
Show HN: Coding Career Handbook - swyx
https://www.learninpublic.org/?from=Hacker%20News
======
quicklime
> The Coding will always be the easiest part of a Coding Career

I'm a little triggered by this headline. I understand what it means, and I
agree there's some truth to it. It can be good advice when given to developers
who haven't yet figured out that their job is not exclusively to write code.

But in my company (which is a big non-tech corporate) I've noticed that a
similar phrase often gets used by non-technical people to belittle the work
that software developers do. The exact wording varies, but the sentiment is
basically that technical problems are easy, and can safely be outsourced to
the lowest bidder, as long as there's a good Project Manager who can enforce
the right methodology and processes. It's the problems that require "soft"
skills that are _difficult_ \- these are the kind that Thought Leaders and
Influencers work on - and we need to pay a premium for people who can solve
these problems.

In reality, technical and non-technical problems are both difficult in their
own ways, and both occupy a space that ranges from trivial to impossible.

In terms of career advice, I'd really suggest not perpetuating this myth. One
of the tactics that the book lists is "marketing yourself", and repeating the
idea that coding is easy (especially to non-technical people) undermines your
career and that of your technical colleagues.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
To be honest, the technical problems are the easy thing in most companies
since they just need a simple CRUD app and anything you do will be magic to
most people regardless.

The politics are the difficult part of most work in this industry. Everyone
has an agenda (which is not a bad thing) and serving multiple agendas will
make your technical problems even worse.

~~~
sharadov
Depends where you work, if it's a dinky ecommerce site with no scalability
issues, then coding is not a problem. But if it's a real product company with
AI/ML engineering problems, then coding definitely is.

~~~
Mandatum
> a real product company with AI/ML engineering problems

I've worked in just about every industry in my career, yet to find a place
where those engineering specialisations are make-or-break, or even necessary.

~~~
yowmamasita
Same. Most product startups I've worked on where the business model seemed to
be working, always the stability and scalability of the platform are the main
problems.

------
claudiulodro
Please don't take this the wrong way; I am genuinely curious. As far as I can
tell, you've been a professional developer for approximately 2 years. What
qualifies you to instruct people how to manage their dev career, let alone
charge $40+ for the advice?

~~~
acemarke
As a bystander but friend of Shawn's, I can say that over the last few years
he has demonstrated an incredible ability to quickly learn and master
concepts, then pass that information on to others.

I've seen him go from someone who didn't know anything about web dev at all,
to a master of what's going on with React and its ecosystem. He's added
expertise on Svelte and other tools as well.

Shawn excels at a lot of "big picture analysis" type thinking (which makes
sense given his prior financial background), and I always find his comments
and presentations insightful and highly informative.

I haven't yet had time to read through this new book due to my own tasks, but
based on the blog posts I've seen him write leading up to this, and the
preview material he's tweeted, I have full confidence that this book is going
to be an excellent resource for other developers.

As for the price, Shawn's clearly put a lot of time and effort into writing
this. If you have questions about his ability to do so and the likely quality,
I'd encourage you to read through some of his blog posts to get a sense of how
he writes:

[https://www.swyx.io/writing/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/)

~~~
sokoloff
I think GP's point is that I would be similarly skeptical of taking parenting
advice "from diapers to diplomas" from someone who hadn't yet had their first-
born blow out a birthday candle, regardless of how well-edited or how much
effort they put into publishing that advice.

To me, it's not about the $40; it's about advice on "the full journey from
Code Newbie to Senior Developer" from someone who is probably much closer to
the former than the latter.

------
elliotbnvl
Congrats on the launch, Shawn!

I'm frustrated and saddened by the amount of negative comments here from
doubters, burnt out folks, and cynical engineers. I want to weigh in with a
positive perspective.

I've been following Shawn for a while now (from a distance) and I have to say,
seeing his name pop up in more and more places has certainly been an
intriguing experience. He went from being nobody a few years ago to being
somebody worth listening to very quickly.

He's built up a lot of good will with me just from what he's posted that is
freely available, so it's a little frustrating to see other people bashing /
looking for problems as soon as he releases something with a price tag. I
personally have benefited a lot from his "learn in public" approach (more from
his example than from his advice!!) and have had multiple posts hit the front
page of HN by "learning in public", from which I've learned further (it's a
positive feedback loop).

Full discloser, I haven't read this book, but the interesting thing is that
he's only recently started monetizing this exposure. That rings true to me of
somebody who knows what they're doing and has real value to bring to the
table.

For people who are saying "But he doesn't have enough experience," bear in
mind that this book has ~1400 references to other peoples' experience. I trust
that way more than I do one person's singular viewpoint, even if that is
backed up by 40 years' worth of experience.

Also, before anybody tries to call me out – this is a 100% spontaneous
response and I had no idea Shawn's book was out until I saw this post on the
front page of HN.

------
stephc_int13
I am frankly a bit tired of this kind of bait-clicky lessons from people with
a very thin track record. (This is way too frequent on Youtube these days)

I'd be more interested in the insight someone like Fabrice Bellard gained
during his coding career, especially if we're talking about productivity or
impact.

------
swyx
Hi HN! I have been writing since April, but this book has been _years_ in the
making. So glad to launch it today!

Since I switched careers from finance and started doing freeCodeCamp in 2017,
I have been studying the principles, strategies, and tactics that make great
developers successful and applying it to my own career. This has helped me get
hired at a Senior level at AWS in just 3 years. While between jobs, I decided
to take the time to write down everything I've learned about the tech industry
- everything I wish I had known, everything I believe to be true, everything I
think an individual contributor developer needs to build an exceptional
career:

\- Going from Junior to Senior

\- Learning in Public

\- Tech Strategy (the Business of Software)

\- Why You Should Write (A Lot!)

\- Engineering Career Ladders

\- Developer's Guide to Twitter

\- Marketing Yourself (without Being a Celebrity)

\- and more!

Roughly 1/4 of the chapters are prior blogposts that have done super well - my
greatest hits include [https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-
public/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/) and
[https://www.swyx.io/writing/marketing-
yourself/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/marketing-yourself/) \- and since
publishing them I have loads of feedback and rewritten them for the book. The
remaining 3/4 are brand new content I have applied for my own career, and
market tested the messaging in tweets, talks and podcasts.

There's a launch discount applied to everything on the site; I hope you enjoy
it!

\---

Side note on tech stack - For the book, I am using
[https://softcover.io](https://softcover.io) which is a Rails app that Michael
Hartl uses to create the Rails tutorial. It's the best tool I found that
generates PDF/EPUB/MOBI out of the box with decent customization by exposing
LaTeX (and its also FOSS, with a paid option!). For my site I am using
Begin.com for hosting and functions, Svelte for components, and Podia for
payments. For Audiobook I am using Audacity and my trusty standard issue
Egghead.io Instructor Shure mic! Putting this together was a good couple weeks
of trial and error - Let me know if I can answer any tech stack questions
alongside book questions!

~~~
humanlion87
Was 2017 the time you switched careers from finance and learned to code via
freeCodeCamp? Or did you switch before 2017 but started learning new stuff
(say a new language) on freeCodeCamp in 2017? If it is the former, that's
great progress getting to Senior level in less than 3 years! Congrats

~~~
swyx
short form - i started doing FCC in nights and weekends from Nov 2016 - Mar
2017, then quit and went all in in Jun 2017 and went to an NYC bootcamp to top
up my FCC knowledge and also get my first dev job.

here's the long form story - [https://medium.com/hackernoon/no-zero-days-my-
path-from-code...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/no-zero-days-my-path-from-
code-newbie-to-full-stack-developer-in-12-months-214122a8948f) \- ive been
harangued over this before so i should be clear that i have done programming
prior to starting FCC - just that it was basic self taught data munging stuff,
not web dev. i definitely did not start from zero, but i also definitely felt
very out of my depth learning the JS/Web stack in 2017 and it _took me a year_
to get to the point where I could credibly apply for a frontend dev job.

thanks!

------
lukeholder
It looks like a lot of friends with prepared comments for this launch in here.

~~~
acemarke
I can confirm that my own comment above was 100% spontaneous.

That said, Shawn has been writing this book in public, so anyone who's been
following him does know that he was about to launch.

------
forrestbrazeal
Read a version of this book pre-release and loved it!

Distills much of the best advice you can get if you hang out for a few years
on HN into an easily shareable package.

Would recommend as a graduation gift or career starter for the new tech person
in your life. But also super valuable for folks who have been in the industry
as well. The chapter on "Marketing Yourself" contains some reminders that I
found really helpful:

\- Keep online presence 90% positive

\- Be consistent (same profile pic everywhere, etc)

\- Be "The Guy" (or non-guy) for a specific, unique, easily-grasped value prop

\- Don't chase celebrity or short-term optimizations (posting times, weekly
metrics, etc)

~~~
antoncp
what is meant by “easily-grasped” in this case, and why is being this type of
person good? I.e. why would it be good to have a skill that anyone can easily
grasp?

(I’m sure it’s mentioned in the book, but I couldn’t help but ask anyway :])

~~~
forrestbrazeal
Poor choice of words on my part. Should have said something like "easily-
grasped value prop". You want a very short elevator pitch for what you do,
that makes it clear what value you provide.

