragmatic side to it and where I'm kind of thinking is like well I'm an unfortunate situation to have a decent Runway I also recognize it genuinely takes a while to get a business up off ground um and true you especially get to a point where you could be making income and pragmatically I don't want to burn through all of my savings right I understand so what I'm trying to look at more is instead of trying to force myself into a situation where I need to build a business quickly and survive and which I think puts a lot of pressure on and can actually lead to you making poor decisions you're doing it more out of urgency than what is correct I guess um I'm more interested in actually like finding a job that facilitates eventually starting my own company um and that could be in a few ways it could be like learning again learning my full stack it could be like taking on more leadership roles uh it could be learning more about the business side product it could just even be like it's a more chill place to work where I can actually have time and energy outside of work to be thinking about it um and a lot of people who I've sort of like researched into start a company it seems like they often do have the job in started on the in start of us on the side and that job kind of gives you that Foundation you're not trying so you can you know try to find customers you can actually try to build a product you can take your time to actually grow and get a business that's working and transition it let me let me try challenging just a little bit of what you're saying only because I think actually what you're talking about is crucial to walking into your next job with the right attitude it sounds like you're you're pretty much there but I just I think there's a couple things I want to make sure that I ask you about um so first is uh I agree that typically getting a business off the ground you know I think and you know how statistics are right there's always the exception I think statistically people will say about 3 years on average till it becomes like something that fully sustains you now again this if you think about people though who are like very entrepreneurial-minded um people who just like don't go towards Tri typical employment kind of from the get-go right when they become adults or even before they're adults they can be complete exceptions to this right and they just put their effort into it and it happens what I wanted to interrupt you with I apologize ol for that and just kind of ask you about was I

hear this thought that hey a job is stable and I'll get a job and then on the side I can do this thing and maybe I'll do some leadership product management and I definitely get that from a like you I hear you not wanting to make um sort of kneejerk decisions right that are based on like a feeling of too much urgency where you make an unwise decision what I wanted to flip the script for you though and just ask you is it possible to look for a job when you already have Runway like you do is it possible to look for a job in urgency as well yeah and so that's actually something I was I had been journaling quite a bit it's like when I would look at certain jobs over the years there's obviously some that were I think were a great fit and there were maybe some that were less of a great fit and I think part of that can be this urgency you're placed under um in part maybe an natural pressure yeah right you just like you just need to find something or you're in a place that you don't really like and you're like you need to find that next place and so there's this urgency under it um I think last year was interesting for context year I was I had I call it a career break last year for eight months and then I took a job for five months and was laid off um but it's sort of interesting because I'm like kind of getting to redo my time off last year in a way and last year I think I had a lot of ideas of how I would approach a career break oh like I want to do a lot more learning but that career break ended up becoming mostly job searching which was not really what it was meant to be it was actually meant to be a break where I spent a lot more time learning and exploring things and well did a part of that I felt a lot of pressure to jump into something um and interestingly I jumped into a job which um you know ended up five months later laying off 80% of the company well let's let me let me again steer this a little right there because that's kind of the Crux of it which is like I you know we were working together before and you got a great new job it was it gave you now I know when you got in there and you started learning some of the new front end you were like I like react better I'm more used to that we we'll get into all that or maybe we won't but what happened is you did find a better job it was very intentional I remember you had another company that was offering you a lot more money but you took the job that seemed like it was going to let you recover from the burnout better and just really do a great you loved the culture I remember I think it was the CEO even told you hey our people we really care about like if they're not feeling good and like you got a lot of really good Signs Now again you get the job sometimes it doesn't play out exactly like that but still even when you had started you know I was hearing some really positive things and at the end you got laid off not because you made a bad decision not because it was a bad company because it was just the luck of the draw and so the reason I asked you the question before is I hear you saying hey I don't want to pursue self-employment out of urgency and make an unwise decision that's smart my question though is if you've got Runway and you could pursue self-employment or a job is it possible to say I'm going to pursue a job because it's safe but actually history shows you otherwise yeah it's kind of true it's sort of it's interesting because like you kind of look at a job as like a being more of a safe thing but the reality is like I did that last year and uh here I am again um we're something I actually find really exciting about the entrepreneurship side is you can just like hey go build it your own go build