#188 Playing the Developer Job Search Game to Win in 2025 with Danny Thompson & Leon Noel

#188 Playing the Developer Job Search Game to Win in 2025 with Danny Thompson & Leon Noel

For this week's interview, we've got a special treat. I'm talking with two legends in the self-taught developer community.

Danny Thompson worked for 10 years at a Tennessee gas station, frying chicken for people to eat, sometimes working 80 hour weeks just to provide for his family. And yet, Danny had ambition. He taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He built his network through local tech events. And eventually, he landed his first job as as software developer. He's since worked at tech companies like Google.

Leon Noel grew up with everyone telling him he had to become a doctor, lawyer, or dentist. He skipped college, taught himself programming, and had a successful exit with a startup. Leon then turned his attention to helping folks who were struggling during the pandemic. He started 100Devs, a charity which has helped thousands of people learn to code.

Danny and Leon run the Programming Podcast which you can find in the podcast player freeCodeCamp iPhone or Android app, along with other podcasts we recommend.

The following 45 minute conversation is almost entirely focused on the developer job market - perfect if you're looking to getting a new job.

You'll learn common misconceptions people have about Résumés, Recruiters, Applicant Tracking Systems, Knock Out Questions and more. We also talk about the Commit Your Code conference happening September 25 and 26 here in Dallas. Tickets are super cheap and all proceeds go to charity. I'll be there and I hope you'll be there, too.

A massive thank you to every single on of the 10,706 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our charity and our mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org/

Links from our conversation:
- The Commit Your Code Conference: https://www.commityourcode.com/
- The Programming Podcast (listen in the freeCodeCamp iPhone / Android app)
- Danny on X/Twitter: https://x.com/DThompsonDev
- Leon on X/Twitter: https://x.com/leonnoel

News items:

freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will help you learn about AI-assisted coding, straight from a software engineer who's maintained freeCodeCamp's platform and infrastructure for the past 7 years. Mrugesh was initially skeptical of AI tools but has recently used them to great effect. And he wrote this handbook to help you do the same. He says experienced developers can complete tasks faster with AI assistance. But they need to know how to use these tools effectively. And they also need strong foundational programming skills. This handbook is a no-nonsense guide to emerging tools and best practices. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-become-an-expert-in-ai-assisted-coding-a-handbook-for-developers/

freeCodeCamp also published a course on building your own AI agent from scratch using Python. You'll implement the agentic loop. Then you'll endow your agent with the ability to read, write, and execute code. Finally, you'll supervise your agent as it goes through and makes fixes to an intentionally buggy codebase. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-ai-coding-agent-in-python/

The freeCodeCamp community also just published our first-ever Mandarin Chinese course. It's aimed at absolute beginners. It'll teach you fundamentals of the language and help you prepare for the standardized HSK exam. As you may recall, we've published beginner courses on Spanish and German as well. We eventually hope to have courses on a wide range of world languages at many levels of proficiency. I started learning Mandarin 23 years ago and I can tell you this course just scratches the surface. But it should be a good starting point for you if you're curious. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mandarin-chinese-for-beginners-full-hsk-1-level/

Learn the graph algorithms that power Netflix's video recommendation engine and Google Maps' routing logic. This Python tutorial will introduce you to Breadth-First Search, Depth-First Search, Dijkstra’s Algorithm, and other key computer science concepts. It includes plenty of code examples to help you understand these powerful programming structures. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/graph-algorithms-in-python-bfs-dfs-and-beyond/

This week I read a pretty well researched article on the role of AI codegen in actually getting things done as a developer. The author has more than 25 years of experiencing building software. And he argues that if AI tools really gave devs a big productivity boost, we should see this in the numbers. Specifically, shovelware, which is essentially fast, cheap software projects. And he says we don't really see this. Github repo creation is flat, apple and android app store registration is flat, domain name registration is flat. So he argues these tools aren't actually helping people write code faster and it's just marketing hype. I definitely recommend you read the article after this podcast and I've included a link to it in the description. https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware-why-ai-coding

