Take those struggles and kind of say, yes, they're struggles, but they're temporary. And then that relentless approach, you have to not give up. You have to kind of search and keep clawing your way through it. You know, I found that that has been the best approach for me. It's just, you know, hard work, a lot of grit and grind, you know, and there's definitely been a lot of struggle along the way, but I feel like you learn a lot through those times. Hello, and welcome to the Py Bytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldeboz. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome to another Piebytes podcast. This is Bob Eldibles. And this week we had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Brink, who shared with us his transformation from schoolteacher to professional software developer. In this interview, he shares valuable insights, what he did to get to where he is now, both technically and also from a mindset perspective. We hope you enjoyed this inspiring interview, and thanks for listening. All right, Jesse, welcome to the Pywytes podcast. How are you doing today? Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it. I'm doing really well. How are you? Good, thanks. Yeah. A long time coming, this interview. I know. Yeah, it has been. It's been almost three years, I think. Yeah. So all in all. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe you want to introduce you a bit to our audience and what you do day to day. Sure, yeah. My name is Jesse Brink. I was a public school teacher for the past 15 years. About two and a half years ago, I started learning to program in Python. Was kind of struggling to find my way a little bit and found Bob's and Julian's website called Pibytes. Really learned a lot from it. And, you know, within the last six weeks, got my first job as a developer. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. How does that feel? It feels amazing. It's very different. Very different than my former day to day. Nice. Yeah. From a teacher to a developer right now, officially, yes, exactly. Congratulate. We're really pumped about your change and, yeah, how you got there, because I remember when you joined the platform, and we think you got some byte tokens and stuff, and we slowly got to message on the platform, and you were very tenacious with those bytes. I remember, yeah, I think that that served me well over the course of time. I think that allowed me to learn a lot, and then just soak in a lot of information. Yeah. So maybe tell us a little bit, then, about that transformation, how you basically yourself taught and now you're a professional developer. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. So I started out pre pandemic, I guess, but not too long before the pandemic, I just started thinking I wanted to try something new, try something different. I've always had kind of a growth mindset and always really wanted to, you know, try and learn new things and take them as far as I could. One such instance is the guitar. I've been playing the guitar for probably, like, 25 years and was kind of feeling like I had reached a point where, you know, I was like, okay, I could go a little further with this, but, you know, honestly, it'd be nice to try something new. Inter programming. I took some programming classes in high school. I didn't remember anything, and that was the last time I had touched a programming language. I didn't even have a personal computer when I started, so I bought a computer for $150 from eBay and, you know, bought a book. I can't even remember the title of the book. And it was a good start. You know, I kind of learned, you know, variables and how to write print statements and things like that. But once we got to object oriented programming and the use of self, you know, I was totally lost. I didn't understand, like, what is this self word? What does it mean? How do I use it? Why does it keep coming up? I never see it, you know, anywhere else, you know, and I was just feeling kind of discouraged and a little lost. But it's not really in me to give up on something, you know, I knew I liked programming. I just didn't really know anyone who knew anything about it. So I kind of got started searching on the web, kind of looked around for some different materials to learn from, and somehow stumbled onto pie bytes. Um, I tried a few exercises, really liked them, um, found them challenging, and, you know, I guess, as they say, the rest is history. I was really dedicated. Um, I really. I think I did almost 75% of the bites over the course of probably about a year and a half. And through them, I learned a lot about python, the language, and just programming in general. Nice. And so. Okay, so you. I think you got to a black or panel belt around the 700. Yeah, the black belt. Yeah, I got to the black belt, and then I got a few. I think I did a few more. And then, you know, my. My journey into trying to become a professional took off, I guess you could say. Nice. Yeah, so that. That's about like 250 ish exercises or so. Yeah, it was a lot. It was definitely quite a bit cool. That definitely helped you with your python. And later we worked in PDM together. So you went more into building projects, right. I would say that the foundation, the solid foundation, not only with Python, the language itself and its standard libraries, and also some of the pypy packages that you can import, that pie bytes gave me, but also just the logical programming skills and that logical foundation that you need to be a good programmer, really helped me transition into PDM. If I didn't have that solid background going into PDM, I think PDM would have been much harder. PDM was much more about the projects than it was certain bite exercises. And I think during PDM, I think I completed four different projects within the ten weeks. And that was kind of like my start. I had never tried anything with any kind of