074: Ask Me Anything

In this episode I’m answering listener questions…ask me anything! The questions I answer in this episode are:

• What kind of laptop to you use? —Ellen
• What was the coding school that rejected you in episode 48? —Karl
• Do you think you’d ever start a new podcast, maybe focusing more on financial independence with a few updates on your coding? —Erica
• What life is like in general for someone living abroad? Do you ever get home sick or was it easy to meet new people? —Erica
• What was/has been your favorite part of living abroad? Would you like to make the move permanent or just a few years? —Erica
• Any podcast recommendations? I know you mentioned Second Career Devs and I’m now a big fan of that. Not even just coding ones, but what are some others you enjoy? And what made you start the podcast vs just blogging? —Erica
• What is your perception of the job market for entry level frontend web development jobs? —Alex
• It’s my current plan to build a solid portfolio and apply for jobs online, but I wonder if that route has become so competitive that it’s not a realistic way to land a job anymore. As you said, it’s so saturated on Upwork that they turned you down(?!) —Alex
• I know that meet-ups/networking is important, but it’s hard to prioritize that stuff since it would take up a lot of time that I could use to work on my coding skills. How do you decide how to prioritize these two aspects of the job hunting process? —Alex
• In pursuing financial independence, for us self supporting folk, is coding the best route? Also, is there any threshold to transition completely to a self learning or school route or just to keep at it an hour or so a day? —Krista
• If you had $1000 to spend, what would be your top resources? I have tried Udemy (Colt Steele and others), FCC, Learn XYZ the Hard Way, Treehouse, Udacity, community college, and am struggling with information overload… —Krista
• It seems that web dev, computer science, mobile, data, and security are really all their own things. Is it best to be a generalist or only focus on one? —Krista
• Any idea on how long to really be job ready at the hour plus a day? Is it really like Gladwell’s 10,000 hours or Norvig’s 10 years? —Krista
• With limited time, is it best to do tutorials/learn or just go build? —Krista

This episode was originally published 26 June, 2018.