All right, let me set the context. There are standard set of questions that I feel are repeated a lot um on YouTube. We had the orientation class of the cohort yesterday over there as well.
Generally around uh I'm not getting a job or what should be my road map to get a job. Uh or I feel like I can't code even though I spend a few hours trying to code uh but I'm not able to do it myself. Uh which all lie in the same bucket of challenges and hopefully have the same set of solutions to them.
Um I've written down a few points uh trying to just decode the philosophy behind it and I would love to take you guys through the points as I try to explain what the problem might be. um and maybe a few solutions. If you're feeling inconsistent, if you're feeling uh you're not getting a job irrespective of trying, what might be the right way to try uh you know being motivated to code, what might be the right direction to code in?
What's the kind of mindset that's decent to have? If you have like a 6-month horizon to get a job with that, we'll get into the video. The very first point that I've written down is humans are lazy.
Systems have been made to make us lazier. Find a forcing function to not be lazy. Um generally, this forcing function is getting a job.
Um, self accountability is a myth. 99% of humans can't be self-accountable. The 1% usually this either is highly motivated or has a core purpose that leads to accountability.
The point basically is trying to deep dive on general human laziness. Uh, and one humans are lazy like that. That's probably, you know, one of the purposes of of being on on this earth is to, you know, have a good life.
Um, which is fine. The problem is if you're eventually looking for a job or if you want to code specifically in this context or do anything else I think productive in life and create value unfortunately uh you have to spend most of your working hours or a decent chunk of your working working hours you know 40 50 hours a week trying to hone the skill uh that you're eventually going to use to provide value everyone has different potentials uh final outcomes how big they can be in a specific skill set um and the problem lies where you know a lot of people have a decent chunk of IQ probably a decent bunch of value that they can provide to the world but they don't have the right accountability motivations to stick to learning the skill that will eventually lead to a job or you know uh making money um to just I mean make peace with the fact if we're really bad at accountability I've seen this in the school as well like if you make 0% attendance criterias um the motivation for 0% attendance criteria is to make sure the people who are really good don't waste their time but the direction that it ends up taking is you know most people who are not good end up not attending classes uh because humans are lazy Um even if your class is at 2:30 p. m.
uh you know people tend to sleep late or whatever the reason is and when they're sleeping late they're not sleeping late for the right right reasons. Um and that learning from you know the first semester here has been okay it's you honestly sometimes it just makes sense to force systems um to make people more accountable that could include you know attendance criterias making them sit through classes for you might be you know I don't know actually I have no if you're back home um I think it's very easy to chill um so you have to find that system that keeps you accountable because keeping yourself self accountable without a job is really hard when you have a job it sort of makes sense you have deadlines you have managers they sort of make sure you're being productive and if you don't remain productive over time you tend to lose your job or you know you will not see salary bumps that you expect. If you don't have a job where this becomes a you know slippery slope where you one don't have a job and two two don't have enough motivation to hone the skills that lead to a job.
So make peace with the fact you're not accountable beings. Um and I think everyone out there knows what to learn or you know how can you get a job or you know what is the right uh technology to learn number of hours to give uh apply for a job uh get an interview. uh the harder bit is you know having those skills to clear an interview which will only come if you're being extremely accountable which means you know putting a lot of hours learning that specific technology.
Point number two. So again, this this sort of relates to point number one, which is it's really how do you know you're being accountable? Um the answer probably is you should track everything.
Um the number of hours, productivity or learning curve, what you learn today. Are you a more proficient human being compared to yesterday? Um I don't necessarily mean tracking the number of hours or lines of code that you've written.
Uh I think uh us as humans again uh at the back of our head know okay you know what we've done today has it made us more productive or not. Again this is a very good outcome if you already have a job. You don't necessarily have to be productive.
You're forced to be productive at least 8 hours a day. And when I say 8 hours a day, I mean 8 hours of a day today. Like you can probably write much more code today in 8 hours compared to 3 hours.