framework like Django or flask or any kind of front end framework, nothing like that ever before. And so it really kind of opened my eyes as to what was possible and what I was capable of, you know? And I remember telling you not too long ago, you know, I thought back sometimes on some of the code reviews, you know, I think I, I think I submitted a pull request every day. Hey, I probably got on your nerves at some point because I was doing so many of them, you know, but that was how I work. That was great, though. I remember thinking sometimes, like, why is this important? Or why is he asking me to change this? I didn't understand. And, you know, looking back on that and knowing what I know now, I totally get it. You know, I was very thankful for that opportunity to learn. Yeah, I remember your enthusiasm and motivation, hard working. What was your favorite project, by the way? Because you did four. So, you know, what's funny about the whole thing is I still, to this day, the remind me one where essentially like a cron job scheduler, I still use that, you know, I still, I still use it for myself to, you know, schedule little reminders. I have half in mind to go back and kind of make it so that you can set up like recurring events, you know, like, I want this to happen once a week, you know, or I want this to happen, you know, once every 30 days. That kind of a thing, you know, so I don't know when I'll have the time to do that. But, you know, it's a thought in my mind. Yeah, you can open source and get some contributors. Yeah, right. That's true. To do that and it's running in the cloud. And is it sending emails or SMS or both? It's SMS, yeah. Awesome. I think you used Twilio, right? Or. No, it was all just standard library python stuff. SMS. Yep. Wait, wait. Can you send an SMS with standard library? You can? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's been a while since I essentially what. What it is is I think it's. You have you just send the phone number at, you know, verizon.com or at and t.net or whatever it is, and it will send an email or not. Excuse me, an SMS. Oh, but that's partly on the provider. Then as long as you email to the right email, then convert it. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. The email is totally in the standard library. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And for people curious, we have that project showcased on the PDM page. So are you stuck in endless commutes? Have you ever dreamed about being able to work anywhere, control your schedule, give back to society, become an open source contributor? Or become a successful developer, doubling your salary? Well, it's time to look at the PDM program and it's time to actually build something that's going to help you get the future that you're looking for. The people that we've worked with in the PDM program have achieved some incredible things, including starting their own SaaS business with their own application. Imagine that. That could be you building your own application, selling it, making your own income. We've had people more than double their salary. I'm not making that up. I'll say it again. Double their salary. After completing our program and applying for developer jobs. These are the sorts of things that you can actually achieve through ten weeks of dedicated life coaching in the PDM program. So here's the challenge. If you are actually serious about taking your future into your own hands and not letting someone else control that for you, click the link below and get on a call with myself or Bob. That's right. We want to talk with you about your goals and how you can use Python to leverage your career. So book a call below and we cannot wait to talk with you soon. So you went to PDM. So then that got you, of course, a step closer to your dream of becoming a professional developer. Maybe you can share a bit like what happened then, because then it's very challenging, intimidating even for people to then start applying for a developer job. And we always say, like, start applying, even in PDM, kind of fake it before you make it because. Right. Yes. There's still a lot to learn. Yes. There's a gap. But you also have gotten a lot of skills in a relatively short time, right? Yep, for sure. So tell a bit about that experience maybe, and maybe have some tips or things you learned. Yeah, absolutely. So I did start applying for a few jobs and, you know, didn't hear much, didn't really have much of a background there, didn't really know a lot. I had been in the same career for 15 years and just wasn't super used to applying for jobs or having a resume, those sorts of things, you know, I ended up taking a little time and doing another type of, like PDM sort of program, like a boot camp, and learned a lot of front end skills, you know, and I can definitely say the things I learned in PDM definitely gave me a leg up. I pretty much flew through most of the course because I had learned so many solid skills in PDM. The bootcamp I did was part JavaScript and also part Python. But the nice thing was when I got to the Python parts, I didn't even have to almost pay attention because it was very intro basic Python. I think they got as complicated as a list comprehension. And I was pretty much just like, yeah, I can just do the assignment, you know? You know, I think in addition to just knowing some of the material, piebites and PDM just taught me how to learn and how to think because I never had, I don't, you know, I didn't know anybody. I met, I met a couple people. I met you and I met Eric, you know, within my time, you know, at pie bytes, um, but I didn't really know anyone else that was, you know, capable of giving me advice or giving me help. So, you know, I had to do a lot of learning and processing kind of on my own, and that really helped me through my time with the boot camp. Fast forward a little bit. After the boot camp, you know, I kind of