Dear Fellow Software Developer,
I still remember the moment when my boss pushed me over the edge.
One minute my boss, Tom Shirkey, is pulling me into the conference room for a little "sidebar" chat...
Next thing I know, something inside me snaps and I'm screaming into his face at the top of my lungs—while he yells right back.
And it took everything in me not to...
Now I'm not proud of this shouting match. It was definitely a low point in my software development career.
But he really did have it coming...
Tom was easily the worst part of the worst job I ever had.
Every morning when I walked through that front door my stomach clenched into knot. I counted down every second of every day, and when 5 p.m. rolled around I hit that door running...
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.
^^ Me during my "awkward phase." 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 on topics ranging from Java to iOS to GoLang, or write the best-selling book, Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual.
I didn't know that I'd someday headline at international developer conferences like Ordev and Xamarin Evolve, or have major corporations like Verizon knocking on my door to consult with me at $500 an hour.
And I really had no idea that I'd achieve my lifelong dream of early retirement—and that I'd reach that goal before my 33rd birthday.
Back then, all I knew is that...
Today my book Soft Skills is one of the best-selling software developer books of all time.
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...
Because of my role as a mentor to software developers all over the world, I hear from a lot of developers who are in the same boat I was.
Here's the real problem:
Programming has become a commodity.
As in, a product that's bought by the pound, usually from the lowest bidder.
The word got out years ago about all the opportunities available in software development.
It really is a great career choice...
Where else do you get the chance to spend your working hours pursuing a challenging craft, solving meaty and important real-world problems, building products that change the world, working with some of the best and brightest minds out there...
Learning and stretching every day...
Enjoying trendy office space, free snacks and break room ping-pong matches...
And making serious bank in the process?
No wonder a "gold rush" of eager young programmers flooded into the job market. And that trend continues—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.
Now the really great jobs are still out there.
But once you've been around the block a few times, you start to realize that the opportunities, salaries and perks in software development are "asymmetrical."
What I mean by that is that...
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.
And what makes all this even tougher is that the hiring process for software developers is completely broken.
Let me lift the curtain for you and show you just how bad it is...
When a company posts a job on a site like Monster or Dice, it's like tossing chunks of bloody fish into water that's teeming with Great Whites—a vicious feeding frenzy erupts.
The first application arrives within seconds. And they continue to pour in for days until the posting expires.
Companies get 250 applications for every job they post, and that's just an industry average.
Good developer jobs can attract far more than that, as desperate job seekers (like I was!) spam their resume to every company that comes up when they search the term "developer" on Monster...
75% of the time they're not even qualified.
Think about all that NOISE.
Now do you suppose that companies have their best developers carefully weigh every application?
Of course not. Your resume gets "screened" by low-level HR lackeys who think "for loop" is a golf term...
Yet they get final say over whether your resume makes it into a hiring managers hands... Or gets tossed on the "unqualified" slag heap.
And since the HR screeners can't tell the programmers from the posers, they just scan for buzzwords—an average of just 6 seconds per resume.
Here's a scary stat:
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.
Again, that's an AVERAGE.
Want to work at Google? Good luck—it's 10X harder to get a job there than to get into Harvard.
Could things get worse soon?
Just about every week there's word of another round of mass layoffs at major tech giants like Microsoft, Yahoo, and IBM.
And according to Business Insider...
Why isn't anyone telling developers about this new reality?
It's the reason why I spent months sleeping on my parents' couch, applying for job after job, never getting so much as a polite rejection notice in return...
And it's why I agreed to interview with the consulting firm in New Jersey where I met Tom.
That dysfunctional crew seemed determined to make me miserable from the first minute. They forced me to wear a full suit and tie to the interview—which happened over lunch in a Chinese restaurant.
The whole time they're chowing down on egg rolls, and they didn't ask me a single technical question.
(Later I realized that they didn't really care if I could program—they were hiring me to be a fall guy. More on that in a minute.)
And as I'm fielding their softball questions, I'm thinking, "I do not want this job, I do not want this job..."
And the hourly rate was too good for a down-and-out developer like me to pass up. After all my family was counting on me to put a roof over our heads again.
So we packed everything we owned into our Xterra and headed up the coast to New Jersey—and thus began the longest 11 months of my software development career.
My new boss Tom was an ex-high-school football coach with a bushy brown mustache—the stereotypical overbearing step-dad.
He was there to make you run your plays like a good linebacker, and if you didn't, Tom was going to make you do wind sprints until you dropped dead of exhaustion.
Tom had juuuuuuuust enough Visual Basic under his belt to make him a certified expert on every aspect of software development.
Tom had to review all of my code before I checked it in—even though he didn't know a vector from his... Well, anyway...
Tom had to give his blessing before I could install any new tools on my dev box—and man did he ever pitch a fit when I installed the .NET framework without running it by him first.
Later I'd discover that Tom even wanted control over what I did when I WASN'T under his paternal eye...
Anyway, my first day on the job I hadn't quite figured all this out yet. Tom starts explaining my assignment to me, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
And I started to realize that...