So when I say 8 hours a day, I mean 8 hours of code today, which probably is equal to, you know, write 30 hours of code maybe 3 years ago when elements weren't there. So if you're being forced now to be productive for 8 hours because that'll lead to a paycheck. this sort of becomes an outcome um of you know by the the end of the day when you're sleeping you've most probably put in you've trained your brain enough that it's grown a little uh it's learned something new it's dealt challenges in production um versus again if you're back home or if you don't have a job it's really hard to you know track the only thing is in like 3 4 days a week if you've not if you're not being productive it's very easy for you to at least tell uh I've not really learned something new in the last you know few days and if that is happening uh find a solution to it which again I don't have a good answer for generally the answer is getting a job.
Um but again this is a vicious cycle of you know if you're not being productive today it's very hard to get a job. Point number three 100k is not an outcome it's a journey long arduous and today an uncertain journey. Um I think you will probably feel extremely motivated to learn if you're prepping for a 100k job or if I tell you okay you know if you do this eventually it is going to lead to 100k job.
Uh I think that's why people are fairly motivated to give J because it's very obviously there's a day that you're preparing for on which if you do well uh probably you know you're going to do well in your career. There is unfortunately no such one big outcome you can get say at least for most people that that you know you optimize for that unfortunately this is going to be a long aruous and today uncertain journey why uncertain today because back 5 years ago it was easy to hire or it was sort of necessary for companies to hire engineers in bulk using puzzles DSA but because it was such an elitist sort of a field okay anyone who was trying to get in was getting a job there are too many people now trying to compete for the same pie it's no different from you know multiple other fields I think if you're in medical you probably have to you grind till 30 31 32 before you actually see a little bit of you know a job a stable career it's not as bad here it'll probably never be as bad in engineering specifically computer science but there will be sort of a you know a curve to go through uh debts to pay entry- level jobs to take before you can reach that number there's no unfortunate uh path to a oneshot outcome if you're doing x for you know 6 months a year it happens in fairly uh you know not as often as you would think you know you might think it happens a lot because of YouTube but it doesn't I think for most people for like for the average this is like a very common number after 6 7 years of experience if not 80 lakhs maybe you know 50 lakhs is like a place if you're an engineer and you have to just not even taking contrary bets if you're taking standard bets of being you know um in startups in companies take any example of you know razor pay and at Google um it's not unheard of after a few years of experience to make 50 60 lakhs peranom um I think the problem might be like the motivation only comes if you feel like you'll get that offer tomorrow which unfortunately won't happen. Point number four, u the deep sleep phenomena.
I feel like I this only happens with me or maybe with a few of you. Um I've had the most deepest sleep when I've coded for 4 to 5 hours straight straining myself with an outcome. Um when I say an outcome, I mean probably a freelance job, a gig, something like that.
I'd actually love to show my Udemy dashboard here, Upwork. God, it's been years. All right.
Uh so this is the one. Uh this was back in 2020. Um it was a week worth of a gig.
So Monday it started, Friday it ended. U and this was while I had another full-time job. I remember distinctly I had another two laptops open at the same time.
The other was a full-time jobs had to be available for meetings. These guys sort of knew I had them on the job. So they weren't very pissy about that.
Uh but at the same time, you know, I had to uh basically execute a lot. It says 57 hours here. This is after like a discount that we initially negotiated on.
So it was like around 60 hours that I probably actually did work for them, you know, on Google meet because I had to execute a specific project very quickly. good forcing function for me to you know execute let's say 60 hours here and maybe another you know probably 10 20 hours the other side so 80 hours in a week just coding a new codebase I have seen for the first time that is being led by someone who's mildly technical and you know I'm coming there and fixing fires and I remember you know after a week after I had done this gig they called back I changed something it broke I had to fix it things like these but you know Saturday morning at 7 8 in the morning is when this ended I remember distinctly I went out with my mom and you know felt one very nice hunch or whatever money outcome you know I made four lakh five lakh in a week but more than that the brain sort of reached a peak of what it could do it's really hard to find a forcing function to strain your brain that much I was lucky enough to you know find such forcing function if you look at you know my complete history over here if you look at this project as well which was like a few months I would say this was with another full-time 40 hours a week a gig that I had I was managing both of them together and you' probably you know not you you probably can find similar projects today like seems like a very simple thing but at the same time you know that specific user had done 100 things that were wrong in a chat application and uh this video is sort of less about how to get a job it's more about you know uh how to uh how I strained my brain enough to learn a lot of these skills on the go for example this specific client had redux which I had never done um and I learned redux through the process of working with them so find such forcing functions I was lucky enough to naturally uh get such forcing functions to overwork to a point where my brain can't learn anymore more, but I wouldn't say I'm the most high IQ person. I'm just, you know, um, good at working hard.
