Are You Working Full-time AND Learning to Code?

Are you learning to code while working a full-time job, taking care of family, or other heavy responsibilities? We need to have an honest conversation. More importantly, I want to talk about the mindset that'll help you survive the journey.

---------------------------------------------------

👾 Join Discord - https://discord.gg/TpQe2k8Ab3
💻 Learn Frontend (20% off): https://scrimba.com/the-frontend-developer-career-path-c0j?via=donthedeveloper
⚙️ Learn Backend (25% off): https://boot.dev/?promo=DONTHEDEVELOPER
🐱 Learn NestJS (free) - https://scrimba.com/nestjs-c0n7djgjma?via=donthedeveloper
🧠 Advanced Coding (40% off) - https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=donthedeveloper
👥 1 on 1 Mentorship - https://cal.com/donthedeveloper/mentorship
🐦 Follow on X - https://x.com/thedonofcode

Disclaimer: Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Episode Transcript

Don Hansen (00:00):
For people that are trying to learn part-time as an
aspiring developer while theywork full-time at their job, or
maybe a little less, maybe alittle bit more, it's very
difficult.
I think we need to just likepause right here.
And I I want you to recognizethat it's really an uphill

(00:26):
battle.
And so give yourself permissionto not go as quickly as other
people.
Give yourself permission toforget things more as it spreads
out.
Give yourself permission to notbe able to do the most
optimized path.
It's going to take time, andjust because it's taking you a

(00:50):
lot of time does not mean thatyou are doing a lot of things
wrong.
So you have to just be kind toyourself.
You have a lot of otherresponsibilities, and yeah, just
be kind to yourself.
Maybe of children,relationship, work.
It's a lot.

(01:10):
And one thing you have torecognize, and I think your
strength, is you have to besmarter about your mental
energy.
And I think you're going to bemore aware of it.
Right?
We all have days where we feelclarity, and when we feel like
there's just this fog, and wecan't quite grasp things as

(01:36):
well.
You are going to have many ofthose foggy days.
And doing something duringthose days is better than
nothing.
Just because of the habit thatyou're building, and whenever
you do try to focus, when youdon't feel like focusing, you're

(01:57):
improving your ability tofocus.
And you need to recognize thatsubconsciously, a lot of our
brains have just been trainedwith what we consume for that
focus to be completelydestroyed.
And so when you don't quitehave that mental clarity and
you're putting time intolearning to code, you are

(02:19):
building focus, you are buildingstrength, you are building
self-discipline that many otherpeople don't build up because
they have all the time in theworld.
And what they're doing, a lotof times when you have too much
time, you take it for granted.
And you kind of just don'treally focus on those habits.

(02:41):
And so I really want toemphasize to do this well, you
have to have self-awareness.
Like if you have a ton of otherresponsibilities, juggling, you
have to have self-awareness torealize when you have the energy
to do something and when youdon't.
You're going to do it anyways.
But the next day, you are goingto think about why didn't I

(03:05):
have that energy?
Do I need to talk to my partnerto get more support from them
so they can help me out?
Maybe I need to spend more timewith my kids.
Maybe I need to take a littlebit of a longer lunch during
work, right?
I think it's easier to thinkabout these things if you

(03:26):
actually care about yourselfbecause you don't have time to
waste.
And so that is your strength.
It's being aware of how littletime you have and taking care of
yourself so that when you dohave that time, it's optimized.
You feel clear, right?
Get sleep, eat well.

(03:49):
10 minutes of guided likemeditation just to focus on.
I'm lacking the type ofmeditation.
Not just guided meditation, butum just breathing.
I can't think of the term forit right now, but just like
breathing and focusing on yourbreath, right?
Get, you know, let yourthoughts occur, because we all
have thoughts, they all appearin our mind, or we hear them,

(04:11):
and we just don't, we kind ofacknowledge it and we just let
it go.
That's the trick, right?
And a lot of people will startwith just like focusing on their
breath.
Even if you're stressed, likejust take a minute, breathe in
deep, focus on your breath.
Might sound silly if youhaven't done it, but if you
have, you know this works overtime when you're consistent with

(04:34):
it.
Um, a lot of times we startgetting anxious and distracted
and stuff just from ourbreathing alone.
Taking a moment to just groundourselves can bring that mental
clarity.
And so I also want you to lookat yourself like a like you have
a battery, right?
You have a mental capacitythat's a battery.

