Hey guys, today we talk about teaching yourself how to program
and my guest was self-taught and is also an entrepreneur.
We talk about the growing importance of knowing more about
programming and technology in general, just how it works
behind the scenes because we're gonna face it in the future.
My guest today Roy Decks. And don't forget to like and
subscribe if you're on YouTube and follow us on your favorite
podcast platform. Enjoy.
Welcome to Beyond Coding, a dive into the world of Successful.
People in it from your sponsors, Zibia, creating digital leaders.
Here's your host, Patrick Akeel Roy.
How's it going, man? All good.
Thank you, Patrick. Cool man.
So I invited you on to talk about self-taught engineers and
I think it's kind of evolving since.
But you're self-taught, right? Yes, indeed so.
Well, most of all, I'm an entrepreneur now, but I also
like to create software, and I started doing this when I was 14
already to actually start my entrepreneurial journey.
Nice, that 14 is quite young. You always knew you wanted to
kind of pursue that entrepreneurial journey.
Yeah, So my father is also an entrepreneur, mostly in retail,
bars, these kind of things. But from early on, I already
knew I wanted to start my own business, I think.
In lower school I was already selling like gumbars and these
kind of things to people at the school.
Yeah that's awesome. So then at 14 what did you pick
up cuz you said you were self-taught?
Is that why you kind of kick started your career in that?
Yeah, so I was 14 then. I'm 28 now, so it's about 14
years ago, and I think PHP was then the sort of biggest,
easiest language. You had Java, but it's really
hard to start with Java if you don't.
Know anything yet? So I started with PHP and
basically I reverse engineered an open source framework just to
figure out how it could change things because plugins were also
expensive. So I had this ID for a
marketplace for DVDs because that was the major problem.
I wanted to start becoming an entrepreneur.
I really liked watching movies, but downloading movies 40 years
ago was you could do it, but it's a bit harder and it was
also illegal. So it's something I didn't want
to do that much. So I wanted to have more DVDs,
but my pocket money was also limited.
So I had one or two choices actually, yeah, so you either
make more money or find a new way to get DVDs.
So I came out with like a marketplace to buy, sell and try
to use DVDs. Cool, man.
And that was you started at age 14.
When, when did the marketplace then actually launch and how did
it go? Well, I think the same year I
didn't really liked high school. It was OK to be there during the
breaks I meet friends, but most of the classes were a bit
boring. And so I did my entire best to
not be there as much as possible within the legal boundaries.
And then all my free time, I either spent it with friends or
I divided into coding. Yeah, and I think it went life
quite fast because, well, you had all these plugins, so in
theory it was really easy to do. But then if you're a
perfectionist, it's always harder to make something that
you feel is worth going live with.
Yeah, I mean, it's never gonna be perfect.
So at some point you just need to be confident enough and
comfortable enough to go live with it, right?
Yeah, definitely. And I think, well, at least back
then, my biggest priority was make sure the UI is okay.
Yeah. And Ui's were very different,
like 14 years ago. Absolutely.
The media was the biggest pain point.
The UI should actually be good. And then the actual experience
how everything function came second.
Yeah, then you have that nice look and feel and kind of the
functional thing. I mean, it should work.
Should do this thing as well. Yeah, I need websites. 14 years
ago are very different and things were slow.
You need to reload the page every time you did an action.
We had jQuery, PHP. I don't really know people that
use PHP anymore. I think Claravel is sort of
okayish, yeah. But jQuery?
Luckily it's gone. Now it's gone, yeah.
And I mean way back when you didn't have to deal with mobile
views as well, which is now it's very big basically, but then
after you kind of kick started your market, it was a
marketplace, right? Yeah, like a peer-to-peer
marketplace. It was mostly free trading
between people and then there was subscription model if you
wanted to get a higher ranking in the trading.
So I made an algorithm or just a bunch of FL statements, not
really an algorithm which is 14. So people could find their DVDs
easier and if you paid like I think it was like €5 per month
or something, you will get a higher ranking in the algorithm.
Nice. So people with their own product
could rank higher because of that.
Yeah, yeah. So.
And they could also do more threads.
Okay, that makes sense. Cool man.
So for me personally, out of high school, I didn't know what
I wanted to do if I wanted to go to the university or start
working right off the bat. Was that for you then?
The same because you already had a taste of the business life,
let's call it pretty early on. Yeah, yeah.
As for me, there's always doubting Do I want to be a
software engineer or do I want to be an entrepreneur?
Do I want to be both? And back then, I think I didn't
really realize you could be both.
Yeah. So when I finished high school,
I'd like do choices like either get funding for my startup, the
marketplace, which is my preference, or go to university,
what my parents really wanted. And in the end, I think we
settled on going to university just to make sure you have a job
in the future exactly. But it's really hard for me to
decide between do I want to study computer science or do I
want to study business economics, do I want to do
something else? Because still.
I really hated education. I really hated high school.
So it's also looking for ways to not having to study but do get
an education. So I've explored all kinds of
things, but in the end I ended up with Economics and Business
economics, which was sort of a nice addition to what I've
already done before. But in the end, I'm not really
sure if I actually learned things that I don't know, sort
of helped me in my career. Yeah, it's hard to say in
hindsight, right? Because it's a lot of theory,
not necessarily that practical experience which you get when
you're done with university. Yeah, definitely.