Since we're likely in a AI investment bubble, this week's song of the week is a "Bubble Life" from Squarepusher's 2006 album Hello Everything. Some amazing synth patches in this, and a tasty bass solo with tons of ghost notes and a heaping serving of chromaticism. Link's in the description. Listen to it after the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUpSAzUN5Vg

Episoder(100)

#145 Open Source Superstar and Roadmap.sh Founder Kamran Ahmed

#145 Open Source Superstar and Roadmap.sh Founder Kamran Ahmed

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kamran Ahmed. He's a software engineer and founder of Roadmap.sh, which has skill tree roadmaps for lots of developer fields, such as DevOps. As a teacher, he's also a Google Developer Expert and a GitHub Star. We talk about: - Kamran's tips for finding the right open source projects to contribute to - The story behind Roadmap.sh, his popular developer website - Other specialized open source Kamran has built over the years - How Kamran became a Google Developer Expert and GitHub Star Can you guess what song I'm playing during the intro? Also, I want to thank the 10,922 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kamran's website, Roadmap.sh: https://roadmap.sh/ - Kamran's "Design Patterns for Humans" GitHub book: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/design-patterns-for-humans - freeCodeCamp's "How to Contribute to Open Source guide" Quincy mentions: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-contribute-to-open-source-projects-beginners-guide/ - Kamran on Twitter: https://x.com/kamrify

11 Okt 20241h 50min

#144 How to Become a Street Smart Developer – From Dropout to Selling his Company w/ Dennis Ivy

#144 How to Become a Street Smart Developer – From Dropout to Selling his Company w/ Dennis Ivy

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dennis Ivy, a software engineer and prolific freelancer. He dropped out of college at 18 and taught himself how to build websites. He started his first agency, built and sold products, and eventually started teaching his skills on YouTube. We talk about: - Growing up in an immigrant family of 13 kids - Dropping out of school and working construction before learning to code - Figuring out how to get web development clients through trial and error - Selling his codebase to his employer $61,000 and using it to fund his journey into teaching Python Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - The Bussard Ramjet theoretical spacecraft Quincy mentions as an analogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet - Dennis Ivy's React + Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-sticky-notes-app-with-react-and-appwrite/ - Dennis Ivy's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/dennisivy - Dennis Ivy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dennisivy11

4 Okt 20241h 48min

#143 The reality of the developer job market with ex-Googler YK Sugi

#143 The reality of the developer job market with ex-Googler YK Sugi

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews YK Sugi. He's a software engineer and prolific YouTube Computer Science tutorial creator. He's worked at Google and Microsoft. He runs the CS Dojo channel where he shares his insights on software development, AI, and developer career progressions. We talk about: - Emerging AI tools and how developers are adopting them - The role of interest rates in developer hiring - Japan's developer work culture VS the US - How not to burn out Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Also, I want to thank the 10,993 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday. Links we talk about during our conversation: - YK's freeCodeCamp article on the resume he used to get a job at Google: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/heres-the-resume-i-used-to-get-a-job-at-google-as-a-software-engineer-26516526f29a/ - YK's freeCodeCamp article about leaving his job at Google to focus on entrepreneurship: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-i-left-my-100-000-job-at-google-60b5cf4ebefe/ - YK's popular CS Dojo YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSDojo - YK on Twitter: https://x.com/ykdojo