your own product as a developer I think you learned so much more doing that than you would just picking up a ticket at work because it's just depending on what your manager getes you um like a lot of personal growth remember how um and I'm only interrupting you because we work together so much I'm trying to get you to a spot because I think you're at a spot where there's some actions that potentially you could start Tak to really start making some progress on this I think you're right there um you know you you in correct me if I'm wrong with the story I'll give you the high level but you explained something about you were I don't remember if you were at a trade show or an airport you were somewhere and you saw some some something some product in an involved technology and you just had this reflection this moment gosh that's cool somebody did that somebody brought this thing to life they made it you know I could maybe do that and I I'll tell you from knowing you

Matt we spent quite a few hours together um I have no doubt you could build whatever the hell needs to be built you've built so much software over your career I mean I think that's not going to be a CH not that there's not challenging and learning and that you know you've done that endlessly the challenge is the other side the discovering a business problem where it's an opportunity to invest in so that what you're building you actually have something to sell to a market that has an appetite for what you're offering um and I've talked about in one of my other episodes on the show how the first two startups I tried to do um I focused too much on creating a product that was interesting for me to build now I did care about the customer I I'd like to think I wasn't just like well I'm going to build something with absolutely zero business value but I still was a little too I'm going to pick a Tex stack and a business problem that I'm going to enjoy coding um and what I can say is one thing I've learned and I'm just one person so you know take it with a grain of salt as I always tell you uh one thing I've learned is that it actually takes a lot simpler solution with actually a lot less moving pieces to start a successful business than I think we as Engineers think because we're paid to solve complicated problems I mean if you think about you go to if you go get a job at Google the reason you're paid so much is not just because I'm working at a company that can afford to pay me more because Google obviously can it's because the scale and complexity of the problems they face are really challenging if you're starting a business you're not obviously you know you're not Google but like you're not you're not going to be establishing yourself in a market by bringing to Market a complex solution that requires a whole team and all you know if you're going to be a solopreneur so to speak you know you have to bring something forth that you can build and you can sell and you can market and you can be the product manager essentially the person who talks to your potential customers you you're kind of wearing this is what I do you're wearing all those hats if what I offered now I do have Dev Pathfinder today and I have something else I'm working on but you know if I offered was some you know three tier six tier seven microservices insane thing as my first product I'd probably still be building it today and I'd have no idea if anybody's even willing to to buy it so I'll stop there but what I wanted to ask you is maybe I can't give you the ultimate answer with you know will really anything this is your career but you know with which job you should get next or how you should approach that I I do want encourage you though since I've started coaching you that like you're a really smart guy you have a lot of empathy for the user you know how to lead people um is there any way you could start to take some steps to begin to explore potential markets that have problems to try to see if any of those problems uh are a simple enough of a software potentially solution that you could solve them um without having to hire a team you know you basically you'd be looking for a problem in an existing Market where the customer hopefully is already doing it today but they don't like their solution maybe it's not automated maybe it is um and that you can build it on your own you can get it to you know an MVP in front of them like I think two months a month something fast where you can start to get some feedback um what do you what do you feel when you hear me even say that does that sound too Pie in the Sky unrealistic just be real with me like how do you feel when I that so the fun thing is I feel I already have that um okay let me elaborate on this so me personally having gone through many layoffs recently I also know many people who are laid offs and I see a lot of developers who are really struggling right now the thing is U with my last layoff I I started like a study group where we started practicing interview questions together we would start doing like lead code or system design and I basically like have a little group who I would meet up with like once every two weeks or something and we do mock interviews and I can actually see where developers were struggling and I would see them going through these actual pain points you know they want to get back to a job I would also see us very willingly spending money on courses to do these things you know you usually spend H1 or $200 in a course if it can lead to you