And during university also, I don't know you're using models
and thinking better instead have been there for like 40 or 50
years, which is kind of okay. I recently met a woman and she
didn't went to university and it's sort of a group of people
which will help each other to become more influential in
public opinions and she's the only one that didn't study in
university and. She also mentioned that we are
way more structured like the other people that did study
compared to her. Yeah.
So I think in the end, it maybe did help me a bit.
Yeah, it probably gives you that structure basically to do well.
You have a certain goal and it might be an assignment or
accomplishing someone or working together with some other people
and you do that kind of continuously throughout your
educational career I guess. So maybe in those later levels
you get better at it as well probably.
Yeah, I think indirectly, yeah. At least for my I mean, if
you're studying to become a surgeon or like a lawyer or
something that probably really needs your education, yeah.
But if economics abyss economics, I think most people
went on to consultancy in the end.
Yeah, exactly. Moving back then to self-taught
engineers way back when you taught yourself more of the
technical aspects. And I think people are still
doing it. I mean, either from university
or from high school, people that have a laptop already can start
teaching themselves or watching videos.
There's enough content out there to teach yourself a lot of
aspects, but what do you think makes the distinguish or the
difference between someone that just teaches themselves for the
heck of it and someone that can actually pursue a career down
the line with the things they've taught themselves?
Well, it's sort of difficult. I think there are a lot of
people that start coding themselves like maybe under
ethic, maybe in their free time. But I don't know if the numbers
would be interesting to get some numbers on this, but I think a
lot of people don't actually pursue a career after this.
Yeah, I mean, I have friends that are in business or are
working for the university and they thought themselves out the
code for a bit, like maybe some Python to do some data analysis.
And they basically thought the code, but they didn't really
pursue a code in software engineering.
Yeah. But I think the real difference
is persistent. So you need to like it.
You need to have stimulants at the right.
Moments in time, yeah. So for me it didn't have a
mentor or something, but because I was building a business, I got
feedback from customers saying things for slow things for non
performance. I don't know, maybe the
algorithm I made got stuck because at some point I got too
much users and then too much DVDs flowing in and then the
algorithm got stuck because we just if L statements.
Yeah, so I keep raising the PHP limits to process the files
within the engine got stuck. So you need to find new ways in
order to do this, and then you. You start Googling, you start
going to stack overflow, you start trying to find ways to
make it more efficient and for me that really helped.
But I think if I would have something like a mentor to help
me it would be even better. Or maybe university.
I did some classes in computer science and one was about SQL
and you actually needed to use sort of algebra in order to find
the best or most efficient SQL query, which is also kind of
interesting because it changed my way of thinking.
So when I started being self-taught I thought.
Actually do this in this way because that's what I read
somewhere. Yeah.
And then when you actually go into computer science class, you
actually start thinking about more theoretical, you start to
figure out how else can I do this.
Yeah, and it really helped me. But I think the biggest thing is
persistence. So persistence and some sort of
a fall back. So either a mentor or maybe a
company you're building. Maybe not even a mentor, but
maybe a friend that's also start studying with you.
Yeah. Or maybe if you start doing it
in a boot camp, it could be nice to have other people in the boot
camp that are also really ambitious.
Yeah, Yeah, like that. You said it's all about getting
that feedback right? And for you it was actual
customers. For other people, it can be the
the peers they're working with or a mentor they have behind
them to just talk about what you've created and the options
you've taken and and also which option you took, right?
Because if you're kind of new starting out, you as you
mentioned, I think there's only one way or a few ways, but
there's always multiple options you can choose from.
And I think right now what distinguish is a really good
developer is someone that kind of can weigh out those options
and can pick one or two of the best ones and then just pursue
one. And if it's not the right one
can still shift and take the other out.
But it's really hard I think to teach yourself that in thinking
of that because it's a shift in mindset, I think from being
self-taught to actually weighing out the options and continuing
from there. Yeah, definitely.
So that's one thing I see happening, especially people
that follow boot camps. So if you there are like tons of
boot camps out there and they will probably teach you one
thing like either Salesforce or Nodejs or React or View these
kind of things, yeah. But they don't usually teach you
how to use them. Because that's of course the
only thing you can teach someone in weeks or months.
Yeah, but you don't, really. Teach them how to think about
the patterns, how to compare the other languages.
So usually in companies I work with, if they're junior
developers, I often tell them okay, try a different language.
If you're using TypeScript or no JS, try switching to maybe
Python, Try something else, maybe even try Java just for the
sake of it, just to get some comparison from another
language. Try to see what they're doing
there. Why do they do certain things?
How would it impact your own code styles so?
You can have like object orientated programming or
functional programming, but either language takes a
different approach and if you're only used to react an example,
there's a language I use a lot. Then you sort of think that
everything you write is a component, but for a different
language, or maybe a back end language, or maybe Python.
You don't really have components, so if you're used to
reacting, taking components, then it's really hard to change
your mindset into thinking into functions or thinking into
objects. You get that?
I mean, they're all, they're all tools, right?
