Reader,

I've gotten a lot of DMs along the lines of:

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm hoping to give some of you a reality check.

If you need someone to guide you before you even get started, you're in the wrong industry.

This is my main criticism of bootcamps. Most folks who succeed after attending a coding bootcamp didn't need the bootcamp in the first place.

It's a confidence issue, plain and simple.

Instead of seeking a mentor (aka, "hand-holder"), you should be looking for these instead:

1. Community

If I hadn't found the #100DaysOfCode community in 2018, I might have quit learning to code early on.

Feeling a sense of belonging is what kept me going when I was living alone trying to change industries, feeling estranged from my family.

The people on Tech Twitter became a "2nd family" for me, when I had nobody in my life to "talk tech" with.

Why not collaborate with a few people on a project, a podcast, a livestream, or something else you can all benefit from?

There are formal QA communities like Ministry of Testing that exist to help connect software testers to other software testers.

Meet some people and see if you can support each other.

2. Many Mentors

The list of people I consider "my mentor" is over 100 people long.

I've learned from so many creators and teachers and friends and colleagues over the years that I don't know if I could properly list them all.

I never believed in this idea of "the one true mentor" who will guide me safety and success.

How could you possibly expect 1 person to get you from zero to hero?

Asking for help isn't a bad thing, but you'll be hard-pressed to find support from 1 magical person who can devote the time necessary to help you succeed, while also holding a full-time job (and who knows, maybe they're raising a family too).

You might think someone is selfish for not offering free 1:1 mentorship if they're successful, especially with all the big names out there who'd happily give away their kidneys for free if it helped the tech community.

We all have families, we all have hobbies, we're not saints living upon the earth seeking to serve others for free in all our spare time. Especially just 1 person, when we could be serving many.

It should be normal to you that people won't give you free stuff.

But tech is weird.

There's LOTS of free stuff. So USE IT.

I never spent more than $500 on learning resources before getting into tech. And mostly I was doing it because I wanted to consume more content by my favorite creators, not because I couldn't go learn it on my own.

There are:

• Blog posts
• Courses
• YouTube tutorials
• Documentation sites like W3Schools
• and so much more

Anyone with an internet connection can learn whatever they need while paying $0.

Is it the fastest way to go? Probably not. But is it possible? Absolutely.

3. Failures. Lots of 'em.

There's no way around it.

You can't get good without being really bad for a long time at what you're trying to get good at.

Just start trying and don't give up when you get an error message or your tests won't run or you miss a bug or whatever.

Learn from it and move on.

I can't tell you how many times I cried over JavaScript when I was first starting out.

I was the biggest baby ever, and I kept going anyway. I eventually learned that this will never end.

The mistakes continue even when you're "senior", whatever that means.

If you want to reach a point where you "understand everything" or "stop messing up so much," you'll wait forever.

Now stop waiting for a superhero and go win.

Cheers,

Steven