getting a job again the ROI is pretty much immediate um and a lot of what I'm actually seeing here is there's a recurring type of interviews and the material is very fairly well known go learn data structures algorithms system desine um I just mock interviews and a lot of times what people kind of need is like Clarity um and so had this idea even just to build for my own self while drop scripting is like hey what if I just made almost like a simple flash card thing that gives you a problem of the day to go solve and you can kind of just it's giving you something to do to keep practicing for system design or um be code interviews like that's fairly simple you don't even have to build a user system you can actually just do those at front end and just do little flashcards and maybe do something local storage to save your progress or something like that um I have people who would use it I would personally use it and I know people who actually would because they're in the situationally in like mentoring and talking to them um and I have a lot of developers who are going through these struggles U and I think that Clarity and direction for job searching and getting better interviews is should quite good um that also ties into a lot of like what I'm personally interested in data structur algorithm system design myself personally interested in building a project and kind of ties in a lot so and also just like from a value perspective I I'm not a competitive person and what I mean by that is I'm someone who actually prefers collaboration I get a lot more joy out of mentoring other people and teaching people I really like learning myself and it just really feels like something that aligns with me because it's like you're building something that I recognize I see genuinely many people suffer struggling with that I'm personally struggling with and you're helping them out and I like just is fine actually just genuinely really meaningful to me and I also do have an audience people who would actually want to use that and I know they would pay because I literally see them similar things well so I I think it's I love hearing the energy and the passion you have behind the prospect of doing this like I love that um there's a couple things though I want to ask you about because I think um they're just they're worth seeing how you feel about them um but and before we even get into those I want to ask you made the statement I'm not a very competitive person I really enjoy collaboration and teaching why do you think that is what do you is do you have a certain adversity to uh competition is there was there an event where you maybe you know I don't want to call her why don't you just tell me why do you think that is yeah it's not even like from a programming perspective it's just like something because of the personality like you know playing multiplayer games like a racing game like I don't really enjoy losing but also like I much I just enjoy it more when we're working together on a problem well hold on a second I really don't enjoy losing that doesn't sound like a person who doesn't want that actually sounds like someone who is competitive but who maybe lost one or twice and uses that as a justification to say they don't want to compete I think you are competitive here's why okay you had a dream to work at this one company it's not the last one it's the one before it I won't name them but right you got you have you always thought man i' I'd love to work there you worked there I think you said your niece was impressed by that you worked there you took a lot of Pride that you were at this company then when you were there you eventually moved up into somewhat of a technical leadership position you continue to grow you had people challenging you and even though it was frustrating and one of the people who challenged you know you and I worked together uh was I don't want to call people names very difficult person to deal with that I can see why encountering that person would probably if I were you which I'm not but I probably would have taken on some maybe resentment a little bit for having dealt with that I it maybe also would have caused me to second guess you know my progress in my career a little bit and I know you've done a lot of work with your therapist and reflecting on that since but I just want to pause to ask you I mean do you really believe that it's true that you are not competitive by Nature H well that's kind of it's kind of

interesting there are some things like to compete on like I remember doing time trials in Mario Kart a lot I got really upset when my friend beat me and then I didn't want to play anymore I didn't like that um see that's what I mean though that what would it look like if you went forward in your life and you said I'm not going to let getting beat a reason to stop trying yeah that's interesting because I think that comes down to like self-comparison a lot and there's like that sense of like needing to be better than other people it's funny I'm okay I'm looking off to the side right now I'm just gonna point this out um I have this book literally on speedrunning nice which is literally about you know getting your fastest time in games um and beting other people so I'm like kind of funny that we're talking about just staring me in the face while we having this conversation um anyway I if I wasn't I think there is like that sense of like eating to be better than other people instead of being better than yourself um and you're you can often have standards that are really unfair because you're comparing it to people who are like experts or yes a lot of me than you I can relate and I think you start to recognize like your disadvantages or things that might be a little more uncomfortable um and I feel like it's like you feel like you're losing for like due to unfair reasons um random examples from Canada we just get paid less like and so it's annoying like I'll talk to it at all it was like 10 years younger than being paid more than I am as a they're like intermediate developer making more than I was as a lead it's just what it is but it has nothing to do with but you're making a decision and you and I've talked about this you don't have to stay in Canada I you've got good reasons you've explained them to me and I think they're valid but if you're G to choose to stay there does it really serve you to say I've got this disadvantage you I mean I have to be a little bit careful I'm not I'm not trying to tell you that it's not valid to feel that way sometimes but I'm saying is that helpful to because again that's a little bit of a comparison again you're looking at well if I was in the US you know I'd just make more money and I'm not oh this sucks you know which right I get that um well let let's let me just steer back because I wanted to explore that only to say um in this is your session so I promise I won't make this about me but I'm just going to add a