Either a language or a certain way of doing it.
It's all a tool. And probably in a boot camp they
show you the box of tools, maybe not even necessarily how to use
it or how to use it in a certain way.
Yeah, definitely. But you can always use it in
different ways. And I like that you mentioned
trying to step out of what you already know in exploring a new
language, because the way you use it might be completely
different than the one you're used to.
And then you can also just pick one of the tools that's most apt
for the job instead of using a hammer for every job, basically.
Yeah, it's also really confronting.
So I mean if I tried out some Python, I tried out some Java,
but if you ask me today to maybe run a JavaScript or get some
Kotlin, then probably have no idea how to do it.
So it also helps change your mindset a bit.
Like you think you're really good at something and then you
try it slightly different but maybe a different tool.
And then suddenly you feel like you don't really know what
you're doing. A friend of mine recently told
me a funny comparison. So he's a hockey player.
And he told me, especially all hockey players have different
hockey sticks. So I played soccer when I was
younger. Apparently there are way
different hockey sticks, and every player is on preference.
Some halter stick really low, some halt them really low.
And if you would look at, like the Dutch team for hockey, they
all have different sticks and they all hold them slightly
different. OK.
So it also shows that no matter what profession you're doing,
you still need to have some diversification and you need to
have some different tools or methods.
And then it could still be good in what you're doing, Yeah.
But it could be different than the person sitting next to you.
Yeah, I never knew that. I like the hockey analogy in
that. I mean, you can have a tool, but
the way you use it is how you are most effective basically,
and it can be a personal trait. Yeah, and if you go back to
sports, if you look at Fader, he's like 40 something now and
he's still one of the better tennis players.
If you look at his styles over the years, I think he has a
career of like 20 years or maybe more.
He actually changed it. So first, I think now his back
end is really good, but first his fore end was really good.
So you keep changing over time because also his body changes
and mindset changes. And for developer and engineer
it could be the same, like you get older, you get more
knowledge about different frameworks.
And in the end you need to make sure that you use the knowledge
you already have to apply to newer things in order to stay
but relevant as one side a diagram about developers being
most productive. And I think it went up like this
and then somewhere around 3540 it actually went down because
people either got too much experience to learn new tools.
Also the private lives changed like in the beginning of all
this time. And then maybe you get children,
or you buy a house, or you get different hobbies, more
commitments. More commitments and then also
with experience comes more responsibility.
Yeah. So I think it also changes for
you as an engineer like the older you get, the more you sort
of shift away from really coding and also more trying into
architecture or maybe management or all these sort of things
surrounding your job. Yeah, I mean that gets into kind
of the name or the verb, developer or programmer or
engineer, whatever, that it's evolving so much more than just
sitting behind the keyboard and just bumming out a bunch of
code. Basically.
I think most of the time engineers are not really coding.
They're either researching, learning, knowledge sharing, or
just figuring out which option is the best one to take.
And then doing the actual work is actually not that much in
compared to all the preparation to do the right thing basically.
And I think I don't know how it was previously, but I think it
was just more and more coding in general.
Well, it's different I think if you like the way people look at
the words developer and engineer, I think developer at
least. Not that I agree or disagree,
but I think a developer is someone that creates something,
and I think an engineer is something that creates something
foundational. So maybe a new programmer
language, or maybe starts thinking about what kind of
database should you use? How does it work in?
Or statue arrays. And a developer would probably
just pick a database, implement it, create an API, and so forth.
So I think that's sort of the common way people think about it
now, which you also see if you look at jobs for developers, you
often see people don't already have needed computer science
education for engineers. People often say you need to
have foundational computer science experience.
You need to know how different languages work, how a computer
works inside. You need to have free high level
or low level code experience. So if you look at it this way,
then probably 20 years ago, all developers were engineers and
all engineers were developers. Yeah, because if you did in
studio computer science, you probably didn't know how to use
a computer or how to program things exactly.
I never, I mean I use those words interchangeably.
But I have seen kind of what you mentioned in that one.
It's a developer. It's more of a get done attitude
basically, and it might be more based on the organization that's
actually asking for a certain set of skills.
I think when you're in a startup, it's more of that.
Get it done, get the feedback fast, The proof of concept out
there on MVP and seeing if it actually works before you can
scale it. And more of the engineers may be
more in bigger organizations when it's more about long term
and about working together and maintainability and longevity of
the thing you're building. And if you go that route, you
need to know more than just getting it done, basically.
Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I'm still not sure if
I actually agree with the words developer and engineer, but this
is what you read on Twitter a lot, or in other communities.
Like people sort of try to make a distinction between people
that have foundational experience through computer
science education compared to people that just know how to get
things done. But yeah, I'm not sure if the
comparison really should be there, because in the end, if
you didn't study computer science, you can still get the
foundational experience to work experience to trying our
different languages to. Working on tons of projects,
working for different companies and also having good mentors.
I mean, if you did a boot camp two years ago, you started
working for a company, you got a lot of responsibility, you work
a lot with maybe the senior members or the Ctos, and still
you can get that foundational experience without having
computer science backgrounds. But as long as people really
keep making distinction between engineers and developers, it's
also really hard to get out of that stigma of being a
developer. Because maybe you only did a
boot camp, or maybe you touch yourself how to code and then.