started applying a little bit more and I got a few interviews, got, you know, got to a few final rounds. You know, I was kind of surprised at how many rounds some of these companies want you to do. You know, they want you to do a phone screen and then they want you to do a technical interview, and then they want you to do a take home project and very different processes for each one, I guess you could say. And certainly nothing like becoming a teacher. You know, that's usually one interview for maybe an hour and then you're done. So, you know, there was just a lot of time that was sunk into it. You know, you're writing cover letters and you're trying to tailor them, you know, to each particular job about why you think you'd be a good fit. You're wondering, does it even matter? Are they going to read this? You know? You know, you're tweaking your resume to look good for this application, and you eventually send out, you know, so many applications. I mean, I feel pretty fortunate, you know, I think I sent out over 100, but I've heard of people sending out over 500, you know, which is just an incredible amount of time, you know, so I feel pretty fortunate all in all. But, yeah, I got to a few final rounds, you know, through everything. Didn't get a few of those jobs, but ended up being in the right place at the right time for my current position. That's amazing. Wow, 100. That's quite a number. Yeah. Kind of a numbers game. And you used LinkedIn mainly for that or, correct? Yeah. So LinkedIn and a little bit of. Indeed, I did a little networking on LinkedIn. Met a few people on there that were able to help me as well. I think that that is probably the best. You know, from what I see, people who kind of post about their journeys on LinkedIn regularly and drive a lot of engagement have more success in terms of being able to find a job more quickly, I guess you could say. And that certainly wasn't the way I necessarily did it, but I did. Nessus. I did meet some people along the way that were helpful to me in my journey and getting me set up with interviews and, you know, referring me to other people who might be able to help. Okay, cool. So it was partially, literally looking at the job boards there. I guess it's partially networking, getting on the radar of certain people and build up a network, making sure you've got your resume in order, you know, all that good stuff. Got projects and a place to display them. Yeah. The LinkedIn and curriculum revision, very important. Yeah, Julian likes that one. Yeah. And then I guess also portraying your skills. Right. I think you built your website, you would also. You also portrayed the projects, I guess, correct? Yeah. Yep. You know, I. So I built my website and then I had, like, I think it's three different projects on there that I had built over the course of time. I want to add more to it because I've definitely got probably at this point, you know, five or six that I could display. I just haven't gotten around to it since, you know, my current position started. Nice. And did you also do, like, teaching or posting organically? Like, not like, publicly, although I had always kind of thought about, you know, doing, like, a blog of some sorts. I thought that might be a good idea, but I never actually got around to it. I was still, like, teaching as my profession, you know, and I also have two kids, so life was busy. You know, I definitely did kind of, you know, help some people privately, you know, kind of along the way, and people who were, I guess you could say, more in the position I was in when I started pie bytes and PDM. And so I was able to offer them some advice and kind of teach them things as they went. Cool. Yeah, that's. Thanks for sharing. You're welcome. And so, fast forward now in the job, was it different from what you would expect? In a lot of ways, very different. You know, I think I certainly still take away all of the foundational skills that I learned, you know, throughout my preparation in various aspects, but different frameworks, a different language, and just the fact that you're not doing things on your own, you are. It's not your code base. You can't just make changes on the fly and commit to master if you want to and then push changes. You know, there's reviews and there's a lot of things and processes in place to make sure that things go well. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest difference. You're working with a team of people, which I think working with you in PDM, you know, was a good start in terms of helping me get prepared. Just the whole idea of pull requests and, you know, merging changes and things like that, that was a good start as far as that went. And I think the fact that, you know, you have this code base, this pretty giant code base, and it's not yours, you know, you got to come in and you've got to kind of learn, you know, the different parts and you've got to kind of try to build it and play around with it in a safe environment, try things out and then really kind of try to internalize the part that you might be working on at that specific moment to really find out what you need to do. So, whereas when you're doing it from scratch, you can kind of do what you want, you know, so a little different in that sense, actually. Very different. Interesting. Yeah, no, I remember that. Getting into a team with a legacy code base of years and hundreds and thousands of commits and different coding styles, and it's very intimidating. Any. Any tips how you kind of got up to speed with that fast or. I mean, none. I think it's just like pretty much anything else that I have, you know, done, I just worked hard at it. I spent extra time kind of reading through the code base and trying to understand, I think if you can, you know, being able to build the project locally, build the project locally and also, you know, run it if possible, and kind of tinker with it to try to, you