Can You Get a Job Coding? | R100 Series

I started to learn coding to get a job. As it turns out, you don’t just do X months study, Y months applying, 40 years later you can retire in that. You CAN get a job with coding, but you have to think so much further than just whether you get a job.

You have to think about how to keep opening up paths for yourself. You have to think ahead and prepare times to update your skills and add new ones as new technologies come in and others go.

My LinkedIn post on career stability:

How do you get career stability?

One of the most important articles I ever read posed a military problem: do you invest in maneuverability as a capacity, or [I forget what the other option was].

The answer was, maneuverability and room to maneuver are things you consistently have to fight for. You could be a combination sprinter-pole vaulter-gymnast but be tied up and locked in a trunk plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.

Career stability?

You have to look ahead and fight for things that allow for it.

Back to it in a moment.

Behind the question “can you get a job coding?” is the desire for an in-demand, decently-paying career. But then you can get dropped if your skills don’t keep up. Even if you’re good, “decently-paying” means “expensive” at layoff time, especially if you’re at a startup going through a “down” part of “ups and downs.”

Outside of getting a decently-paying job is also living within your means. If you’re making $100,000 a year, live as though it’s $70,000 or something.

And don’t live in San Francisco.

You have to be in charge of your own finances because it’s not like getting a job is like being hooked up to a perpetual money machine. Your career will include times between jobs.

A friend of mine is currently between jobs. He’s a super advanced software architect or something, so he could probably get a job if he wanted, but he’s burned out. But he has a financial cushion to help him transition.

More things you can do:

Avoid dead-end jobs (or find one that will have you for decades—it's up to you).

Take courses, take training, read books.

Apply for promotions or lateral moves. Whatever keeps you going.

Start side things.

I can DO stability. I like being reliable and all that. But I haven't been great at choosing the most stable things, fighting to be in places that keep opening up promotion or lateral move opportunities.

So stability.

Fight for it. It doesn't just happen and stay that way.

So for me, can I get a job coding?

Maybe this one company in some place I haven’t heard of yet would have me, they’d train me the rest of the way, and keep me in place.

Otherwise, it’s not fruitless work to make sure I’ve done lots of things to have the best possible set of skills when I hit the road applying for jobs.

I’m looking into signing up for a boot camp. That should help me finish the foundation, and it will help me break through some more conceptual barriers.

Stay tunes for more.