To me, it was 14 years ago. But if it was two years ago for
you, probably you'll be in a stigma for the next five years
or something. Yeah, until you actually have to
work experience to prove that you're in their eyes, not just a
developer but also an engineer. Yeah, and I mean, even with that
work experience, some companies don't really test that work
experience in kind of an interview process.
For example, you might need to solve an algorithm, but in
practice you're never gonna do that because you're building an
actual product and the solving of the algorithm might be a very
small part of the bigger hole. Basically, the companies are
really fixated on testing those skills.
In particular. I don't know where that comes
from though. I think it's.
More it goes back to the thing I told you about university.
Like you learn a lot of things. Yeah, you learn how to structure
things with certain mindset. But for the rest of my life, I
probably will never write an essay again.
Or. Need to do research about stock
companies or these kind of things and things like that in
economics. Yeah.
So I think it goes back to that you sort of learn a way of
thinking or how to structure things and then if you learn it
through computer science, then you could do it later on.
So probably their idea is if you know how to create an algorithm,
you probably also know how to make a switch statement in order
to decide which component to render.
Yeah, that makes sense. But then you're kind of
filtering out people that don't have that experience necessarily
or they need to specifically learn about algorithms because
that's being tested just to pass the bar and get hired to then
use their own skill set, basically.
Yeah, definitely. And I think if you just started
coding, if you did a boot camp or followed some online course
and you start working at Facebook, working on some tiny
compiler or some tiny component. And probably it's also not the
job in which you will learn the most.
Yeah. I think especially if you have
little experience, then it will be really useful to work at a
startup, work at a smaller company, maybe even freelance,
which is also a bit scary because I know people that went
to a boot camp, then started freelancing.
And often you really see in cloud quality that they've been
working on their own because especially those first years,
you really need some guidance. You really need a company that
helps you, or a mentor that helps you or.
That feedback. Yeah, really, the feedback.
Yeah, and that makes sense. It's funny that you mentioned
Facebook and kind of the bigger organizations, because currently
the job market is pretty tight when it comes to developers.
Tight, meaning that there's just not enough developers or
engineers, whichever label you want to use basically.
Yet the bigger companies are creating more and more jobs and
more and more options for developers to go there instead
of the smaller organizations. You can name your startup or
you're kind of medium organization and there's a
difference in pay and kind of skill set required.
And I think people are more and more navigating to the big
companies in that aspect, which is quite a shame.
Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know, maybe
it's also the circle of life. I mean, you start somewhere
small, then you go to bigger companies.
And in the end, something I do see it as bigger companies is
people also start leaving maybe around the 40s or something to
either start a new company themselves or start working for
a smaller company. Yeah, but it is a real problem.
I mean Facebook wants to create 10,000 jobs in Europe, not
necessarily the Netherlands, but I do think they have a a bigger
and bigger office here. So there could be a big chance.
A lot of these people need to come from the Netherlands.
So I am kind of worried where we're able to get like this
10,000 engineers. You already said in the
Netherlands, I think 50% of the developer jobs that we have are
engineering jobs. They really can't find someone
because there aren't enough people here.
So I work with companies in the past and we've got people all
over Europe or even the world to start working for us in the
Netherlands. And then you have to compete
with just other startups or other scaleups.
As soon as you start competing with bigger companies, it's
really hard to do it. So you really need to find
people that want to work for a smaller company, that really
want to learn how things go to certain smaller company.
But then they also might just leave after two years.
Yeah, I think that's really hard for a company to.
Because it's not necessarily about pay.
It's about what you're doing, whom you're doing it with, the
environment around it, and probably the way that you're
doing it and how much you can learn.
Especially if you're starting out and this is your first job,
basically, yeah. So your career is also an
investment that people sometimes forget because you want to see
immediate return. So if you invest in stocks, you
know you put money in and then you expect it to be more in five
years. But the biggest investment is
your career. So if you start investing your
time now to learn to code, to improve your coding, and maybe
you're making like let's say you would make 10,000 today.
Maybe if you start investing in yourself or they start writing
tutorials. Start following courses online,
try to find good guidance. Maybe you can make 100,000 in
two years and then that's probably a bigger investment
than invest in stocks today. Yeah, that's quite the bump
actually. I'm wondering because you
touched upon freelancing initially in that when you're
starting out, it's probably good to start at a company, get the
feedback before you if you want to do that, actually pursue that
career. But when do you think is kind of
the time then or the sweet spot to move into freelancing really
depends. So I think you should only move
into freelancing if you feel your you have enough experience
in order to work independently. You also want to work
independently. I mean it is a bit different if
you were used to a company where you would have drinks every
Friday evening where there would be things for you organized.
I mean, if you go to freelancing and you have no friends, you
don't like to work independently, then it would be
really strange to go into freelancing.
Exactly, yeah. So it really depends on what you
want to achieve. I think freelancing is great if
you want to travel the world, you want to see other countries,
you want to make products for different companies, that really
makes sense. But I think a lot of people that
go into freelancing after ID, they will make way more money
freelance than working for a company.