And back then, the motivation was I did not have a full-time job. Um, I wanted to grab as much money on the table as I could. Point number five, consistency wins.
Usually, consistency is built by interest and not by force. You don't need to be consistent to scroll Insta. You don't need to be consistent to play games.
It happens automatically. Uh, but what's better than games uh on Instagram? It's, you know, money hitting the bank.
Um I think the high that you felt people say this uh by when you when money hits the bank or you make money while trading um is closer to the high that you get when you do uh intoxicants. Um I think it's sort of true um especially if you're not a full-time employee basically if you're you know making a living by finding software projects and getting paid for them. Uh then yes you chase that high a lot um that again makes it a forcing function to be consistent.
Uh because if if you're free for a week you're not getting paid for a week. uh to look at any you know example I think I recently saw a tweet by of you know someone who got a 2. 5 CR offer u from Karak but if you look at his code forces is like basically last four four years he was solving questions every day which is usually a good outcome of curiosity um if you like CS and you know you can create interest in CS by watching movies you don't necessarily have to be the most gifted person I think people who do have interest in CS are either people who had who got access to a laptop early or people who get fascinated by movies which back in the day were you know the social network or movies like these do what it takes to find that motivation but once that motivation comes consistency usually falls um consistently usually follows try to find what that is if you can't then you know good luck with being consistent because again us as human beings very lazy very hard to be consistent on something when there is a unpredictable outcome uh which I think is true today u it's not necessary if you're super consistent you know and god knows how long you'll stay consistent will it be a 6 months will it be a year you know it's very hard to do that if you don't have core interest another small example I take at this point is when I was contributing to open source to get a job.
I remember I was at my brink of uh contributing to that company. Uh it was the 10th day I had been contributing pretty much not sleeping and contributing because I had another offer to take and you know I only had a window of 15 20 days to to grab this offer. I was at the brink.
I was about to stop. That was my last day of contributing when I got the offer. So you know a lot of times um you will probably not remain consistent enough or not be able to find that timeline of you know when consistency should stop unless you have interest.
If you have interest then that's anyways what you do you know um on a on your day like this you'll probably feel sick if you're not coding um you know at least a few hours a day or if you've left coding for like 2 days. Last point um the world will move on blame games one time and you'll have 100 different things to blame if you don't achieve what you set out to take that escape if you feel like it. Again the good thing today is we have the internet uh and you know there are 100 things you can blame which could be you know the market the industry AI u and those things will stay probably you will have more reasons few years down the line um to blame why you don't have a job today u our lives have become easier uh we have access to you know the best content at 500 rupees a month if you have a Wi-Fi u in India specifically I think the standards of living are really good u if you can make a meager living doing whatever I mean the worst case you can make a you know a mega living being a gig worker 25 30k a month which will have a decent lifestyle and you know your lifestyle is probably going to go up you probably live like kings today if you compare yourself with 1900s um so if you already feel uh you don't have interest in the field just take the blame route um and blame everything um and try to find a job elsewhere I think there are a lot of fields that are decently lucrative um could be you know I don't know a sales job a government job many other fields try to avoid the elitist mindset of a CS job being out there assume it's as bad of a job as any other job out there.
Um, and with that blood bath, if you still feel like, you know, you'd be happy being in technology, irrespective of the outcome, is when you should stay. If not, as I said, lives are going to get easier. So, it's just easier to have fun.
Um, and probably not ever get that job and not work hard for a few year than trying to work in a very half-ass fashion. Um, and then eventually also not get a job. Hopefully, the video was insightful.
I'll see you guys in the next one, uh, which probably is going to be a coding video. I think it's been a while since we've posted one of those. Um, with that, we'll end it.
Bye-bye.