little anecdote here um I actually had it in an EP an episode last week when I saw another person somewhat adjacent to me in just an aspect of what I do get really successful with something or just take a big step and my initial reaction was to be all pissed and frustrated and depressed and like oh you know I waited too long or That should be me and you know my wife was just like you're miserable like you know meaning like she was she's a very compassionate woman but she was also just like I can't believe how you know bad you're this B you out of shape like you got all these things going for you just had somebody on YouTube that you coached you've always wanted to do that you know Ben which was a couple weeks ago you know she's like you're working on this new program which I'll talk about in the future she's like just worry about the stuff you're doing you know um and what I found is like I actually am a very competitive person and where I do well selfemployed with my competition is when I compete against myself with how well I can serve my customers so like for example when I used to create documentation uh as a consultant I would go to really kind of a ridiculous levels to like style things well and have them really easy to read and I put a lot of Pride and craft into my documentation and there were always other developers that appreciated it and the management would also appreciate it to a level but they didn't appreciate it to the level that I put effort into it because I was kind of treating it almost like a product like something that I figured like this is the core thing that this is actually going to make money for the business when it's not it's really just kind of a maintain maintenance artifact for development when I work for myself when I create a survey that you know you or somebody fills out when I create a video to explain which I just did that recently uh it used to be I don't

know if you probably remember this when you and I first met I did a little presentation at the beginning do you remember that at all yeah so I turned that into a video now and it's a decent video and now I don't have to give the presentation every time so it gives more space for the consultation but like I mostly did that because I was like man if I was a customer of me I would be impressed and I would love if there was like a pre-shot video that went through everything and it was good like that would excite me I'd go into that session thinking awesome you know this guy took the time to create this really great onboarding video so I just say that to say like ever since I've worked with you like you definitely take a lot of pride in everything that you do and I think you know maybe you're maybe you don't want to compete against individuals and that maybe that's a good thing where you're at right now but you know if you were to go into you know you're talking about potentially hey I've got this little side Community where I've helped them with interviewing um maybe I even have this flash card thing you know your competitive nature could think about how do I serve the people with that solution I'd be building in a way that's better week after week month after month you know year after year than what I started with and let that sort of be the north star that you're pointing towards when you make decisions in your career maybe still have the day job but like your the competitive part of you the part of you that wants to push the needle having it be something that you truly control and benefit from even if it takes longer to get off the ground now again I'm not I'll come back to your idea in a second but just that conceptually where what do you think when I kind of throw that out there how does that make you feel what's your reaction it's funny because going back to the competitive side it's like I recognize there's actually probably a lot more competitiveness than I think there is learning is a good example like I would be like learning constantly I want to be better um than other developers or like even thinking like oh I'm comparing myself to other developers like I want to compete against them I want to be better than them I you know it's like I don't want to be less than them it's like what I have right now isn't good enough but it does it is actually interesting it is a drive but I think there's a sense of like maybe comparing to myself unfairly to others are people who just like are just way ahead of you for various reasons and that's like makes you kind of feel crappy but I think there actually is quite a little bit of competition now that I'm even talking about it um yeah it's interesting I haven't like thought of myself as someone competitive for like a long time but I think it is just like a discomfort to it um like oh it's like wrong to be competitive or win because if you win someone else would loses you know it's like think like a zero some game but it's not always zero some um well let me throw out there something that's helped me so when I started doing this uh five six years ago um when you searched Google if you search for software engineering coach or whatever I was number one and there was almost nobody else out there it was like a very new I think there was a Reddit post it was like does anybody ever hire soft engineering coaches no like I wouldn't trust him any you know it's was like nobody's even bothering there was like one guy who worked for Twitter that tried to do it and then he just gave up cuz nobody would hire him and I in my competitive nature was like I'm G to do this I'm GNA be the first one to do it I'm going to get people to trust me I'm actually going to try really hard to get them results I've been a developer I know how freaking skeptical they are and man I not a week goes by where I question whether that was the right decision because it's really hard to help engineer years um so you know some of them right like people like you you're much more humble you kind of knew hey I could use possibly some help and that whole industry is exploded I'm not number one now there's you know there's companies that now have like whole networks and they're way cheaper than me it's kind of like anybody can be a coach now um hey great um I'm not so competitive that I want to make other people lose which is a bit of what you're talking about it's like hey there's enough in this industry for everyone however if I have someone come to me and they go yeah I tried working with this other engineering career coach they really sucked I want to see if maybe you'd be better and then they start working with me and they're like this is great of course I feel good about that now I don't I hopefully don't feel good because I'm like you know think because I don't even know who the other person was I'm thinking oh it's good that they didn't get business that's not what I'm thinking but I am thinking wow uh you know I'm I was able to help this person who did not get

