How to Escape Your Day Job and Become a Full-Time Web Developer In Just a Few Months

John Morris
On Freelancing
Published in
3 min readAug 1, 2016

Subscribe to the Podcast

Several years ago, my little brother came to me desperate.

I remember it distinctly. He had to drive to my house in a beat up 1970’s truck. On the way, it broke down twice so he had to stop, fix it on his own, then continue onto my house.

I even had to send him some money halfway through so he could make it down.

Needless to say, he was broke, frustrated and terrified for his future.

He was also 3 years into his Computer Science degree. And, he’d convinced himself he had to finish that degree before any tech company would hire him.

Now, before I get into what we did…

I have to make sure you understand something. I’m somewhat of an “interview assassin”. Meaning, I have a history of slaughtering interviews and getting hired for jobs I had no business getting hired for.

I mean, way in over my head.

In fact, I once even got hired back to a job that I had walked out on in the middle of the day… with them knowing full well what I’d done… because I nailed the interview.

In fact, the new job was a promotion!

So, I have a certain kind cockiness when it comes to this.

I truly believe I could get hired for any job if I can get the interview. So, when he told me he thought he had to wait until he had his degree… I bluntly told him: “bulls!@#”.

And, I’m telling you the same.

So, when he finally got to the house…

I did a couple things. I made him start freelancing. If you haven’t heard this from me, yet… EVERY developer should freelance at some point in their career.

Nothing can replicate that one-on-one client experience.

And, your career will benefit tremendously from it.

Anyway, that experience of freelancing gave him confidence. He saw he could, in fact, get paid to code… that he could deliver… and he could make clients happy.

Second, I made him start applying for entry-level positions at big tech companies. Now this goes back to the “dirty secret” of big companies like this… tech or otherwise.

They’re desperate for good employees.

Good people are always hard to find.

It’s the #1 problem of every single company out there. And the bigger the company, the bigger the problem. Any company’s growth is limited by its ability to find good people.

So, for entry-level positions… they know they have to train you.

They’re starved for intelligent, reliable, creative people.

Anyway, one of the companies my little brother applied to was IBM… for an entry-level Java Application Developer.

Now, he didn’t know a lick of Java.

But, I told him how to ace the interview.

So, he went in… did exactly what I told him and got the job. And, started out making 40K/year. Now, that’s a modest salary but for a broke college student… it was a life-changer.

Now just 4 years later, he’s making a six-figure income.

And, he did finally get his CS degree but it had zero effect on his career or his salary. It was just “nice to have”.

So, if you’re one of those people that thinks you have to wait…

Wait until you get your degree…

Wait until you’ve learned this or that set of skills…

Wait until you’re more confident…

Or whatever barrier you’ve placed in front of yourself…

You don’t.

In any case, I’m going to be releasing my “Ace the Interview” training over on Patreon this month. In it, I’ll tell you everything I told my little brother and everything I’ve used for years to ace interviews and get hired for jobs I never should have.

To get it, head yonder and become a supporting listener on Patreon: http://www.johnmorrisonline.com/patreon

P.S. If you liked the show, give it a like and share with the communities and people you think will benefit. And, you can always find all my tutorials, source code and exclusive courses on Patreon.

Originally published at John Morris.

--

--

John Morris
On Freelancing

I’m a web designer who helps other web designers with two things: 1) how to code and 2) how to market yourself so you can earn your living as a coder.