I think of Corey Quinn, whose pitch is "I fix your AWS bill." Short, easily-
grasped, specific.

~~~
swyx
this exactly. but Corey can also pitch himself in anywhere from 30seconds to
30 minutes. Marketing Yourself is about adjusting your message to your
audience/situation, and _it can and should be practiced_ because you do not
leave things like this up to chance. (the public draft:
[https://www.swyx.io/writing/marketing-
yourself/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/marketing-yourself/))

this is obliquely referenced in the book, but i believe the most effective
pitch is if you can losslessly compress your entire value proposition into two
words. [https://www.swyx.io/writing/two-
words/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/two-words/)

Corey invented "Cloud Economist" for this purpose. brilliant. no one can
compete in a category you invented.

~~~
QuinnyPig
Thanks. It's nice when your work is recognized!

I've argued that in some ways a more effective positioning statement would
have been "I fix the horrifying AWS bill for SaaS companies in the Pacific
Northwest" or whatnot; you want your prospective clients to see themselves in
what you do.

Fortunately, "the AWS bill" is painful enough of a problem without too many
other viable alternatives that this was "enough."

------
TurboHaskal
I've just read the table of contents and I think I want to get off this
industry.

~~~
swyx
i'm sorry i made you feel that way. this is far from the only valid
perspective on the industry and I'd be interested in reading what you
prefer/enjoy instead.

------
freewilly1040
A lot of the early positive comments in this thread feel astroturfed

~~~
mbo
I feel the same way. For a place as exceedingly cynical as Hackernews, a lot
of the comments here feel artificial.

------
mellosouls
The book may be an excellent resource, but this appears to be just an advert -
are there free examples you can point us to?

It would be better to link directly to that page I think.

~~~
swyx
hi! - there wasn't - this is a result of my noobyness doing this - but now
there is! i've put up 4 chapters for you to evaluate - no email needed.
[https://www.learninpublic.org/#learn-
more](https://www.learninpublic.org/#learn-more)

~~~
mellosouls
Thank you

------
canadev
This book looks interesting. I'd like some advice on whether it will be useful
for me.

I've been a professional dev for over ten years and I have a CompSci degree
from a respected university. I'm getting paid principal engineering salary for
a moderate sized city in the U.S. and I work remotely from Canada in a fairly
cheap cost-of-living city at a small company (far from Silicon Valley salary,
but pretty damn high for here).

Do you think this book will be useful to me? I want to maintain my career as a
developer and grow in skill and salary. I have started blogging about a year
ago and I do infrequently but I think my posts are decent. I also am taking
the time to learn some stuff like ML and am constantly trying to improve my
skills with stuff like PostgreSQL and Go.

~~~
swyx
you have more experience than i do, so your call on deciding whether you have
a superset on this content. all i can offer is, if you do choose to check it
out and decide it is not for you, I will honor your refund request.

Good luck! I am certainly always on the side of developers working on
themselves.

------
king_magic
We've got to get away from calling everything "coding" and everyone "coders".

------
antonzabirko
Any free version I can audit? Not convinced this is worth the money since you
have 2 years of experience, but I am willing to invest some time to prove
myself wrong.

~~~
swyx
hi Anton - there wasn't - but now there is! i've put up 4 chapters for you to
evaluate - no email needed. [https://www.learninpublic.org/#learn-
more](https://www.learninpublic.org/#learn-more)

~~~
antonzabirko
Ty

------
geochronology
I'm curious enough about some of the content in this book that I'd consider
reading it if the price was cheaper (maybe $10-15 or so).

Unfortunately this book seems too all-over-the-map to be particularly useful
to where I'm at in my own coding career: about 18 months into it.

There are two pieces to this book if I read the marketing pages correctly: *
First, the overplayed trope of "How to get hired as a Pr0gRaMmar!!!1" \-- a
cottage industry nearly as large as the field of engineering itself * Second,
the less-played trope of, "Here are some actionable ways to develop your
career path under the severe time constraints that an engineering career will
present you with"

If this text were more exclusively drilled down into the second topic rather
than the first, I'd probably make the purchase.

However, I don't feel like spending time reading through a lot of things that
I either already know, or that don't apply to me.

------
itqwertz
I typically don’t trust anyone who uses the word “coding”.

