
Pybites Podcast
The Pybites Podcast is a podcast about Python Development, Career and Mindset skills.
Hosted by the Co-Founders, Bob Belderbos and Julian Sequeira, this podcast is for anyone interested in Python and looking for tips, tricks and concepts related to Career + Mindset.
For more information on Pybites, visit us at https://pybit.es and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Julian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliansequeira/
Bob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbelderbos/
Pybites Podcast
#057 - The benefits of making a lateral career move
This week we talk about the challenge of changing jobs and that a lateral move is sometimes strategically smarter for your longer term goals.
Main take aways of this episode:
- Being in a certain role for too long you might become too comfortable and in order to grow you'll need to become uncomfortable again.
- Take advice from others with a grain of salt, keep a varied group of "advisors" to make the best (unbiased) decision.
- Sometimes you have to take one step backwards, to take two or three steps forward.
- You are the an accumulation of your past experiences. Don't underestimate this! Leverage your adjacent skills when applying for a new job.
- And remember, you are never ready, you'll get ready when you actually start executing!
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On that note, if you're serious about taking your Python career to the next level, aiming high and thinking big, then come talk to us.
We have helped people double their income, earn freedom they thought was impossible, become prolific open source contributors and more.
This is well within reach for most of us as long as you combine consistent effort with the proper guidance. If you want to get to your goals faster, book a strategy session with us.
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Books mentioned: Super Human and Game Changers
When you make that move, you're suddenly going into the unknown, and the. That I've gone to is very much the unknown. I've never been on this side of the business before, never supported this sort of a team before. And, yeah, it's definitely scary. But that's the thing, right? If you don't try it, you're never going to grow. 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 Beldebus. 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 back, everybody, to the Pibytes podcast. Here's Bob, and I'm with Julian. I am here as well. How's it going, man? Yeah, pretty good. How are you doing? I'm good, very good. I'm hot. It is stinking hot over here. Today. Finished the day with a massive thunderstorm to cool it off. But I'm happy. I'm happy. What about you? Yeah, nice. It's getting warmer a little bit. We passed the worst part of the winter. You say that as you're wearing it. I can see wearing a jumper. It's the water cold here. It's a sensation. Oh, yeah, the water cold. Well, I'm chuffed. Chuffed to be back, just two of us. Don't get me wrong, I love our guests and friends that join on the podcast. So we've had a few great episodes, but it's always good to get back to just you and me sometimes. It's a nice alternation. Yeah. But, yeah, we had a great time with our guest last few episodes, but now it's. You have to deal with us two only today. Yeah, us and our inane rambling. So we'll kick off today's episode with a win, actually. So, Bob, do you want to go first? What's your win for the week? Yeah, so. Well, it's last week, actually, but it's still a win. I do this weekly code clinics in PDM. Right. And it's a lot of demoing and teaching. And last week I did an intro on microservices, and that was kind of a beast. It was kind of a giant topic. Right. So it's very easy to go, very theoretical and all over the place. Managed to do that in 2025 minutes, and it was pretty compact and people were happy. And, of course, while preparing and actually teaching it, as we always say, I learned a lot myself, so I consider that a win. That was a wicked demonstration, man. I loved it. Learned a lot. And I think based on the reactions, because obviously I wasn't there live, but so all the reactions, people just thought it was amazing. So good stuff. That was good. Thanks. How about you? A little bit of a plug there, actually. Just a taste of what you'd see in PDM if you joined. So there you go. So. Got to get it in. So for me. For me, I got a few wins, but actually one of the wins I just thought of was that today the kids went back to school. Nice. Oh, my goodness, it was so quiet at home today. Oh, man. Now it was seven minutes to drop the. Oh, yeah. So there's another win. There's a huge win. I think I've mentioned before that it was used to be half an hour each way, maybe a little bit more, depending on traffic, and now it's down to seven minutes because we moved houses. What a. What a difference. And it's a nice drive. Rather than driving on freeway. It's just a nice little windy road around a mountain. Couldn't be happier with the water. It's good time we got back for pilots. Oh, yeah, totally. Exactly. Um, but yeah, the. The win. The big win. The big, big win is that today I started a new job. So I started a new role. Thank you, thank you. At, um. At AWS. So, um, still there, but just in a different organization. And it's just. It's actually really, really good. Obviously, I was nervous going into it, but, yeah, what a difference it's made now that I've jumped in. So, yeah, I'm happy with that. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think that's also a little bit around the topic today, right? Yes, a bit. A bit of self indulgence, but also it's like a self case study, rather than us talking about other people. I'm going to talk about this exact experience. If. If you wouldn't mind, Bob. No, I want to hear all about it. So how would you label the topic? Is it making. Not just going to a new job? Right. There was something about it, yeah. Yeah. So I don't know how I'd label it. We've got to figure out the name for this episode after. But anyway. So look, the reason I wanted to talk about this and share this with everyone, with you, our dear listeners, is because it's not always easy changing jobs. Right. Especially when you're comfortable, when it's something you've been working incredibly hard to get to. Where you are, the idea of leaving it can be daunting. And, you know, I was in that role and that organization that I just left for five and a half years, so that's a lot of time with that team and all. Yeah. Different. Different roles in that, but still overall, the same vision and mission. Right. So leaving that is incredibly scary. You know, there's. There's a lot of mindset there and this is why I wanted to talk about it. Because when you make that move, you're suddenly going into the unknown. And the. That I've gone to is, is very much the unknown. I've never been on this side of the business before, never supported this sort of a team before. And yeah, it's. It's definitely scary, but that's the thing, right? If you don't try it, you're never going to grow. And the thing with this specific role is it's not even. I wouldn't. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's not, you know, generally when people change roles, they change upward. Right. That they're going for something better and bigger. And that's generally defined in the way of salary, job title, seniority, whether you have 10, 20, 30 employees reporting to you, that sort of stuff. But in this case, it's. I feel like it's more of a lateral move. And some people would scoff at that and say, well, why would you just move sideways to something that's completely the same or very similar? Why not just stay where you are and work your way up? And the reality is, and this is where a bit of the coaching comes in for a lot of people that we work with as well, is that sometimes it's not just about the cash. Sometimes it's not just about the. The title. Sometimes it is about the cash. Don't get me wrong, if you're getting like a 80k pay rise, you take the money, right? But maybe not that. That, you know, black and white, but you know what I mean. The thing with this, though, with the lateral move is that there's sometimes a lot more to it. 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. Sometimes it's about your mental health, sometimes it's about your routine, sometimes it's about the experience of trying something new. So for me it was all three of those things. You know, the pre, the previous role is, as you know, Bob was, was global in nature. So I was taking, I would jump off some of these recordings and go straight onto a work call to, with a team, you know, with my team. And that would be
at 10:00 p.m. Next thing I would have a 07:00 a.m. Meeting the next morning to meet with the other side of the world. So it's just, it was getting taxing, I was getting tired and I just thought I need something that's more in my patch. So the new role is just, uh, is an Asia Pacific manager. So no APJC manager, I should say. So not, none of this other stuff outside of the region, which is nice, um, but the mental health as well, right? When you're so stretched thin, sometimes you need to take that step back. And when I say stretch thin, I don't just mean work wise, I mean time wise. It was taking me away from the family, you know, it was. And not just because I was on meetings and stuff, but also preoccupied, you know, with the way that I was working. I was constantly thinking about work and aside from pie bites, I was definitely, it was bleeding into that family time. And yeah, just to me, at the end of the day, it just showed I needed a change. And it was spectacular today, first day of the new role, it just felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders I didn't even know was there. Had great meetings with my managers and it was just awesome. So there's it's the reason, again, that I mention it, is it's not always simple. You have a lot invested in the previous role, right? A lot of career asset buildup. Maybe some sunkast bias we spoke about in a previous episode. Yeah, right. Already invested so much, so why not keep doing that? But we also always say, like, when you're becoming too comfortable, that means you stop growing, right? So you have to become uncomfortable again. So apart from the convenience of the time zones and that, I feel like in your case, in spite of the inconveniences of late schedules, there was something like, what's next? What else can I learn here? Right? So I'm glad to seek doubt and, yeah, try to become uncomfortable again, because now you can expect another growth spurt, you know? Yeah, now you're exactly right. And a few of the things that I might get to do is pretty exciting as well with regards to that. So that's, that's always good. Um, but one last thing. I'll mention about all of this, uh, for everyone's benefit as well. Take people's advice with a grain of salt, right? Everyone's got their own agenda, even if they say that they don't. There's always that bias. There's always that depending on their relationship with you. Uh, so, you know, Bob, for example, you, your advice is going to be much more agnostic because you're not part of the company. You couldn't care less what I do as long as I get a paycheck and survive. Right? Whereas, you know, when you are talking with people at work, just, you know, some people, it is in their best interest if you stay on the team or you stay in the organization. And they may not even realize that the advice they're giving you is self serving. And there's no one in particular that I'm talking about here. It's just when you listen to these, these bits of advice from people, just, you know, always be careful. Right, because some people might even say things to you, as you said, bob, the sunk cost bias, they might say, but you've put so much effort in. You've, you've done, you've built this yourself. You. You've done so much here. Why wouldn't you just stay and keep building and growing it? Well, again, is that the advice that you need? You know? Exactly is. It's, it's sound, it's an opinion. But at the end of the day, you have to look at all the factors that influence you and, and your family and where you're at in your life and um. Yeah, make your, make a well informed decision rather than just knee jerk reaction. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And have different types of advisors in your life. Right. Your best friend, your parents, colleagues, colleagues from other companies. Right. So you good mix because some people can be overprotective or it's in their interest that you stay because you scratch each other's backs, you know. So yeah, everybody has their agendas. That's not necessarily bad. But yeah, keep your, your advisors varied. But yeah. So that's pretty much it. That's all I wanted to mention. It's a, it's a new role. I'm chuffed to be in it. Very grateful for everyone that helped me get there and excited to sink my teeth in over the next few days. But don't worry Bob. It doesn't, doesn't affect what we're doing here. Better not be, you better watch yourself. That's cool man. And thanks for sharing. And yeah, if I just look back on my career I definitely have two specific examples. I might have mentioned them before where I also had to take one step backwards to do two or three steps forward. Right. So don't only look at the money or conditions, whatever. Look at the greater plan. The two examples, I can quickly mention them. When I landed in Spain in 2004, I had a finance background and that's of course what I wanted to work in. Yet the only realistic job I could line up for myself was help desk it because they needed somebody that spoke Dutch, my native language. I was really looking forward at a desk job sitting at a phone for 8 hours. But turns out I got this on microsystems training and turned out to be Unix. Learned a boatload of troubleshooting which still to this date is very beneficial in my developer work and coaching work im doing these days. And yeah, secondly, when I became a professional developer first I had to do one or two years of support work. So I did commit small fixes and stuff and I wanted to jump on the feature stuff like the fun stuff. Right. But actually again that time and support, very beneficial, very beneficial. So yeah, just, just a takeaway from me and the extra bit of advice I wanted to put on top of it is sometimes something looks like one step backward but look at the longer term and you will get a lot of adjacent skills that can benefit you far more in the future. Yeah that's, that's great advice. And uh. Yeah and I love it that, that trouble hit the nail in the head, the troubleshooting thing. It's amazing how much that I almost want to say that's the number one skill everyone should have. Uh, it just helps everywhere. So I still use that, those. Those troubleshooting skills we had from back in the Sundays. Uh, everything that I do, both as a developer and a coach, like, as a developer, you're constantly solving problems, you're constantly getting stuck and have to be creative to get on stage and also coach. The same with our clients. Right. They get stuck. And what's my value in PDM? Well, get them back on track as soon as possible. Right. And a lot of that is not even python core syntax. It's how to approach a problem. More like the meta skill, right? Yeah, exactly. Right. But, yeah, what's that? That saying you're the accumulation of all your past experiences. So just you keep that in mind. Everything you do, every choice you make, every career change you make, it's all adding up to where you need to be. And that's. That's how I try and look at these situations. So I've done my time in the old, now it's time to take all of that prior experience into this new one and go from there. Awesome, man. Yeah. So that's it. I hope you all got a little bit of inspiration from that. And my takeaway, as always, is to get you to question the status quo, you know? So if you are in a role that you're just feeling a bit stagnant in, you know. Yeah, okay, I'll talk python here and development. And you want to chase that python goal. You want to chase the developer position that you may want but don't have, you know, why not make the jump? You know, there's nothing stopping you. You can do whatever you have to do to skill up and just push, just try a lot of it might just be confidence. So, yeah. Remember, you're never ready anyway, so. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're never ready. Even when you get in and you're three years in the job, you're still not ready for every day. So you're getting ready when you start executing. All right, well, look, as we wrap it up, are you reading anything? Yeah, I finished superhuman by Dave Asprey, and I'm moved on to his other book, game changers. So that's good for inspiration. Nice thinking, growth. Yeah. Cool. You send me some clip notes. I will. You. I don't know. I don't know where my books are still having. Still unpacked that box. Oh, my gosh, I get so high on the stack. You're going to reach it. All right, no more excuses, man. Yeah, yeah. I'm moving up the career thing. Not in height. No. The books, bookshelves that we had for all of our books have gone into the kids bedroom. I don't know how that happened. But now they've got it for all their stuff, and now I don't have anywhere from my books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said your wife has a kindle, so I'm going to challenge you to steal her kindle for a while. I have my kindle. I don't know where it is. I don't know. You know what? Nothing in the house got lost except for, like, my stuff. I don't know where it's gone. It's probably. I think my wife's put it away somewhere in a drawer. Anyway, I'll find it and I'll get back on the reading. I promise. I promise. You get. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening, as always. If you are pursuing Python and you want some support, come and give us a call, because that's the sort of stuff Bob and I want to help you with. I want to help you achieve those results that you want as well. So thanks as always, and we'll catch up with you next week. Talk next week. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte Friends, that is Pybit es friends, 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 Pibytes slash community. That's Pibit es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.