27 Sep 20241h 31min

#142 From PhD drop-out to Google Data Scientist with Megan Risdal

#142 From PhD drop-out to Google Data Scientist with Megan Risdal

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Meg Risdal. She's a data scientist and Product Manager at Kaggle, Google's Data Science competition platform.  Megan works closely with the global data science community, and on Google's Gemma open models project. We talk about: - Google's Kaggle, which hosts 300k open data sets and runs data science competitions each week that anyone can participate in. - How people talk in academia VS how people talk in tech - Stack Overflow VS Kaggle – how Megan contrasts what it was like to work on these two "communities of practice" - Linguistics and its importance in LLMs and AI research Can you recognize the song I'm playing during the intro? It's a punk song from 1994. Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Also, I want to thank the 10,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: Meg's blog: https://www.meg.dev/ The Sliced Data Science Gameshow that Meg co-hosted with Nick Wan: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PX3YIZuHhyQmXKnyZmVDzdgAYbzwgDw Meg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeganRisdal Kaggle's open learning resources: https://www.kaggle.com/learn The Gemma team at Google that Meg also works on: https://ai.google.dev/gemma

20 Sep 20241h 49min

#141 Lessons from freelancing for dozens of startups with Eddie Jaoude

#141 Lessons from freelancing for dozens of startups with Eddie Jaoude

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Eddie Jaoude who is a software engineer and open source creator. He's worked more than 15 years as a developer everywhere from Germany banking sector to London's tech startup scene. He's now a dev rel for hire and runs several open source projects. We talk about: - Eddie's journey into open source - How he built his reputation through hackathons - How he leveraged his network to find his first freelance clients - His audio-video setup for filming tutorials Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's the theme from a 1982 police show. Also, I want to thank the 10,773 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: Eddie's YouTube channel with more than 700 tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5mnBodB73bR88fLXHSfzYA Eddie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude Eddie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddiejaoude/

13 Sep 20242h 4min

#140 Surviving 40 years in the software industry with Jack Herrington the Blue Collar Coder

#140 Surviving 40 years in the software industry with Jack Herrington the Blue Collar Coder

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel. We talk about: - How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s - Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia - How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 new-wave song. Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr 1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en

6 Sep 20242h 4min

#139 Spotify Developer Emma Bostian Talks Coding, Hiring Devs, and European Work Culture

#139 Spotify Developer Emma Bostian Talks Coding, Hiring Devs, and European Work Culture

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emma Bostian. She's a software engineer turned manager at Spotify and Prolific coding teacher. We talk about: - How at her first developer job at IBM, Emma's boss told her: "You need to get your stuff together or you won't make it in this industry." And the transformation that followed. - Emma's thoughts on Computer Science degrees. "Going to college gives you credibility and a network. You can get opportunities that way." - How Emma hires software engineers. (Hint: she tries to disregard degrees completely.) - How Emma intentionally procrastinates some big tasks to give her mind time to figure out the puzzle pieces Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 punk song. Also, I want to thank the 10,776 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - Emma on Twitter: https://x.com/emmabostian - The Ladybug Podcast about women in tech that Emma helped host for several years: https://www.ladybug.dev/

30 Aug 20241h 44min

#138 From Brain Tumor to Teaching 500,000 Sysadmin Students with Hiroko Nishimura

#138 From Brain Tumor to Teaching 500,000 Sysadmin Students with Hiroko Nishimura

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Hiroko Nishimura. She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator turned technical instructor.  Hiroko grew up in Japan and moved to the US as a kid. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk. She still lives with disabilities to this day.  Despite this, she's gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS Newbies community. More than 500,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning course. We talk about: - How Hiroko moved to the US as a kid and learned English and American culture - Hiroko's vascular tumor diagnosis, and how she recovered from brain surgery and brain damage - Her big move to NYC and her years working as a system administrator and ultimately cloud engineer there - How she made the jump to teaching system administration full-time as a course creator Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1990 song by a Scottish rock band. Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - Hiroko’s article about her brain surgery: https://hiroko.io/my-words/ - Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: https://www.manning.com/books/aws-for-non-engineers - Hiroko's AWS course: https://introtoaws.com - And her AWS linktree: https://aws.hiroko.io  - My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-crazy-history-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge-and-why-you-should-try-it-for-2018-6c89a76e298d/

23 Aug 20241h 59min

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