If you are ambitious (in tech) and in your 20s or 30s, watch this

The speaker recounts a past marked by financial struggles and chasing superficial desires in his twenties, admitting to wasted years. He contrasts this with his later success, achieving his first $100,000 at age 33 and becoming a senior developer. This personal journey underscores the potential for significant life transformation, even after a late start in a demanding field like programming.

This advice is specifically tailored for ambitious individuals ready to take decisive action. In the current economic climate, challenges like widespread layoffs and AI-driven disruption affect every industry, not just technology. If fear of competition or change deters you, this video may not be for you. However, for those who possess ambition and a willingness to engage actively, the insights provided are essential for navigating a successful career path.

A pivotal piece of advice for anyone under thirty is that there is no valid excuse for not committing fully to one's goals. The speaker emphasizes that in one's twenties, the potential downsides are minimal compared to the vast opportunities for growth and gain. This period offers a unique window to take significant risks and pursue ambitious objectives without the heavy burden of substantial loss, setting a foundation for future achievements.

You can lose 100% of what you bet, but you can win back infinitely more.

In your twenties, the stakes are fundamentally different. You possess significantly less to lose but an immense amount to gain. The strategic objective should therefore be to seize as many opportunities and take as many calculated risks as possible during this phase. Learning this lesson too late, as the speaker did, means missing out on potentially exponential growth. By the time he was nearly thirty, he had not yet built substantial assets, making the decision to go "all-in" less risky but also less impactful than it could have been earlier.

Coding teaches a profound lesson: pursuing a major goal, even if it leads to failure, never means starting from absolute zero. Each attempt, each struggle, and each rejection leaves behind valuable experience and data. These accumulated insights mean you never truly start over. The speaker's journey, filled with challenges like mastering JavaScript and facing numerous job rejections, illustrates how every failure contributed to his eventual success by providing critical data for adjustment and learning.

When embarking on a programming career, it is crucial to view coding challenges not as definitive pass-or-fail exams, but as practice sessions akin to workouts in a gym. Encountering bugs and receiving error messages from your computer are integral parts of this development process. Each bug you resolve, regardless of its size, strengthens your long-term problem-solving capabilities, building essential resilience and expertise incrementally over time.

The speaker shares the story of a mentee who faced a challenging job market, starting with nine consecutive rejections in a single week. This led to the realization that his resume was ineffective, largely due to a lack of practical work experience. By actively contributing to open-source projects and listing these as experiences, his resume became more compelling, leading to his first interview the following week. Although he didn't secure that specific role, the updated resume attracted more interviews, allowing him to progress past initial rounds but still face rejection in later stages. Undeterred, he further refined his approach by building projects tailored to specific companies, even taking unpaid internships to gain experience and stack skills. Eventually, he shifted from blind applications to directly contacting hiring managers, building relationships that ultimately led to job offers from major banks.

It is vital to recognize that a programming career is an infinite game, focusing on sustained engagement rather than a single endpoint. The ultimate objective extends beyond merely landing an initial job; it encompasses remaining employable and valuable for decades. This requires a commitment to continuous learning and staying adaptable within the ever-evolving landscape of technology and software development.

To remain relevant in the dynamic tech industry, one must perpetually operate at the edge of their knowledge. If you are not actively learning, your skills may quickly become outdated. Even after years in the field, continuous learning is paramount. The speaker is currently exploring AI agents, integrating this new knowledge with his existing expertise. While specific technologies change, the fundamental problem-solving mindset developed through earlier experiences, such as learning React, remains transferable and valuable when transitioning to new frameworks like Angular or Svelte.

Consider your career progression through distinct seasons: learning, building, teaching, and leading. Growth should not be solitary; it is intrinsically a team sport. As you advance your skills, you should simultaneously contribute to your company's growth. Mentoring colleagues, sharing knowledge, and documenting your work empowers others to build upon your contributions, fostering a collaborative and elevated environment for everyone involved.

Competence should be prioritized over passion, as genuine enjoyment and enthusiasm often emerge from mastering a skill. Initially, one might prefer certain aspects of a job, like front-end development, while avoiding others, like back-end work. However, passion is a byproduct of confidence gained through proficiency. For instance, initially avoiding a complex library like Molecular IO due to perceived difficulty can lead to missing out on opportunities. But confronting and mastering it, despite initial struggles, yields immense satisfaction and lasting skills, proving that enjoyment follows mastery.

To achieve true mastery, it is far more effective to focus deeply on a single technology stack rather than spreading your efforts thinly across many. Pursuing depth over breadth leads to greater power and expertise. For example, dedicating yourself to becoming the best Vue.js developer meant abandoning the temptation to dabble in numerous other languages or frameworks. This focused approach ensures you can build a complete project from inception to polished product, yielding more valuable learning than numerous shallow tutorial projects.

It is crucial to address and "pay off" ignorance debt by confronting challenging or less glamorous skills early on. Many aspiring developers attempt to skip essential tools like Git, believing they can learn them later. However, neglecting foundational elements like version control can have severe long-term career consequences, potentially leading to becoming a difficult team member. Beyond syntax, numerous skills outside of direct coding are critical for career success and cannot be overlooked without future repercussions.

Financial success in a career is strongly correlated with speed and decisive action. Rather than waiting for an ideal moment or a perfect job offer, it is more effective to make rapid decisions and apply broadly to available roles, including those that might seem beneath your initial expectations. Turning down a $50,000 job while holding out for $100,000 is often an unwise choice, as the former could provide invaluable experience and serve as a crucial stepping stone. Similarly, in coding, push forward, seek feedback, and iterate rapidly rather than delaying action due to perceived imperfections.

It is imperative to move beyond limiting personal narratives, whether it's lacking a Computer Science degree, being considered too old for a career switch, or feeling that past mistakes define future potential. Many successful developers lack traditional degrees, and age is not an insurmountable barrier, as demonstrated by career changers in their thirties and forties. These past challenges should be reframed and utilized as potent fuel for motivation rather than accepted as excuses for inaction.

Every coder that you see online like Prime Regan or even me once Googled what is a variable.

The feeling of being behind, especially when comparing yourself to younger, seemingly more successful peers on social media, is common but ultimately unproductive. Your past failures do not dictate your future. Every accomplished coder, including well-known figures and the speaker himself, began with fundamental concepts like understanding variables and writing a basic "Hello, World!" program. There is no inherently perfect starting point in coding or life; the single most effective action is simply to begin.