 I don't know if I'm okay. I don't see the light of day. Looking up to higher ground. Thinking that I'll be your sweet escape. These days got a schedule to romance. They say they love as a slow dance. A short bike ride to the crib. Use no hands, oh shit it feel like I'm floating. Man, I finally got a haircut. I feel like a new man. I feel born again. Whenever I'm in a barber chair and after I get my haircut, my barber's always like, welcome back. So good to be back. Anyways, what's up everyone? Jossi here. And in today's video, I'm gonna be talking about the five things I wish I knew before becoming a software engineer. There's a lot of myths out there. And if you're not in the industry, you don't know what to believe. You don't know what you should and shouldn't know what type of experience you should have before going into the field. So the purpose of this video is to share some of my experiences along with busting some of those myths that are out there that can kind of deter you from becoming a software engineer because I want everyone to have an amazing tech career and I don't want anything to waver your confidence. But before we start this video, I wanna thank Audible for sponsoring this video. The first thing I wish I knew before becoming a software engineer was to focus more on side projects than GPA. And don't get me wrong, grades are really important. One thing I've talked about in the past when it came to getting my first internship was leveraging my GPA along with some of the projects I worked on within a classroom setting. However, once you have that internship experience, it is of utmost importance to focus on side projects. Now don't let that distract you from actually completing your degree and you don't wanna get bad grades. You need to have good grades. The thing is though, when you have side project experience, that can blossom into so many other things outside of just your computer science program or software engineering program. But one, you can master a programming language. Like maybe you're working on a web app and you're building it with React. So you're getting really good at HTML, CSS, responsive design and development along with JavaScript. Those skill sets actually translate more to the workforce than this sorting algorithm you're learning in an algorithms class. Recently, I started listening to Dave Ramsey's total money makeover audio book on Audible because I've been wanting to really take control over my finances. And one of the best ways to do that is to learn from an expert like Dave Ramsey. And that's the great thing about Audible and what Audible has to offer. You can literally be listening to an audio book about personal financing, investing and more. And then you also can be listening to a guided meditation. There's wellness programs, fitness and thousands of podcast titles. You're telling me I don't have to read books anymore. Not that I was reading them in the past. Yeah, that's exactly what I've been trying to say this whole segment. Thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video. New members get a free 30-day trial. All you have to do is visit audible.com slash jossy. It'll also be linked down in the description box. Or you can text jossy to 500-500. The second thing is that memorizing is not gonna get you far, but problem solving and critical thinking will. Throughout grade school and college, a lot of times if you have a really good memory or you have a really good system that allows you to memorize things pretty well, you'll be successful. Here's the thing. When it comes to software engineering and building technology, that is not the case. You do not need to memorize anything. One, you can just Google stuff and look on Stack Overflow. Two, it's impossible to memorize algorithms. There's so many different algorithms to learn. So when you're studying for a technical interview, it's impossible to just memorize all the different sorts, right? Or all the different types of searches. One thing that you do wanna memorize is something like time complexity. However, that's not as difficult to memorize. But the reason why software engineers get paid so well is because they're really good at problem solving. Hey, we have this problem. There's no solution to it. We've never seen this before. Can you fix it? And when you have those skill sets and are able to pattern match, not necessarily memorize, but pattern match and have critical thinking skill sets, that will take you a long ways. Let's say you're interviewing for a Fang company or a major tech company. They can ask you a question from a pool of, I don't know, however, million questions that they can ask. They can make up something. But if you recognize a pattern and know what type of data structure to use and the kind of algorithm that you think will help you be successful in your interview, those are the keys to being successful. Not memorizing, that won't get you anywhere. The third reason is location. And that's something that I don't think gets talked about enough. From my experience going to a school in Southern Ohio, where there's absolutely like no tech at all, was a bit frustrating from a career fair standpoint. Now, my mechanical engineering and electrical engineering and chemical engineering friends had a surplus of companies that would come to the career fairs. But that's because a lot of these manufacturing companies and engineering companies are located all over the place, especially in like rural towns for some of my reason. However, major tech companies are typically located on coasts or major cities. And Athens, Ohio is not a major city. I remember being in an interview one time and someone literally, also when it came to a lot of the roles that I found the most interesting and exciting and paid the most, they were located nowhere near my hometown or where my university was. And the reason why this is also important is because when your college is located in the same city as a lot of major tech companies, guess who's gonna be at those career fairs? The next thing that a lot of people don't think about because typically when you wanna learn how to code, let's say you're being self-taught. You just look up popular programming languages to learn, easy languages to learn or you go on YouTube and whatever that creator on YouTube says you should learn, you typically run with that because they have credibility and maybe they're a good teacher or educator and they have a lot of subscribers. However, it's important to do research and figure out what you're passionate about. This is really important because I for one, wish I would have pursued mobile development more when I was a computer science student preparing to become a software developer. And to be honest with you, as I've progressed in my career more and more, I find myself having less and less time to pursue mobile development and honestly feel like it becomes less of a reality as time goes on. But developers typically have a niche whether it's like web development, mobile development, it's really, those two are really the main type of development and they typically stay in those lane. Haven't met too many people that I know a ton about web and mobile and vice versa. Also, going back to that point where I said, hey, doing side projects is important when you know what type of tech stack that you're interested in, it's a lot easier to figure out what kind of side project to work on. If you know you love mobile development, why don't you build a simple like calendar app or calculator app? If you know you like web development, build a personal website. That's but not least, I also wish I knew what industry to go in. One thing you'll notice in this video is that all these things are kind of interconnected. If you know what kind of industry you're interested in, that can help you with what tech stack will probably be most exciting and interesting to you which will also lead to which type of programming language to learn. For example, if you know that you wanna build Android applications for maybe an investment bank, you'll know that, hey, I need to learn Java because developers use Java and Kotlin which is basically a spin off of Java to develop mobile Android apps. But if you have no idea what industry you wanna be in, what tech stack you wanna be in, you kinda have no idea where to start. I used to wanna be in healthcare. I don't really know why. I think it's just because my dad always mentioned healthcare and here in Cleveland, Ohio, healthcare is huge and probably our biggest industry. But I can't say I was passionate about it. It was just a buzzword. I hope this video was helpful. I wish I would have had this information when I was younger. Maybe I'd be a mobile developer at this point but I'm a web app developer and I do love web. Like, let me tell you, web is a lot of fun. I really enjoy building responsive UIs along with learning new frameworks like Vue.js, Angular and React which are really progressive web applications that have a mobile-like feel. I love for you all to comment down below your favorite programming language or something you wish you knew before going into software engineering. I really enjoy engaging with you all and getting to know you more. Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it. It all helps out with the algorithm. Share it with someone who might benefit. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I love for you all to become a part of this fam. And as always, have a blessed, wonderful west, wonderful west, wonderful rest of your week and I will see you all soon. Peace.