know, get a feel for it, because it's one thing to read and understand, you know, the general gist of the code base or a certain file or certain method or something like that, but it's another thing when you can kind of be a little more hands on. I've always found that helpful. And, you know, my most recent project that I've currently, well, I was working on, but I guess still am working on, honestly, there's several different aspects to it. You know, that was what allowed me to really get more of a feel for what was happening or what was supposed to happen was being able to get hands on, build it locally in an environment that was safe and go from there. And are you still doing Python in your free time, working on stuff? Yeah, actually. So it's funny, this current project I am working on is in Python. Most of them probably won't be, unfortunately, but that's just the way it goes. But yes, I was actually just before I got on this call with you writing some Python. So, yeah, it's still my favorite. I still love it and it's still what I feel most comfortable with. I've got a pretty good comfort with JavaScript and some front end JavaScript frameworks as well. But Python is home, I guess you could say, and as they say, home is where the heart is, right? Yeah, indeed. Awesome. And of course, the Julian question, any mindset tip for the upcoming developers, or even developers that are already developers, what's important? That's advice for the Python developer, I think what truly allowed me to get to where I am is having a growth mindset and being relentless. This is a long journey and there's a lot of struggle along the way. You have to be able to compartmentalize that and think, you know, well, today hasn't gone well. You know, I can't figure out this one part on my project. I can't figure out why this isn't working the way I want it to. You know, I'm no good at this, but you have to be able to compartmentalize that and say, look where I was a month ago, you know, look what I was doing, type of things I was doing, or look how far I've taken this project, you know, and now I'm here. I'll figure this out. I'll get this done. You have to be able to take those struggles and kind of say, yes, they're struggles, but they're temporary. And then that relentless approach, you have to not give up. You have to kind of search and keep clawing your way through it. You know, I found that that has been the best approach for me. It's just, you know, hard work, a lot of grit and grind. Um, you know, and there's definitely been a lot of struggle along the way, but I feel like you learn a lot through those times. And like I said before, you have to be able to compartmentalize it. You have to be able to think what I'm going through, you know, what I'm trying to learn right now. It seems like a lot, or it may be a big struggle, but it is a small point in the grander scheme of things, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's great advice, because I think what's really challenging for people is when they get stuck repeatedly, they start to doubt themselves. I'm sure you have had that impostor, Shin. I've had it. It's always there. It will never go away. Embrace it. It's what we always say right now. So I like the term compartmentalize, because once you're in that struggle, it can seem like everything, right? It can seem like this journey, what the fm I'm doing. What's the whole point of this? Yep. This is not for me. Engineers are smart people. And forgetting that yourself, also smart. But you don't give yourself that credit. Sure, but then I like what you said. If you only look forward, what's. What's still missing, like the glass half empty, then it's tremendous. Right? But if you also look back at where you were, like, one, two, three months ago, then all of a sudden, the picture changes because you actually made a huge print. Right. I still, you know, there's still so many things. I think, man, I need to learn this. I need to learn this. I want to get better at this. And I totally realized that I am at the beginning of my journey still, you know, but with that in mind, you know, I think back to some of the things, some of the bites I did, and I remember struggling through them so much and just being like, I don't understand what this means. I don't understand, you know, what is happening. And then now I think back on it, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's, like, so clear. Like, you know, because just the experience, you know, and you're able to look back. You know, you always talk about wins. Those are little wins, because, you know, something you've struggled with so much at one point becomes pretty commonplace, you know, something that you're very comfortable with. And I think you have to, you know, give yourself a lot of credit when you're in that position. You have to celebrate those wins. You know, it doesn't have to be a big steak dinner or anything, but, you know, find some way to pat yourself on the back and, you know, keep going. You know, it's, it's. I think I've always looked at it for myself as the only person who was going to stop me was me. You know, there wasn't much else, you know, um, that was going to get in my way, provided that I still had the drive to do it. You know, I've never lost my passion for it, and I think that was really important. I didn't get into this because I wanted to get a job. Like, I never, I actually never went into this at all intending to change careers or anything like that. I just thought, need fun, try something new, and then shortly thereafter, kind of fell in love with it. And, yeah, I mean, I think that that passion and drive has enabled me to, you know, keep going when things were hard. And like I said before, compartment, be able to compartmentalize those things and keep in perspective the fact that, okay, yes, this is hard, but you've already been through all these other hard challenges when it comes