help from someone else I guess I'm doing something right you know and and so when I think this is kind of getting to Brass taxs though here when I think about your helping people with interviewing there were two things that popped into my head that I know are going to be these questions that you probably wish that I didn't ask you but I'm asking you them because I really care about you and I think they're worth just exploring and and I'd love for you to come you know come back maybe next time we talk or again you're in Discord with me or something like that um the first one is just that when you're entering a new market or providing a new solution for which there's no existing solution like when I first started doing engineer career coaching um it wasn't that nobody was doing it but like the people who were doing it were hardly known at all they didn't have YouTube channels this was seven years ago was a to totally different uh situation than it is today really your biggest challenge is getting people to believe that there's even a reason that they might try this thing that you're offering that doesn't seem to have uh existing competition yet so it's it's you're trying to um open the mind of people to like hey what if you as an engineer which I know Engineers are diyers right were like I don't need help I'll figure this out you know I figured everything else out why would I need coaching like right that's how a lot of them are and that's how I was um so like a lot of my challenge was just hey it's okay to not do everything yourself like there is some value in getting some perspective and you know some people need that some don't there's it's not a judgment um but once a niche or a market is established you know my understanding from my own experience and from you know the couple startups I tried you really have to have either a 10x Improvement in the value that used to be there I'll explain some examples in a second I think you know this already when you hear me even saying it or you have to have a really sexy standout completely transformative and and by transformative it could just be way simpler using experience that is just so much better for the customer that despite how much even features wise the other solution maybe is they're just so much B bought into this and the two examples I'd give is the first one is like uber you know like despite let's not get into Uber's business practice questionable decisions I this is this isn't the place for that um but you know they figured out the economics behind finding people a much cheaper ride somewhere and creating a two-sided Market which you know a two-sided Market is where you have a customer can make money in the market and a service provider being the Uber driver right that's they created a new business with two sides which is kind of one of the best ones you can create but it's a lot more complicated so that was again I don't know if it was 10x but gosh Uber's huge right like they completely decimated the the taxi cab industry and a lot of ways then you've got um Apple very classic case of a company who you know the iPhone not everybody's going to agree with this is not really as functionally rich as Android in some areas it's maybe not as flexible but the Elegance of the design um the kind of aesthetic of it the status of it people will pay more even for it because it's just such a great experience that people really love the experience of the iPhone you know typically most of the people who do like it um and so when I mention this to just say maybe as a couple homework inquiries I give people these in coaching sometimes and you could just do these for your own fun um and hopefully Improvement a couple questions you could ask yourself is what could you offer with this group you're creating the potential flash card solution you know you it sounds like you've done a variety of things you've helped review where people are at right what could you do within that could produce potentially and I'm not saying you have to do this it's just a question to challenge yourself a 10x Improvement in how the value people get out of interview prep or support or assistance before and by and I'm not saying it has to be 10x across all aspects of interview preparation that's probably too aggressive to expect of yourself but just some part of this experience that you've kind of been part of is

there a way you could do some research see how do people go about this part of it today who are the existing competitors you know how much what are the stats on the progress on how much do they charge maybe it's 10x cheaper too you know maybe there's 10 times more people to help with the process it doesn't so by 10x value it doesn't have to be profit how we'd think of from a business standpoint it can be any kind of business value driver there's about eight of them and we could get into that some other time so that would be one question maybe just brainstorm hey what you know what what could possibly be 10x better in my idea and then the other thing is there something you could do in your idea where it doesn't have to be really better than anything else out there from a like measurable kpi monetary standpoint but the experience of it the experience of either the support that they get the materials the care that's given to them during engaging with you the I don't know Aesthetics you know this is where it takes a lot of creativity and honestly this exercise you've been doing and taking care of your mind and your body