Jason Swett talks with Dave Rael about job search skills, growing socially, the nature of software careers, and the rewards of creating useful stuff
Jason Swett has been building websites for over 20 years, working for organizations like AT&T, the University of Chicago, and VMware. Jason’s favorite part of programming jobs has always been the job search and interview phase. Now he teaches job search skills at SixFigureCoding.com.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Jason Swett
- - How Jason got started in software
- - Jason's attraction to interviewing, negotiating, and the job search
- - The reasons for frequently changing jobs
- - Jason's motivations for teaching job search skills
- - Sales and marketing for developers
- - Jason's approach to the job search and what he has to offer developers
- - Ways for developers to market themselves - hunting and farming
- - Interview preparation
- - Jason's story of failure - lacking social intelligence and acuity (and learning to grow it later)
- - Personal skills developers can develop and Stephen Covey's contrasting of the character ethic and the personality ethic
- - Jason's success story - creating content people found useful enough to pay for it
- - Jason's mix of technical and soft skills content
- - The things that have Jason most excited
- - How Jason stays current with what he needs to know
- - Jason's causes of pain and suffering
- - Advice for improving job search skills by looking at the individual steps and getting better at them one at a time
- - Jason's top 3 tips for delivering more value
Resources:
- Jason's Website (no longer SixFigureCoding.com - he switched to codewithjason.com after recording)
- Jason on GitHub
- Late Night with Conan O'Brien
- Ramit Sethi
- "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar
- Saron Yitbarek on Developer On Fire
- Toastmasters International
- Stephen Covey Explaining the Charactor Ethic and the Personality Ebthic
- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp - Peter Norvig
- Perrry Marshall
- "Uncle Bob" Martin on Developer On Fire
Jason's book recommendation:
- How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Stephen R. Covey
- Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) - Steve Krug
- Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship - Robert C. Martin
Jason's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Make sure you understand what needs to be done and why before you do it
- Learn usability testing
- Read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin