For the first ten years of my software career, I was convinced that my deep passion for coding and my expert-level skills in Vanilla JS were all I needed to succeed. I loved what I did, and I was good at it. I was also completely wrong, and it left me with a decade of regrets.
After a series of failed interviews, I had to face a hard truth: the skills I loved weren't the skills employers were willing to pay for. If you're currently teaching yourself to code or feeling stuck in your junior role, I wrote this for you.
My first turning point came from a single sentence an employer said during an interview: "We aren't hiring people to build frameworks." It finally clicked. Companies don't pay you to reinvent the wheel; they pay you to solve business problems, quickly and efficiently. My niche expertise was a point of pride for me, but it was a liability in the job market.
My second turning point was even more painful. I finally received a job offer, contingent on passing a technical test. "No problem," I thought. "I'm a JavaScript expert." I failed spectacularly. The test wasn't about the niche things I was proud of; it was about core concepts and common libraries I had dismissed as "boring."
Those two failures forced me to admit my entire learning strategy was backward. I was following my curiosity instead of the market. So I threw out my old methods and decided to let job postings become my new textbook. Here are the three practical steps I took that changed everything:
1. I Became a Job Description Analyst. I stopped browsing random tutorials and started analyzing job descriptions. I'd open 20 postings for "React Developer" and put every single required skill into a spreadsheet. The ones that showed up more than half the time? That became my new curriculum.
2. I Focused on Stacks, Not Just Languages. I noticed that no one was just asking for "JavaScript." They were asking for React, TypeScript, Jest, and Webpack together. I stopped learning things in isolation and started learning the entire technology stack that companies actually use.
3. I Learned to Separate Hype from Reality. The tech world is full of hype. "Build once, run everywhere" sounds amazing, but I learned to ask: "Who is actually hiring for this?" I started paying attention to who was asking for the technology. If only brand-new startups were using a new framework, I'd watch it from a distance. But if established, major companies started listing it as a requirement, I knew it was time to take it seriously.
This shift in mindset from 'following my passion' to 'following the market' was just the first step on a long road. It took me years to undo my mistakes and learn the other hard lessons about structured learning, soft skills, and finding mentors.
I documented every lesson and every regret in my new book, 'The Broke Software Engineer: How I Wasted 10 Years So You Don't Have To.' I wrote it to be the guide I desperately wish I'd had when I started.
If my story resonates with you, you can grab the book on Gumroad or Amazon today.
And here's a special request: If you read it and find it valuable, leaving a short, honest review on Amazon would mean the world to me. Reviews are the single most helpful thing for a new author, as they help the book reach more developers who might be on the same frustrating path I was on.
Thank you for reading, and I hope my mistakes can become your shortcut.
Top comments (12)
Thank you for your insights! I can feel the weight of those decisions in your writing (and I have a few of my own, as well). I think the fact that you took that situation and turned it into a published book is a testament to the kind of strong person you are! 🦅
It's easy to look back and say, things like "I should have known", but until you've lived through some of those mistakes of your own, it's difficult to understand how things like that happen. But they do. Frequently. So, you're not alone in that!
It's not a small thing, either, to take those shortcomings and announce them to the world in such a memorialized way. Then on top of that, spin the whole thing and make it relevant to somebody else's career. Kudos!
I hope this is a success for you! 💕
Thank you for your kind words.
Wow! Those 1-2-3 points are so on point! That’s exactly how I realized — the hard way — that I should have been learning and improving after spending 5-6 years just running in circles in the industry. Really insightful post!
Kudos on the book, by the way. The cover looks great! Hope it’s doing well!
Thank you for your kind words. The book is new, so it has yet to make any sales. But I believe it will pick up soon. Thank you.
The question I have is what were you learning for ten years if you didn't follow the javascript evolution? Javascript is a slow moving language.
I did JavaScript ->PHP( I spent a lot of time on PHP)->Python. I then went into desktop application programming with Python. When I first learn javascript that was about 15 years ago, and it was JQuery. Later there was also AngularJS. I did none of these frameworks. I also did Drupal along the way.
Is it fair to assume you did more backend work than frontend work, based on your comment?
So what makes you a javascript expert? The post implies you only did frontend work.
At that time, I did every Javascript lesson on w3schools. I thought that was all there was to it, until the job test asked my about validating input forms in javascript.
I feel you set yourself up for failure.
I went on the self taught path, and I never stopped learning since. I have gathered a lot of knowledge and I still don't call myself an expert, because there are still many things I don't know nothing about.
I didn't know that there was more than I didn't know. W3Schools if you don't know boast as the creators of the web. So if they were done, I was done. I didn't know there was more.
Thinking you are done is your failure. No one has all the knowledge, whatever they want you to believe.
Being curious makes you a good programmer, not languages or frameworks or stacks.
I hope you are learning new things now.
Yes, I am. Thank you.