(04:55):
And you need to understand thateverything you do consumes a
little bit of that juice.
Everything that you consume,and here's a tip: when you are
at work and you are listening toa developer podcast, you are at

(05:16):
work and you are kind of likelistening to a video talk of
trying to teach you conceptswith coding, all you're doing is
splitting your attention anddraining that battery
significantly faster.
A lot of people think thatconsuming developer course
content because they don't havea lot of time outside work is

(05:37):
what they need to do.
But the reality is you need tocarve out time outside of work
and just do work at work and docoding at home.
Or if you have a pocket, likeyou want to do it during lunch,
fine, right?
But don't multitask.
Multitasking is the dumbestfucking thing that became so

(05:58):
incredibly popular.
You weren't multitasking, youare task switching
simultaneously, like over andover and over and over.
You're just task switching.
That drains your battery.
Multitasking is bullshit.
I know a lot of you, I'vetalked to a lot of you, have
been taught that.
We got to multitask.

(06:18):
No, a company wants you tomultitask because they don't
give a shit about your yourmental.
You just gotta have a certainamount of output and okay, but
they don't really give a shitthat it's training you to not be
able to focus long term overtime.
They don't care about you longterm.
Of course they don't.
By the way, if you are divingdeep into Node and you've

(06:38):
already built a few things withExpress, it might be time to
challenge yourself with a morescalable framework, NSJS.
It's one of the most popularframeworks for Node, and I
personally use it to build myprojects.
It's one of the reasons why Idecided to build a course for
it, to get people up to speedwith the basics.
Find that course atScrimba.com.
Oh, it's also free.

(06:58):
If you use my link in thedescription to sign up for
Scrimba and you decide toupgrade to the pro plan, which
unlocks a ton of differentcourses, you actually get a
discount.
Again, I partner with thembecause they are actually really
good at building up juniordevelopers.
Check it out.
What do you have to lose?
Now let's get back to thevideo.
Multitasking is a lie.
So another thing is you need tomake sure that you carve out

(07:23):
time.
That means like just makingsure that you're consistent with
it, but you carve out time atleast three days a week, at
least three days a week, atleast an hour, preferably two.
I would even say like if you'renot carving out two at least
three days a week, that isrough.
A lot of you are gonna trulystruggle to eventually learn

(07:46):
everything that you need to.
So if you can't even carve outsix hours a week to learn to
code, uh the chances of youbecoming a developer are just
they go significantly down.
I'm just gonna be blunt withyou.
Um, I remember this is just aseparate thought, but I think
one of the things that got methinking about this and ways to

(08:09):
make this part-time learning tocode journey actually effective,
because most people are doingit, right?
You gotta pay the bills.
Um, I talked to, I was gonnaleak it.
I don't think he cares at thispoint, but um CEO of Rhythm
School, I asked him why hedoesn't offer a part-time
program.
I don't remember if I asked himon the podcast or not, but I'm

(08:30):
leaking it anyways.
And he does that, he's like Idon't remember his exact words,
but I'm so I'm kind of justsummarizing.
But essentially, this is reallyhard, and it's really hard to
make it work.
A lot of people aren't gonnamake it work.
He's like, you know, when wehave them full time, it's um
it's a lot easier, but it's justit's so incredibly hard to make

(08:54):
part-time programs work.
It usually requires a lot more,like coding boot camps that did
that.
It usually required, they'dsay, like, oh yeah, 10 hours a
week, no big deal.
Uh it requires a lot more.
A lot, a lot of people gotfrustrated with that.
But it's the truth.
Um now you can spread it outover time.

(09:16):
I'm talking about a codingbootcamp that's trying to
condense it, but I think anotherthing I want to touch on is
we're gonna assume that you'redoing it at least six hours
every single week.
And the reason why I'msplitting it up into three days
is because cramming, I find thatcramming one day doesn't work
as well with a lot of people inretaining things.

(09:39):
Because, you know, in myprevious video, um, I talked
about how even with the fullday, you are going to just limit
learning to two hours, likeactually going through
coursework for two hours max.
But even two days a week, it'srough.
I find the sweet spot is threedays, spread it out just a

(10:02):
little bit of time forconsistency.
You need that consistency anddoing it once a week, you just
start forgetting too much.
You start forgetting too much,you're not applying it enough.
You need to apply itconsistently, preferably every
other day minimum.
I'm saying three days a weekbecause maybe you could fit it

(10:25):
into your weeks, but uh what I'mreally emphasizing is at least
every other day.
Every day if you can.
But not everyone can.
But you're gonna find that evenif you do three days a week,
but you're just kind of doing alittle bit here and there,
you're gonna forget stuff.
You're gonna forget a lot ofstuff.

