Hi, I’m John Sonmez

And back when Tom was making every day a living hell, I had no idea what the future had in store for me. If you’d told me back then that I’d one day mentor millions of software developers—and even retire at 32—I would have thought you were crazy.

I didn’t know that I’d one day become a leader in the developer community thanks to Simple Programmer, my blog that reaches more than 1 million devs a year. I didn’t know that I’d go on to create 55 Pluralsight training courses, or write the best-selling book, Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual.

“Office Space” Wasn’t Just A Funny Movie—It Was A Documentary Of My Life

To be honest, I only took that job out of desperation. I’d been out of work for 3 months. My wife and I were living with my parents near Orlando, crashing on their sofa bed in the living room while I job hunted. And after a few months of shotgunning out resumes and hearing nothing but deafening silence, you start to believe that…

The Deck Is Stacked Against You

Programming has become a commodity. The word got out years ago about all the opportunities available in software development. No wonder a “gold rush” of eager young programmers flooded into the job market. 40,000 new computer science students enter the U.S. job market every year, and that’s not counting self-taught developers and bootcamp graduates.

The Top 3% of Developers Snap Up All The Best Opportunities Before You Even Hear About Them

Which leaves you to slug it out with increasing numbers of recent graduates who happily work for peanuts to get a foot in the door. The hiring process for software developers is completely broken. Companies get 250 applications for every job they post. Your resume gets “screened” by low-level HR lackeys who think “for loop” is a golf term—an average of just 6 seconds per resume.

98% Of Candidates Are Eliminated Based On Their Resume Alone!

That means your odds of even landing an INTERVIEW are only 1 in 50. And your odds of actually getting an offer? Just 1 in 250. Want to work at Google? It’s 10X harder to get a job there than to get into Harvard.

85% of Jobs Are Never Advertised

The best jobs are almost always snapped up by internal candidates or inside-track referrals LONG before they ever hit Indeed or Monster. If you see a job advertised, you probably don’t actually want it.

“85% of jobs are never advertised. If you see it posted, you probably don’t want it.”

I finally caught a break when a friend of a friend told me about a QA opening at a software company. It wasn’t glamorous—but it was a foot in the door. I knew if I could just get in front of the right people and prove my worth, things could turn around.

I got the job. And I immediately started looking for ways to go above and beyond. I helped developers debug their code. I wrote automation scripts that saved hours of manual testing. I made myself so useful that within six months I was doing development work full-time—even though my title was still “QA Engineer.”

Brian, a senior developer on the team, pulled me aside one day. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, “but keep doing it. People notice.”

The Way to Create Real, Life-Changing Opportunities Is To First Give Value to OTHERS

The most successful people in any walk of life are successful because they’ve created massive value for others. Take Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin—he built his reputation sharing wisdom on UseNet and is now one of the most trusted experts in the field. Or Scott Hanselman, who built a massive following by teaching everything he knows on his blog, podcast, and conference talks.

When I took a contract with the Idaho state government, I started Simple Programmer as a way to share what I was learning with my team. Word spread. Thousands of people started reading every month. These developers started to look to me as a leader. As a result, I got promoted to project lead—at the highest hourly rate of any contractor in Idaho state history.

When You Become A Recognized Authority, Opportunities Chase YOU

I was sitting at my desk when my phone rang. It was a hiring manager. “Hey John, we all read your blog and love it. We have a position opening up—we’d like to hire you.” What’s a good time to interview? “Interview? No, you don’t understand. We don’t want you to apply—we just want to hire you. The job is yours if you want it.”

Just a few years ago I couldn’t get employers to look at my resume. And now I was getting walk-on job offers. Unexpected job offers. Lucrative freelancing and consulting gigs. Speaking invitations. Book deals. Business partnerships.

Instead Of Chasing “The Prize,” You ARE The Prize

A startup contacted me about building a testing framework. I quoted what I thought was a crazy high rate of $300 an hour. Their reply: “When can you start?” I’ve since raised my rate to $500 an hour and turn away work regularly. O’Reilly contacted me and offered to publish a book on ANY topic I wanted. A year later Soft Skills became one of the best-selling software development books of all time. PluralSight invited me to create courses—55 courses later, the royalties enabled me to retire as a millionaire at 32.

“I went from sleeping on my parents’ couch to being recognized everywhere I went in the software world.”

There’s A Term For This — And It’s A “Dirty Word” To A Lot Of Developers

“Marketing.” I get that reaction every time I bring this up. But “Marketing” just means connecting a person with a problem to a person with a solution. When you market yourself by always looking to deliver overwhelming value, it feels completely natural. And it’s so much better than the degrading meat grinder of the shadow job market.

Now I’ve taken all the road-tested knowledge and hard-won experience I’ve accumulated over 17+ years and put it all together into the kind of all-in-one training program I wish I’d had 20 years ago…