Well I think in the end if you look for the right companies, if
you make good career choices and you have the proper guidance,
you will make more money in the end if you would have worked for
a company than going to freelancing.
So it's I think it's a double edged Schwartz, and it really
depends on the person if you would make really make it
successful. Because I know people have been
to freelance and then they only wanted to sign contracts with
companies that could have them for one or two years at the
minimum. But then you're just freelancing
for money. Probably not really freelancing
for really the flexibility. Yeah, I really like that answer
in that it is that double edged sword, right?
It can gain you a lot and then you have to give.
It's probably gonna be stressful along the way, but it's really
dependent on the person that's doing it.
I think for some reason, because the job market is so tight,
probably people are trying it out more and being like, well, I
could probably earn more if I do this my own rather than
filtering through the company and me just getting a chunk of
the cheese basically, yeah, definitely.
But yeah, if we will go look at the job market, I think
freelancing is really the answer.
So for Net Lens, I think we just need to change the mindset as
well to make sure there are more developers, there are more
engineers, there are more people interested in technology.
Yeah, because in the end you see things are changing.
A recent article from a big Dutch bank, they did a research
about the financial industry. So there are 30,000 people
working in the financial industry and they will expect
Look Chain will eat most of their jobs.
Exactly. So we have all those people that
are now sort of good paid, sort of highly educated and they need
to start, find other jobs. So they in the end maybe need to
start programming. They need to start either in the
same blockchain, because maybe they have to use it in the job.
Yeah, or maybe even AI. Other research also show like
half of big companies in Anillas are already starting AI.
Yeah, I think. Is that what you mean then, by
kind of changing the mindset in that you need to look around and
see what's gonna happen with your future career and make a
kind of shift? Yeah.
So if I would ask most of my friends, they will all say,
yeah, I don't really know how computers work in the end.
They're sitting behind a computer all day.
Absolutely. And people are also afraid maybe
robots will either jobs or maybe algorithms will take away our
jobs. And I think as long as we don't
understand the algorithms, yeah, they probably will take our
jobs. Because if we don't know what
the algorithms are, if we don't know how they would work.
But our companies are introducing algorithms, they are
simplifying a job. They don't really know what
those algorithms are doing, but they do take away maybe the
harder part of your jobs. Yeah, that is something to worry
about. Yeah.
I'm wondering in how far you need to understand what's going
on, right? There can be some mundane things
that you're doing and those can be automated.
Rather they should be automated. But maybe what you're doing, if
it's a real core thing that can be done by an AI, how much do
you need to understand about what's going on and the
algorithms behind it, do you think?
Well, I think it differs. So if you go to lower school,
you need to, you have calculus, you need to do everything by
hand, Yeah. So you need to define things.
You need to sum up failures and then if you go to high school
you probably get your calculator and then it can do it for you.
And then when you start working you start using excel in order
to make all these things because there is more and more data but
still you know how to some things up.
At least I sometimes do it still by hand, just to make sure you
know how things work later on. You have a device which you
still need to type in the actual values, and now if a computer do
it for you, I think the real scary part would be if you would
Add all these values, or maybe spreadsheet into a computer and
a computer will give you a result without you knowing how
the results calculate. Yeah, I think if you're at that
stage then things are going wrong and you should know more
about what the machine is actually doing for you.
Yeah, man, I love that analogy because it hits home so well.
Coming from just elementary school and moving into high
school. Yeah, you're right.
We did everything by hand and now you're coming from a
situation where you are doing everything by hand.
And all of a sudden stuff get added behind the screen and all
of a sudden it's done automatically.
And that magical part is weird if you see it for the first
time. But when you actually understand
what happens behind the screen, that's where you can actually
make use of it more effectively. Yeah, definitely.
And I think it will also help us.
I mean at some point if you look at the job market, if you look
at all the companies that are active in the net lens in
different countries, at some point I think we need to say
like this is what a machine can do.
And here it kind of stops. If you look at also some issues
with the net lens with tax payments or money people would
get if they had a low income, if the machines would do all this
work for us, then there would be no human factor in it.
I mean, a machine could say you don't get this this amount of
money because your income was higher one year.
Well, maybe a person that looked through the files could have
say, okay. There's like a real true issue
why this person had a higher income this year, so he or she
should still get the money. Yeah, exactly.
It's that human factor and that just human judgment, basically.
That factor's in there, yeah. I think we can have machines
that do a lot of our work for us, make it easier, but still we
need to understand how they work.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's hard, I think.
Moving back to kind of self-taught engineering, when I
started out there was a lot of kind of incubator programs in
where you do kind of a boot camp and then you get placed by a
company. But it was always a duration and
kind of a one or two year contract.
So rather than doing that, I choose to go abroad.
I moved into operations and eventually I got a bit.
What's a good word for this? I got a bit frustrated in that I
knew what I needed to change, but I needed to go to the
developer to change it. So then I pursued a career in
software development basically. Yeah, but those incubator
programs, I think they are actually doing quite well in
that they pick up people that I wanna shift career or that are
fresh out of college and just give them the practical
experience rather than having them either teach themselves or
go on the career themselves and kind of laying the tracks for
them already to. Be a data scientist or an actual
engineer there, Yeah. What's your take on that?