is going to juice you up to be able to really come up with great stuff here but this would be where you're just thinking is there something in the experience of this that could be so compelling and differentiating and cool and exciting that people be like yeah I want to get give this a chance even if the thing it does could be like you said flashcards but maybe it's just like it's such a low barrier of Entry now obviously you could come up with a 10x Improvement in value and or a better experience and it still has to trans or translate to there being enough customers that will pay enough that it's worth your time that's the business model portion of your idea but you know I I've always felt uh and this has just been my experience since I got into career coaching if you love a group of people enough and you do see a pain point that you want to solve enough and you're committed enough to making it happen you'll find a a good solution and now is it going to be the most profitable idea on Earth not necessarily right there's tradeoffs in that but again I know I just said quite a few things I'm going to pause there what do you think about looking at your idea just you know from these two different angles would this even be helpful do you have any reservations or objections to what I'm saying no know I think it's like really great ideas and like I had a an initial thought like one thing I constantly see people doing is like you're just reading material where I think you actually learn the most is by building projects and I think that's harder for maybe someone to deliver compared to like you can write a leite code problem in the web browser or you can read this document or watch this video it's like I want you to build a project that's where you actually learn but how do you sell that sell go do the work it's been interesting but um I think there's something there because uh that's something I've been stumbling on a lot it's like I'm bored of reading tutorials and videos like I actually want to build shift and that's when I actually learned something um so can I maybe turn that piece into something let me let me throw out there a suggestion for you and I'm really curious you know people who watch this that if they did get all the way through because it's these are always longer I you know leave some comments guys if you got some ideas um I in a way I think you might want to look at the other side of this Market this is a two-sided Market here's an example you know how uh I I'm pretty sure at least hacker rank does this I don't remember if lead code does this too and I have not been private about my issues with both of those products but I understand hey their businesses they have a right to do what they do um you know you you've got like for hacker rank for example you've got the customer side of the business which is people who are paying for hacker rank let's say higher level versions of it so they can take as many you know questions as possible they can get more solutions there's different money that hacker can make off of the people who are using it to study and get better and then there's a portion of it where employers can select pre-selected questions on hacker Rank and they can search and they can try to have them be somehow related to their solution I think this part of hacker rank sucks and I hope I don't get a whole bunch of heat but whatever um that side meaning the employer what I feel today is that these tools don't do a very good job at all of truly

pre-qualifying a candidate to see okay let's say I'm hiring a senior or a lead engineer I'm not going to just need them to write algorithms I'm going to need them to make sure that as my codebase evolves patterns are introduced to keep complexity under control um they're not an over engineer meaning they just you know go too me too much with moving Parts because right you you've heard of the concept of architecture astronauts they go so high in levels of distraction they run out of air I love that one um you know right you don't want to hire someone like that but you know there there's Juniors that can come out of Stanford with Incredible algorithmic uh capabilities and mathematic abilities but I would never put a person I don't care how great they are with algorithms as the lead on a project that has like a react front end and microservices and a cicd environment and integration with third part party partners and a whole bunch of custom Frameworks for like processing data between multiple endpoints that have to like wait on each other in certain States could they do it sure but could they scale the architecture in a way where they're making Intelligent Decisions on the tradeoffs I'm not saying it's there aren't people that are more talented and natural at that than others I do think though more experienced Engineers have the ability to make smart wise measured decisions about that I would not want to trust you know a hot shot amazing individual coder so I only say that to say and I'm not saying this is what you should do with your idea this is your idea I'm just kind of throwing out some thoughts you know the other side of this Market of your idea not just the people you're helping interview the people who would be like well could we interview what if we interviewed candidates who've gone through Matt's interview process and it actually raised our confidence that the person we're interviewing he's validated aspects of them that are Beyond typical algorithmic tests these are actually maybe you know higher order thinking that's usually more associated with a more experienced person um that can you know let's be honest you've been on these projects you can make decisions about architecture that bring the productivity of an entire team of 15 people to its knees because it's overly Complicated by then like the amount of damage you're doing compared to oh I I I had to look up some Wikipedia articles on how to do Big O notation for some calculation I don't know because I didn't do recently I mean the impact on that versus bad architecture decisions again it's somewhat contextual very different so I'll just kind of end there but I I mostly wanted to just recommend cuz I think this is an idea and