I have been thinking a lot recently about what direction to take my YouTube channel in and my career in general.
It has been 2 years since I last made a YouTube video and I have been itching to get back into it.
I took a break for a few reasons.
New Job #
I started a new job around the time of my last video. Even though I only work 4 days a week, with a great team, it has still left me with little time and energy at the end of the week to make videos.
Especially not the way I had been making them, that generally took around 10 hours of scripting, recording, animations and editing, for a 10-minute video.
Software Industry Changing #
On top of that, the software industry has changed a lot over the last 2 years.
We have had a “perfect storm” of scenarios that has left software engineering quite different to what it was when I started my channel.
We had the mass layoffs that occurred after COVID, where I think everyone knows someone who was laid off, if not laid off themselves.
It would be nice to say that time is behind us, but layoffs are still quite frequent in the tech industry. It seems like any company that isn't building the next thing in AI is struggling at the moment.
On top of the layoffs, the number of open positions has definitely dropped too. It has risen since the mass layoffs but not substantially so.
There are far fewer openings for junior developers and even senior developers are struggling to get hired.
The Original Plan #
My original plan for my YouTube channel was to help junior developers learn the skills they needed to become senior developers. This was mostly through covering engineering concepts like SOLID, design patterns and systems architecture.
On top of that, I wanted to help people get into software engineering, with the skills needed to pass tech interviews and navigate their career in tech.
However, after being a professional software developer for the last 15 years, I am not sure how much longer I plan on working as a salaried software developer.
I like my job at the moment, but I can't see myself doing it for another 5 - 10 years. The endless cycle of completing coding tasks for 8 hours a day gets a bit much after a while. Especially when the payoff of a successful launch is to do it all over again.
It's not just me, friends and colleagues I have talked to seem to feel the same way and long to do something a bit different like carpentry, open a bar, become a yoga instructor or start a coffee shop.
I am not quite at that extreme, I still love creating things with code, but I am less interested in all the loops you have to jump through to work in corporate tech.
When it comes to helping people get into software engineering I am not overly qualified in that regard. I have been the interviewer a lot more than an interviewee and my methods for hiring are likely very different to big tech.
I also haven't had a proper interview myself in over 9 years, as all my recent jobs I have got through people I have worked with in the past. They already know how I work so it has just been a case of meeting for coffee, discussing the project and asking if I wanted to join.
In summary, it feels a bit hypocritical of me to try to help people get into big tech while I am trying to find a way out.
The New Plan #
I still love creating products and teaching others what I know, so that hasn't changed.
However, instead of teaching people the skills they might need to get hired and promoted I am going to focus more on the more practical aspects of building products and launching them.
Idea → Build → Launch → Profit
I know many developers long to create a profitable side hustle that would allow them to quit their 9 to 5 (or 9 to 8 in many cases), myself included.
This might be creating a mobile app, a micro-saas, an online course or starting a YouTube channel.
With AI potentially taking over jobs and companies hiring less this is going to become more of a necessity.
There are a lot of “how to make money online” gurus, and I am pretty sure most of them are just spouting lies for views. Don't worry I am not going to be one of them.
I make some money from courses, YouTube, and donations but not enough to live off.
So the plan is to show others how to create software end to end while experimenting with trying to make money from my own apps and sharing what I am learning along the way.
Patreon #
I am shutting down my “One a Month Club” and paid newsletter options and moving everything back to Patreon.
For my supporters I want to provide more value by giving behind the scenes access to what I am working on as well as early access to videos.
Due to Brexit, I can't do that without charging VAT which Patreon handles for me.
- Exclusive tutorials, mini courses, and blog posts.
- Income reports for how much I am earning from YouTube, courses and eventually apps. I found these really helpful when other creators have done it.
- Code access to all my videos and some additional fun projects.
- Ad-free access to all my videos.
- Early access to videos before they are made public on YouTube.
- Your name listed on my site and at the end of videos.
- Private Patreon Chat.
I will be in touch with those that are currently paying for a subscription or are part of my one a month club.
While I am still setting everything up I have set Patreon to the recommended minimum of £3/month ($4.50/month).
I am planning on setting this to £5/month once I start posting on YouTube again. This won't affect anyone who signs up now though.
❤️ Picks of the Week #
📝 Article — Scream cipher — This is a fun way to do a cipher. I never knew there were so many “A” characters.
🤖 AI — Meta’s live demo fails; “AI” recording plays before the actor takes the steps — Haha, it is all smoke and mirrors. I really don't think they can blame the Wi-Fi for this.
💬 Discussion — Has anyone else been unemployed for over two years? — If I did need to find another job I think it would be quite difficult.
📝 Article — AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger? — AI is great if you know exactly what it was supposed to produce, and you have the knowledge to validate it. Not so good if you can't tell if what it has written is correct.
📝 Article — How I, a beginner developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me — I hope the tutorials I have written in the past don't come across like this!
📝 Article — Why haven't local-first apps become popular? — I would like to see offline first apps becoming more widespread. I don't like everything being in the cloud if it doesn't need to be.
📝 Article — Resurrect the Old Web — I am big fan of RSS. It is what I use to collect all these links. I would like to see more people embracing blogs and RSS feeds instead of doomscrolling.
🛠️ Tool — Cloudflare Email Service: private beta — This looks cool if the price is right or free. Sending emails is so expensive and often a pain to set up.
📝 Article — Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers — I am not sure what they hope to achieve with this. It just looks like another way to spy on their citizens.
📝 Article — GenAI Predictions — I think there are some good uses for LLM, but it does seem to be used everywhere with no thoughts on the impact and whether it is the best choice.
📝 Article — The AI coding trap — AI is great a churning out code fast but is it the right code?
📝 Article — Loadmo.re: design inspiration for unconventional web — I love the weirdness on this page. There should be more random things on the internet that bring joy.
👾 Demo — Fluid Glass — This is some slick animation.
📝 Article — Claude Sonnet 4.5 can code autonomously for 30 hours — I bet it can, but will it stay on topic and produce something that works as intended?
📝 Article — Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did — You can always say no. If you carry on working when you know fraud has been committed then you can face jail time too.
📝 Article — Discord says 70k users may have had their government IDs leaked in breach — "Hate to Say I Told You So"
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