~~~
swyx
naming is hard... so the background on this is that the book was originally
called "Cracking the Coding Career" for the alliteration and for the mirror
with "Cracking the Coding Interview". I nearly even shipped with that name -
until Gayle McDowell got in touch and said this would break her trademark. So
I had to tweak it. I considered maybe a dozen other names but believe it or
not they were worse :(

~~~
closeparen
Gayle's usage, "coding interview," specifies which part of the interview loop
her book focuses on. Of course there are many other attributes and skills
assessed in an interview loop: design, architecture, debugging, technical
communication, experience, domain knowledge, leadership, etc.

The usage of "coding" with respect to the _job_ often comes off as a polemic
against those other facets. Sometimes this is what you want! Maybe you're
breaking free of all that architecture astronomy and faux-agile BS to just
build stuff. Maybe you're differentiating yourself from your senior colleagues
who seem to write only documents. Maybe you want to hire someone to shut up
and type, not pester you about tech debt. But these are all fighting words.

It gets old when people pick up this usage and repeat it without even meaning
it.

------
treetide
Shameless plug: my work-in-progress book Programming Without Anxiety [0] might
be interesting for you. It got a bit of scope creep which I'll have to cut
back on, but I'm pretty enthusiastic about the content so far.

[0]: [https://treetide.com/book/programming-without-
anxiety.html](https://treetide.com/book/programming-without-anxiety.html)

------
miguendes
Looks very interesting, even tough I'm not new in the industry. So I'm
interested in buying and if like it I'd like to upgrade the package. Is it
possible just by paying the difference? I couldn't find this in the FAQ

~~~
swyx
hello! Podia does allow "upsells" and I tried to do everything right to
configure it such that you just pay the difference if you do. however i havent
run thru this userflow myself. if you do wanna upgrade later and have trouble
just ping me, i'll sort you out manually

------
Ninjinka
$39? Pass.

~~~
janwillemb
Please elaborate. Why do you think he needs to ask more for the book? Is it
because he poured so much of his time in it?

~~~
tydok
Ask more? The book is expensive. If he lowers the price, say to $10, the sales
will probably increase 10x.

~~~
peferron
I highly doubt sales would increase by 10x, or even 2x.

This book isn't trying to sell itself by saying "hey, buy me and you'll be
entertained for three hours, which is a better value than a movie ticket".

This book is trying to convince potential customers that it will help them
graduate from junior engineer at local_company to senior engineer at FAANG.
It's no coincidence that the author mentioned right here in his opening post
that he landed a senior role at AWS. (I realize that's not a dream for many,
and the whole FAANG thing is aggravating, but enough people think this way.)

If you (as a potential customer) aren't convinced, then you have no reason to
buy this book even for $10.

On the other hand, if you are convinced, then the upside is so large that this
book is worth buying even for $500.

Not many people will be on the edge pondering "I really think this book could
help me triple my salary and status but that's worth $10 to me, not $40".

------
forgotmypw17
This page pegs my CPU. Flagged for that reason.

------
dajohnson89
anybody else notice the gradually shifting background color? is my monitor
sketching out?

~~~
swyx
hey! that was a (bad) design decision by me. I thought itd be cool. i was
wrong. i've swapped out the design now and apologize, lesson learned!

------
torgian
This is really cool. I will purchase this next month when I have a bit more
free money.

~~~
swyx
i'll prob end the launch discount by then! whats your situation, i can work it
out with you, email me swyx@hey dot com

------
f311a
No PayPal option?

~~~
swyx
no but you can email me swyx@hey.com and I'll send you Paypal instructions and
add you manually! sorry Podia doesnt provide paypal option :(

~~~
asicsp
You could consider gumroad/leanpub as an additional option if you are not
restricted by your current selling options.

------
foobar_
I highly recommend the channel Tech Lead, a youtuber who covers some of the
mundane aspects of programming career.

~~~
catacombs
Tech Lead is walking meme who rarely offers good advice, most of which should
be taken with a grain of salt. His life is currently a mess: He's divorced and
has been recently been accused of doxxing YouTubers and other people who
criticize his work.

------
abd12
I highly recommend this book and Swyx's other work. He's thorough while also
distilling down to the most important bits.

Great book for people that are just starting their coding career but also for
those with a good bit of experience. If you're feeling 'stuck', this is a
great guide to understand how to advance your career.

'Learn in public' is probably the #1 piece of advice I'd give to anyone in
tech. It helps your writing, it builds your network, and it grinds down your
ego (because people will certainly let you know when you're wrong). Swyx has
been a huge proponent of this, and this whole book is a great kick in the
pants to get started.

I'd be shocked if this book doesn't make you >>>10x the amount you spend on it
(even counting a healthy hourly rate for reading it).