even if this isn't the idea it's really great for you Matt to spend at least a little bit of your time when you're up for it because I know you're trying to recover you know from everything that's happened um keeping the hope alive that like you know yeah you're a great developer yeah you've been an amazing individual contributor but like you're also a very curious person you like to learn and you know there's limits to how much learning we can do with coding there's also the learning of business and I think you've had a genuine fascination with that from the beginning yeah that definitely definely like the business side and the product side and I think that's ultimately what you're kind of building the software for um it's EAS to get lost in the technical details but it's like what am I actually building and what problems I actually solving I find like that's what really gets me going as a developer um so yeah lot the thing about but there that's a thing a journal so if if you were to come up with let's say a list of 5 to 10 potential ways to look at this idea that could be positioned as a 10x Improvement of some way and then maybe a list of five to 10 and these are just arbitrary numbers um you know aspects of this that could be differentiators are really like attractive really aesthetically cool just really the experience is really great um and then maybe 5 to 10 kind of product positioning statements that you could give to employers to actually help them understand the value in considering a candidate who's been through your program or used your flashcards um is that something you're interested in doing yeah that is actually pretty interesting it's funny because I came from the developer side it's where I see but it's like oh but there's like the other side where you

know even going back to the beginning of this call it's like oh I applied for a job I've been ghosted for two months now waiting for it and it's probably because they're kind of inundated with so many applications that they just can't really get back to everybody um so there is like a beneficial side for all the employers too and like it you know just solving leak code problems is much different from actually building software and the impact of making a bad architecture decision is like incredibly costly and can last in the code for a long time um something I think a lot of developers struggle with is they think of co building the code and that's the thing it's it you wrote the code it's done it's like actually know that code lives for years like you have to maintain it someone has to support it someone who doesn't even work here right now is going to show up one day and be like what the hell did you guys do um and there's like little things like just naming variables clearly has a lot of impact for that long term um but that actually is very costly and I think that's what part of software development that I actually find really engaging U like really caring about the product and the business and the developers and maintenance and all that it's more writing code yeah and I mean you know obviously we have code analysis tools today right we can we could run code analysis on code basis what if like you know people do some I don't know if it's architecture work or they write a couple react components or you know whatever it is and instead of just like you here's the answer let's have the interviewer see if you had the right answer what if they had code coverage metrics or like cyclomatic complexity calculations or you know things that would take that tell them those are very simple you'd want to come up with something that's a little more Innovative and interesting but you know as with any engineering thing I guess the one thing I'd caution you with is what I said at the beginning of the session which is we tend to think that our solution has to be way more complicated to be of value because we're used to justifying our value to an employer is looking at us as a you know grab bag of multiple capabilities when you're a business that business for example may still use hacker rank God forbid as part of their interview process maybe you're only solving excuse me you're only building their confidence in the candidate let's say in one thing just one thing that they can't do today but that one thing there's let's say you find some research out there that talks about when companies hire engineers and they don't validate this aspect of the engineer here's you know some and I don't know that there are some studies done on this because our industry is very like buzz driven with very little research people don't like to say this but um anyway I'll stop there man because you know we're getting kind of at the end here but uh really just want to encourage you Matt man you're a smart guy we've worked together quite a bit uh you know I I always feel a little sad when I hear the amount of struggles you've been having getting a job but the other part of me that I think is well is there an element of maybe this is a sign that does this mean you stop pursuing employment altogether I hope you don't hear me saying that that's not what I'm saying I this is your and this is your career you have to ultimately walk out these decisions and deal with the consequences but there's at least part of me that thinks if you started to put effort towards building the skills that you would need to be an entrepreneur every day that you don't do that is a day that you know you're just kind of kicking it down the road um and at some point like for me you know I know my story is a little different than yours but you know I had to stop putting that off and go this week I'm going to learn about email marketing and I'm not going to stop until I like have got a trial account and I've set up an email address and I've opted in and seen what happens and you know okay now I know if I need to Market people on email Mark you know whatever that is and for you even if let's say you go through this activity and you find I can't really find a super compelling 10x and you know reason or I can't really find a super compelling differentiator super compelling reasons why the employer would want to use it here's the benefit you just went through the experience of validating a business idea validating I think people think means that it's a successful business no validating a business idea is being objective in applying some criteria to it and going it's not a good idea and moving on Having learned something from that process so I'm not don't hear me wrong