Do you think it's an effective way of doing it?
Because it's kind of a boot camp and then you get placed at a
company. I think it's a really good way
because you know you will get a job in the end.
The company is also open to hire junior developers.
Sometimes you see companies that are open to hire people that are
self-taught. They don't want to hire people
that have been through boot camp.
And I think companies that commit to the boot camp or the
incubator or whatsoever, they will actually know that they
will get a person that they need to really educate and also help
because that's also a problem if you come from a boot camp and a
company hires you and they will assume you can go, you can
create websites or APIs for them.
Yeah. I mean they should also
understand that you will still need guidance for the first few
years and it you won't be as predictive as someone that has
two or three years work experience.
Exactly. They can't just let you swim and
expect you to make it out. Some people are gonna make it
out, but some people need help along the way.
Yeah, definitely. But some frustration I do have
like all the boot camps, all the ways to educate yourself out
there is that there isn't really any guidance or some sort of
quality assurance that you really know a boot camp is good.
You really know certain courses are good.
I mean, there are online reviews.
There are reviews by companies, but you never really see how in
the end people are really happy with the boot camp, if they
really learn things there, or if they really learned how to do
things at the company. Yeah, I mean, the boot camp is
gonna preach the boot camp, obviously.
Like, this is the best thing, but there's so many out there.
Even if you're talking about online courses, I can, I can
Google a tech course or a React course and there's hundreds
probably that are gonna teach me a specific thing.
But then which one is gonna be a good one for my career down the
line? I think it's hard to choose.
Yeah, definitely. And of course a different
flavor. So me, myself, I really like to
learn by example, or maybe other people really like to deep dive
into theory and then do an example later.
So it also depends on your mindset.
But I think there should be a bit more curation and there's so
much advice out there. There's so much ways to do
things out there. If you go to Twitter an example,
and you ask for like a good programming course, you will
find like thousands of them and people start answering different
questions. And I can understand if you're
new to this, it's also really confusing because you don't
really know what to look for, what people to look for, what
kind of courses, what technologies you would need.
So I think we need some more of a guidance in the Netherlands
and the rest of the world. Like how do you know you can
teach the program? What kind of courses do you need
to follow? What kind of boot camps are
good? What kind of companies really
want to mentor junior developers in order to become successful?
And yeah, because probably most companies will say they will
help you in first steps in your career in the end.
They also need to make money. So they need to make sure that
you're actually being productive from maybe day one, maybe not
day zero. Yeah, it is something to
consider. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think companies have a choice nowadays.
They should pick up the young talent and make them basically
flourish throughout their career a bit more since it is a tight
job market. I don't think.
Yeah, I think companies don't really have a choice, but I
think bigger companies should make a choice for themselves
that they invest in younger people.
Yeah, instead of trying to get all the more experienced
engineers from startups or skill ups that are probably shaped for
a larger part by those engineers.
Yeah, exactly. And even the organizations that
you mentioned that are not willing to hire self-taught
engineers, I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.
And I think that much that should change in that it doesn't
matter if you're self-taught or not.
You're still gonna be continuously learning throughout
your journey anyway, cuz technology is changing all the
time. You need to pick up either a new
framework or a new tool or a new sauce product that everyone's
using. Yeah, definitely.
And I think if you taught yourself how to program or
follow the boot camp, you're probably also way more flexible
on this. So one of the issues is indeed
sort of engineering is sort of a black box for a lot of business
people. So yeah, they know they would
need an engineer or developer to create the website, but they
have no idea how to do it themselves.
Yeah. So if I was in business and I
have no prior development experience and I had to choose
between one person with four years experience and one with
zero, yeah, I would also probably go for the four years
of experience because to me, it's really a black box.
I have no idea what they're doing.
Yeah. So probably the person with four
years experience really knows what they're doing.
So that will be probably a better guess.
Yeah, well, maybe the person with serious experience can get
your product done faster because the person isn't really thinking
about architecture things, about how to structure things for the
long run. Maybe there's a different right
test. So it really depends on what
you're building. If you need like the more
experienced person or less experienced person, yeah.
But as long as the black box is there, it's really hard for
business people also to make this decision.
Yeah, I mean, at some point it's gonna come down to trust as
well. And it's really hard to gain
that trust. I think when you don't have your
past experience in the series of experience versus the 4th, 1:00.
So then it's even harder to make a case for what you should hire
me versus the other person, basically, Yeah, And easy.
I like what you say about going into operations.
Like you knew how to develop a bit probably, And then you went
into operations because you felt it was better for you.
But then you went back to software development.
Yeah, I can understand if you stayed in operations then maybe
you would have thought about this the same like you know,
some development but not enough to actually make changes.
So probably you would put your trust in the people with more
experience. Exactly, Yeah.
And operations specifically is kind of a hard thing because
it's, I think that part is getting phased out a bit more.
It's moving towards the cloud more and that the cloud is just
doing a bunch of stuff that operations people used to do.
Basically, there's no longer a physical hardware or disk that's
gonna get full when you're running in the cloud, cuz that's
just gonna scale up automatically.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. But it would be interesting to
see how we can reduce this black box.