(10:47):
Um you will become frustratedwith how much you forget.
Coding is a use it or lose itsituation.
It always has been.
And you have to accept thatthat is part of your path, that

(11:09):
you are gonna forget some stuff.
It doesn't mean you need to gostudy in a course to refresh it.
It means that you might need tothink about like if this is
something that I'm seeing on alot of job postings or an
interviews they're testing meover, let me figure out a way to
implement it into my project toreinforce that concept, right?

(11:31):
So maybe I have to look at anarticle real quick to kind of
just refresh, but then I applyit.
What happens is when youactually apply it in a real
project, you'll probably forgetit again, just a little bit, but
when you reapproach it, it justcomes back faster.
So it's just repetition that ispurposeful and that is

(11:54):
practical.
You are applying it.
You have that combination,you're eventually gonna remember
that concept for longer periodsof time.
And that is the most that youcan hope for.
You have to expect yourself toforget a lot.
You have to be learning andreinforcing things more than
you're forgetting, but you'regonna forget a lot.

(12:15):
And that's your reality doingthis part-time.
More of a reality than peoplethat are like have eight hours a
day to do this, right?
And you have to be kind toyourself.
It doesn't mean you're stupid,it doesn't mean you're not gonna
become a developer, it meansthat you need patience.
And your strategy is expandedinto many years.

(12:40):
And this is the part thatpeople don't like.
When I say, like if someone hadum two years to become a
developer full time, they weredoing it full-time.
Um it might take at least twoyears.
Whether they're going forfront-end or back end, I say at
least two years.
If you're doing it part-time,you gotta expand that.

(13:02):
I'm not saying that you gottaexpand it fourfold.
I don't think learning to code,it just doesn't work out like
that.
And I'm also kind of going offof averages from what I see.
But it it's gonna take youlonger than two years.
A lot longer.
And you have to be okay withthat.
But most importantly, you haveto understand that it's not a

(13:27):
quick fix for your financialsituation.
Now, maybe the market willimprove at some point.
Great.
My estimations are going tochange.
But right now, for the nextyear, from what I see, what I'm
just estimating, just like anyother developer YouTuber is

(13:47):
estimating, I think it's gonnabe about a year um where it
we're gonna be experiencing arough market.
I could be wrong.
I hope I'm wrong.
But I, you know, I don't divedeep into economics.
I just try to look at data andpatterns as much as I possibly

(14:08):
can.
And right now, this video isabout a mindset.
And I think that's the mostimportant part of doing
part-time.
You have to develop a verypatient and consistent and
self-disciplined mindset to dothis over years.
The types of people that makepart-time work while they're

(14:30):
juggling full-time.
If I were hiring you, I wouldtrust you on my team more than
people that just had no otherresponsibilities and they were
just learning to code and tooktwo years to get a dev job.
You are gonna build yourself upway past what you thought if
you stay consistent with it.

(14:50):
Like your character, yourself-discipline, your work ethic
is going to be, it's gonna setyou up for life.
Employers know this.
They know how hard it is tojuggle.
A lot of people that get intohigher positions based off of
them just being really fuckinggood at what they do and try to
build, you know, even just theirpersonality up, the way they

(15:13):
interact with others, they careabout self-development.
They know how hard it truly is.
And when you've got to juggle abunch of other things, a lot of
the self-development stuff,there's just so much that it's
easy to push away out of yourlife.
But if you were someone thatstays consistent with your
responsibilities and learningthe code, and you know, there
are a ton of commits thatshowcase that you've been at

(15:35):
this for a long time and nowyou're building up into
something, right?
It's not just building a bunchof variety of projects over the
next five years, like you havean aim.
You, you know, in the lastvideo we talked about you kind
of have you're a little bit moremission-driven, like you you
want to solve specific problems,right?
And a lot of your codingjourney is kind of leading up to

(15:56):
that, and this is kind of howyou stand out.
So it can't just be justputting in the hours, you also
have to be wise about it, andyou have to tailor your path
towards what you start gettingmore curious about with coding
and in tech.
But if you're consistent withthat, you are very hireable.
I think that's it.

(16:20):
That's all I want to talkabout.
I just want to go over themindset, and I I think if you
adopt this mindset, I I think alot of people are gonna be
better off.
And I also just I I want to seepeople that are just, you know,
supporting families, supportingchildren, have a lot of other

(16:40):
responsibilities.
I want to see you succeed.
Like people that kind of justhave a bunch of money to sit on,
um, or they don't have bills topay and stuff like that.
That that's awesome.
I want them to get out of thatsituation, but I truly do
empathize with people that arejust trying to live better their
lives.
That's that's really tough.
So I hope this helped.