to programming. You know, this too shall pass, as they say. Yeah. Awesome piece of advice. Yeah. Yes. It's funny, right? Like, it's usually not the external circumstances. It's more like what we. How we talk to ourselves. Yes, I think a lot of it is mental. You know, I don't consider myself special or any kind of gifted or anything like that. I just work hard and won't give up, you know? So I think that that's, you know, for, for me, that's been the key, you know, just having the right, you know, you talk about mindset. Julian likes to talk about mindset. I think it is. He talks about it the whole day. I think it is so important. I mean, I feel like this is very much a mental battle with yourself in a lot of ways, and you do get to points where it's like, oh, can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Do I know enough to be able to do this? There's a project that I spoke of a few minutes ago that I'm currently working on at work. And this would be, again, talking about wins. This is my win for the weekend. You know, there were some features that they wanted to upgrade and add to it, and I got started on it, and there was just some things going on with it where I just couldn't quite figure it out at first. And I'm thinking, you know, like, am I gonna be able to do this? Like, you know, am I gonna. Or am I gonna take this back and be like, you know, what I do here? But, you know, eventually I just kept pushing and pushing and figured it out. And, you know, I think it took a. It took a while. You know, it took a couple days to kind of push through and try different things and explore different avenues, look through documentation, do a little bit of googling, those sorts of things, you know? But I feel like, you know, if you have the right mindset, the right attitude towards things and kind of try to shove that imposter syndrome into the back of your mind, you know, it is difficult. You know, it's not. It's not an easy thing to do. But I feel like, you know, more often than not, you're going to be successful with the task you have at hand. And, you know, I come out, out of that. I come out of that, that little experience, come out of it on the other side with, okay, I've gained this specific knowledge about what I just did. I learned a little bit more about this library I used and how I can use it in the future to help me as a tool. But I also, you know, in here, in my mind, it's like I just solved a hard problem. That's just one more hard problem to put in the bank. You know, in terms of, you can do this. Do you remember when this happened? You remember? It took you a week to figure this out. You did it, though. You know, it's all about that convincing yourself to not give up and convincing yourself that you can do it. It may take some time. Yeah. But I like that lesson also. Like, it's not going to be one big win. It's going to be a payout of wins. And that's why we always recommend to have a wins file or a brag doc or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, yeah. Update that weekly. And while we do that together, Julie and myself, so if you do that with an accountability partner, it's even more powerful because it's that celebration thing. Sometimes those struggles when you're working on something, you know, I remember the first project I ever built. It was something I think it was one of the ones in PDM? Yeah. No, because it was pre any kind of framework. Yeah, pre any kind of like web framework. So I think it might have been shortly before PDM. But anyway, I just remember being stuck on something for like a week, you know, and just thinking, I really want this to happen, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this happen. And then when you do make it happen, those are the biggest wins, you know, because here you are struggling with something, you know, for such a long time, you know, something that was so hard and was taking you hours and hours to figure out, and then you finally do it, you know, those are the biggest, that's the best feeling. And you're kind of at the same time proving to yourself, yes, you can do hard things. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where the confidence comes. That's kind of the only remedy against impostor Shinvan, to do the hard things. Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think that's, that's great for a wrap. So thanks so much for hopping on. We can always have you back because there are topics in this conversation that we can speak hours about for sure. Definitely. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it has been great fun. Thanks for sharing. I think our audience will get a lot of insight and it will inspire them because a lot of our people want to become developers or progress as developers. I bet that there are probably a lot of people that join PI bytes every day that were just like me when I joined. Maybe they already have a career. Maybe they just want to try something new. Or maybe they want to try to learn to program. Like I said before, I'm not special or, or unique in any kind of way. You know, it's just a lot of hard work and, you know, you apply yourself enough, you'll eventually climb that mountain. Might take a while, but you'll get there. Awesome. Thanks, Jesse. Thank you, Bob. It was great to catch up again. Yeah, absolutely. All right, you enjoy your weekend. Thanks, Bob. You too. All right, bye. Hi, hey, it's Bob again. I hope you enjoyed this interview. Feel free to reach out to Jesse on slack link below. Also, if you liked the show, please leave us a review or a rating. It will help get this content out to more people that might need it and we will be back next week. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte, France, that is Pybiton, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of Python programmers, go to Pybytes community. That's Pibit es, forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.