So if you look at current education and elements, I think
we're really teaching people to be unemployed in the future
because there's all these jobs that won't be there anymore.
So I think we need to make a shift early on, maybe even in
high school, maybe in lower school.
We really need to teach people, like, if you're doing these
kinds of jobs, then maybe these jobs aren't there anymore in 10
or 20 or 30 years. So people maybe need to learn
how to program in in lower school, Maybe in high school.
Yeah. If I go back to my high school,
I think they tried to teach me how to program.
And at the end, the informatics course was just using paint
Okay. Using words.
Yeah. Well, it could be quite easy to
actually show me how to do certain stuff, maybe make a
small website with HTML. And then in the end, maybe I
would have decided earlier on I wanted to be an engineer instead
of going into business. Yeah.
I mean, I'm two years younger than you, and I think way back
then they didn't really know how to either teach or tackle
specific informatics courses. I think nowadays it's a bit
better. My brother's 18 now, so a bunch
of years back he did an informatics course and there
they taught him Python And PHP and a bunch of stuff.
Yeah, so that. And it's also about the
teachers, right? So like if you have a 50 someone
person that doesn't know how to program, yeah, he or she also
can't teach the children how to program.
Exactly you need to 1st. Get your shit together before
you can teach others. Yeah, so does it also go back to
the stigma? Like if someone that uses a
computer as a nerd, then children in high school see a
computer or teacher as a nerd, then probably they won't take
the person really seriously. Yeah, and then that's hard.
I mean, if you look back at the courses you were best in in high
school, it probably were the courses with the best teachers
or the most passionate ones. Yeah, that's a good one.
Especially the passion at once, because that passion comes
across to you, especially when you're young, at young age.
And it might even lead you to pursue a career somewhere
adjacent to the courses that you like the most.
Yeah, and for me, I was really good in history.
But also I've got teachers that were really passionate about
history. Absolutely.
And at some point, because teachers that were also
passionate on history, but they had different sort of
methodology, they were mostly not really talking about the
history, but mostly talking about putting the history in
perspective. Yeah, which I actually found
less interesting, Okay. So it really depends on the
teacher and how passionate they are about the course to really
make a success for you as well. Yeah, it boils down to then
communicating, right? And even as an engineer or a
developer, at some point you're gonna do a bunch of sales,
right? Because you need to negotiate an
option with your teammate. I have a certain specific point
of view. You have a different one.
And then we just basically need to negotiate our options.
Or you have to do some marketing and go to your business people
and say, well, we wanna use this tool.
It's gonna cost us a bit, but it's better than building it
ourselves for XY&Z reasons. So there's always a bunch of
different facets that nowadays you need to have in your toolbox
besides the actual programming. And then it especially helps
when you already have kind of a different career or a different
journey. Than a bunch of other people
because that could synergize, right?
I could do more communication. Yeah, definitely.
So in university, for my thesis I need to use Tata, which is a
data analysis program. Yeah, but in the end I could
have also done this with Python And with Stata.
It's only being used by universities or are the same?
Most universities use it well. If in the other hand I would
have should have used Python, yeah it's the same learning
curve but it doesn't have a UI so that's the only difference.
Yeah, but still for SATA you needed to write some code in
order to make it work. If I would have used Python back
then. Or maybe all the other people
use Python as well. Maybe companies they work for an
hour also using Python instead of software they would build on
the market in order to do their analysis.
Yeah. Or you could make that shift way
more easily because you already have kind of a baseline in the
tools that actual companies are using as well.
Yeah, also and it's also mindset by by people like the overall
communities. Because in the end, if I look at
my university class, most of the people are consultants, but in
the end when they went to high school, probably none of them
wanted to be a consultant because what is a consultant?
Even you can be a software consultant, you can be a
business consultant. There were tons of ways to be a
consultant. So we need to find a way also as
a society, to make people interested in technology from
like an early age on, because all the children are using
fonts, but probably none of them know how an app is actually
made. Exactly.
Yeah. You can probably teach that in
kind of a gamer fight way pretty easily to a kid, which is
building blocks and all. This is how you figure out how
to do XY&Z. Yeah.
And I think there are a lot of, a lot of methods and a lot of
things out there, but it is really missing the guidance.
Like they're all either there for profit or not-for-profit.
And they're probably also not really run by engineers, but run
by business people and want to make sure there are enough
engineers in the future. So I think we need to find a way
to really bring those things together.
And also maybe even a society. Think of computer programmers as
school people because they build the apps you use all day instead
of nerds that are locked behind a computer.
I mean, software is everywhere. Yesterday a buddy of mine told
me he's going to the gym now again and there's a big circle
in the thing and you need to do some gym exercises basically.
But that is completely gamified in that your rhythm needs to be
aligned with something that's happening on the TV in kind of a
gamified way. And at the end you get a score
and obviously you have a certain ranking and you wanna get a good
score and that also helps you get fit.
But behind the scenes, that's all software that's doing it.
Or that's all psychologically psychological psychology that
helped you kind of figure out the gamified solution in that
way. So it's kind of everywhere
nowadays where you wouldn't even expect it.
Yeah, maybe also like even broader.