I'm not saying your idea is a bad idea I don't know that I have I don't know really I haven't explored that market you know but you know anything that you do to start to really take actions like a person starting up a company even if it's a solopreneur company um that is not time wasted that's time you're investing in what you're going to have to do no matter what you do yeah that's very true I actually have a course on entrepreneurship that um I bought we ago um that basically goes from like setting up own small business um maybe actually should go back to working on that I thought it was a good place to start just even know I I'm talking about that's cool man yeah I mean you you've heard me talk about this in my learning addiction video but I I think if you got a course just do it like the key the key is like there's so much knowledge we get this false sense of accomplishment just by you know I can go on YouTube every day in my life and learn eight hours a day and get this false like oh my gosh my mind it's been expanded then you asked me next week hey what did you learn from that video what did you do with it nothing literally nothing so like I have to protect myself from learning now and and really only learn just what I need to take my next action in my business yeah otherwise I don't take action I just learn yep yeah that's actually it's very true I think it's helpful to have the material as a reference but it's a bit different from when you just need to like sit down and keep doing a course right it's like you do the course you just learn and learn but nothing comes out of it but if you have it as a reference point it's like you're going through the process you're directing and then when you have a question about something you can go look it up I think that's a actually yeah I'm not actually as of courses as some people are I think I think a well-designed course that actually has processes that you're expected to complete before you move on and it doesn't let you just like oh let me just fly through and read everything I'm going to do in the course and then get the feeling that I did the course that sucks you almost got to gate people like sorry you're not moving on to the next chapter until you actually complete this because otherwise why even call it a course it's just a book at that point so like I know there's a lot of Engineers who for good reason are skeptical of courses there's a lot of crap courses out there but you know a course for someone who can't afford like coaching or something like this it can still be very valuable if it's set up to take good action so like this course you bought you know I'd say it you know you spent good money on it you know finish the damn course you know and take the actions and even if at the end you're like you know some parts of it I like don't know if I do them that way cool you just learned a little better how you would go about business yeah like yeah you can go look into that again um it was it's only a few like a few weeks long or something anyway it's pretty short so yeah at least it give me like a bot more knowledge of where to begin because you're just like feel overwhelmed like how do you start a business there are so many questions are legal stuff Finance stuff but like at least it kind of like starts to clarify things a bit more so there's still value in doing it um but yeah so there's a lot of excitement towards like starting my own thing there's just like a lot of like fear but it's I keep getting kind of brought back to it it's kind of interesting because it's sort of like where I began uh it's like what I wanted to do in the first place so it's like you have an exciting opportunity to kind of go back and finally that dream you wanted to do as a kid hang there Matt I I think you you owe it yourself to at least probably explore some of this a little bit more yeah even if you find that it's not you know happening as fast as you'd like and even if you're still like you know I think I've told you I had to do Consulting you know 20 to 30 hours a week for the first five years that I did this business um until I could go full-time on Career coaching so now that's because I also had you know I was recovering from marijuana addiction and the burnout I've talked about in that episode but uh which is why I hope for many people it doesn't take that long but you know I I'm sitting here today I'm running my own business I haven't I mean I haven't been a W2 employee for seven years I've I've done Consulting contracts or coaching for the last seven years you know and it's had ups and downs and you know again I've had health problems that a lot of other people don't have but that beside I mean I I don't see any foreseeable future where I would ever be an employee again I don't think it's not necessary at this point um and I believe too much in my ability

to create what needs to be created to continue to grow my business even if some of the things I create end up being crap or it's the wrong thing or I find out it's the wrong direction I'll adjust and keep going you know I've at least got some momentum but that was because I took step after step and I made video after bad video especially at the beginning you know and just you know there of course there's going to be fear but like don't let you know I would just say everything you've done probably meaningful in your life there was some element of fear until you did it yeah that's true that's true it's always just the nature of making a change yep comes with the unknown yeah all right man well you feel yeah you feel okay where we're entering this do you feel like you got some thoughts of things you can do next oh yeah there's lots of things to go and like think about now um it's great it's like it's kind of inspiring well awesome man thanks for doing this with me I really appreciate it Matt yeah it was great chatting with you too man