I don't really. You have Silicon Valley, like
there's a TV show. But besides this, there are no
TV shows about programmers. Well, there are big TV shows
about lawyers, about surgeons. I mean there's like 20 or
something sitcoms that play around in a hospital.
Yeah, absolutely, man. But it's hard when you say kind
of a society shift, right? Because it starts early on.
And if already early on you think, well, programming is
something that nerds do, how's that going to change then or
where does it need to come from? It is really hard.
So it needs to come from multiple things.
So it's also parents understanding technology,
understanding software. Yeah, so these things will
evolve over time, but it's not really, it's not really a fast
involvement. Yeah, and there's no silver
bullet. As you say.
It's gonna need time to basically evolve in such a way
that people are just more open to technology.
Yeah, and then popular media should adopt it.
I mean, Elon Musk is probably famous because he's an
entrepreneur, but not so much because he's an engineer.
Yeah, so somehow his business endeavors are more interesting
for people than his actual engineering endeavors.
Well, the products these companies makes are really cool
and they're actually changing the world, yeah, but somehow
people more focus on the business side of that instead of
the engineering part. Yeah, I think more naturally it
will shift because kids nowadays are gonna be more technology
native than us, for example, or even our parents or their
parents way back when when they didn't even have a smartphone
growing up or a YouTube right there.
Yeah, yes and no. I think because children are
using the technology, but if the technology keeps them dumb then
they won't understand how the technology works.
Yeah, but I'm trying to figure out.
I'm very solution oriented, but this is a hard one to solve
basically. Yeah, I think it really helps
by. I mean if you go to a party and
try to understand what you're doing.
Yeah. And you could say I'm a podcast
host. Or you could also say I'm making
quality software for companies all over the world and apps and
then probably people's own out. Yeah, Which is a shame, yeah,
which is a shame. But if you'll be telling I'm a
podcast, how is to interview people that are working all over
the world and changing the world, then they're probably
interested. But as soon as you put software
in there, people sort of sewn out and think boring.
I think it depends on how you say that, because your most
interesting thing could be the program you're writing, or why
you're doing it and what you're achieving with it.
It's still a tool and still a method to accomplish something.
And it could be technological, but that shouldn't really matter
in what you're doing or what you're accomplishing.
Yeah, that's true. But if you are a surgeon here,
tell about your open heart surgeries.
Some people really want to know how it works.
Yeah, it depends. Because then you could say,
well, I use these tools or this kind of mindset and theory in
doing it, but the thing you did was still saving a patient's
life or doing the thing that is exciting, basically.
Yeah, maybe we just need better advocates, yeah.
Or maybe like a TV show developers really showing how it
can change the world, how it impacts, yeah, things, because
the TV shows that are there are also putting down software
engineers as hackers or yeah, these kind of things.
You have all these shitty TV shows with terminals being
opened, which certainly nothing happens and then somehow they're
it makes it a bit hard for people to crisp, I think.
Yeah, I hope it'll change. I'm a positive person,
basically. Yeah, I mean as well.
But I do think we need to also as engineers or developers, make
sure that there is this shift. Like, be proud about talking
what you do to your friends, even if they don't understand.
And actually try to make them understand, because maybe your
friend of yours that's now a lawyer.
Yeah, maybe his job will be gone in like 10 or 20 years.
Yeah, and they actually need to start programming later on.
So it would be nice if you could somehow already influence them
now so they'll know what to do with the job in like 10 or 20
years. And maybe you can already start
the programming course on the side.
Yeah, I think, I think a lot of jobs already are doing that, as
you mentioned. My buddy's a trading guy.
He makes a lot of trades. I have no clue what he does on a
day-to-day, but I do know that he needs to do a bit of Python
And it's kind of stimulated from the organization that he's with
in still kind of broadening his skill set.
Also more towards the technical side, which is pretty cool
because I can also imagine a trading company maybe would say
we need more advanced software. So we need to buy our software
somewhere and then in the end it makes the trading agents dumb
because the software is doing stuff for them.
No, they make it's really nice that they do it this way.
Yeah, they make everything in house.
So that's their edge compared to the competition basically.
And they hire a lot of good developers, but they also teach
the trading people to know the technical side so they can align
that it's cool. So the trading people still
remain training people instead of software becoming a trading
person exactly. Or maybe even the software
developer that built the trading software is more of a trading
agent and the actual trading agent in the end.
Yeah, I think it's a balance, but definitely both sides know
each other. The technical people are still
the technical people, and the domain experts should remain the
domain experts. Yeah, but technical people need
to know the domain and vice versa.
I think domain experts need to know the technical side so we
can just synergize better and make a better product at the
end. That's really cool.
Yeah, on that note, let's round it off, man.
I had a lot of fun. Yes, thank you a lot.
And well, I just hope if you have been listening AR in
business then you will start the programming course sometime
soon. I think so.
I think it's all about just being open to try out new things
and seeing if it works for you, or just learning about kind of
the unknown as well. Yeah, maybe trying to find
evolving in your job because five years ago you needed to
know Excel to find a job. So hopefully in five years time
you maybe need some Python or some JavaScript experience to
actually find that job. Yeah, We'll see how it goes,
man. Yes.
Thank you. Cool Roy, Dex, everyone beyond
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