Their little racket went like this:
Take on a filthy lucrative consulting project with a humanly impossible set of requirements.
Then hire the first hourly consultant who wanders in off the street as your fall guy.
And when he fails, you just fire him.
You and your good ol' boy FTEs escape scot free, and you're laughing all the way to the bank.
Tom didn't clue me in on that though.
Instead he gave me some files in this proprietary printer format from Xerox called Metacode.
My job was to rip apart these chunky binary files, pour through megabyte after megabyte of raw hexadecimal code, and find a way to yank out fonts and images—WITHOUT access to the source files, or any documentation on Metacode itself.
Good luck, son!
The first time I cracked one of those Metacode files open in UltraEdit, I felt sick. Pure hexidecimal gibberish.
But after a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself, my QA training came back to me...
In college I'd worked for HP as a tester for their printer drivers. My job there consisted of studying reams of printouts and looking for patterns, so that's exactly what I did.
And eventually I noticed something:
The pattern "1A 1B," repeated over and over. A header!
I'd found a crack in the fortress wall, and 2 weeks later I had written the world's first Metacode decompiler.
Now after this you'd think that Tom and the gang would finally start to give me some respect.
Instead, they accused me of CHEATING.
I had to walk them through full demo. "See, now I'm extracting a font file. Look ma, no hands!"
Looking back I realize that I'd put them in a tight spot, because they never planned on me sticking around.
But since I'd just pulled off this "Metacode miracle" (which was worth millions to the company) they couldn't exactly fire me either.
So Tom took every chance he could to crank the screws tighter and tighter...
Like the tongue-lashing I took the time I finished a project early and decided to add a couple of "nice to have" features that I knew the users would really appreciate.
And the grueling all-day trips to customer sites on Long Island to babysit installers and swap out CDs.
Tom was trying to grind me down.
Instead he lit a fire under my ass, and...
I spent every "spare" minute studying.
I learned everything there was to know about pointers and vectors and memory management. I mastered advanced algorithms. I even built my own app—a life counter for Magic the Gathering.
When the smoke cleared, I was one of the best-ranked C++ developers in the world on Top Coder.
My confidence in my skills was soaring.
But every day at work, Tom would kick my teeth in and remind me who was boss.
One day Tim announces that the entire team is taking a MANDATORY week-long trip to Manchester, England for training.
Now I'm the only contractor in the group—everyone else is on salary. I get paid by the hour. And all that time I'd be spending in jolly old England was time away from my family and my all-important side projects.
So I pull Tom aside. "Are you planning to pay me for 24 hours a day on this trip?" I ask.
Tom laughs. "No, you're getting a free trip to London," he says.
You're gonna go, and you're gonna like it, sonny.
And that's when I snapped. Before I knew it, Tom and I were belly-to-belly like a couple of trash-talking linebackers after a nasty play.
I was out of line, and as a contractor, I had NO leverage in the situation, but I was DONE being pushed around.
There was no way I was getting on that plane.
I sat in the empty office for the next 7 days, all by myself under the under the humming florescent lights.
Everyone knew my days were numbered. They let a couple of weeks go by to save face, and then the ax fell.
And even though I had zero job prospects, I was SO relieved.
We jumped in the car and arrived at my parents' house at 2:30 the next morning.
This time I KNEW things would be different.
Thanks to my daily Top Coder bench pressing, my C++ muscles were bulging. Good luck stumping me in a tech interview.
And I'd racked up a list of accomplishments that would impress the socks off any hiring manager out there.
So I jumped back into the now-familiar routine of surfing Monster and Dice for job openings, typing up cover letters, emailing out my resume, submitting online forms...
And let me tell you, I was stunned when I hit that same stony silence.
No acknowledgement of my applications.
No replies to my follow up calls and emails.
No rejection notices.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and I'm getting desperate again.
Somehow I finagled my way into interviews for 2 different positions at HP.
I packed my suit, and they flew me out, and I completely ACED both interviews.
So imagine my shock when the rejection letters arrived!
This was like a bucket of ice water in the face—a rude awakening.
That's when I first realized that:
For the first time I saw that when it comes to landing a great job, your technical skills won't take you all that far.
This discovery turned my world upside down.
Here I had invested months of my life studying and hustling on side projects...
And in the end it didn't count for much.
The game really was rigged.
Even my "interviews" at HP were a complete sham.
HP is a good ol' boy's club, and I was just a "token" external candidate.
They were wasting my time and getting my hopes up when really I had NO chance.
The same goes at most companies.
There's a "shadow job market" that's invisible to outsiders.
Because according to the U.S. Department of Labor...
The best jobs are almost always snapped up by internal candidates or inside-track referrals LONG before they ever hit Indeed or Monster.
When you're searching those sites, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
In fact, a pretty good rule of thumb is:
After getting my fingers slammed in the door, I decided to see if I couldn't make this "shadow job market" work to my advantage.
So I looked up a former boss, the guy who hired me at HP the first time.
He was still there, and as it turned out, he was looking for a QA lead.
I accepted his offer—at a pride-busting rate of $35 an hour.
I finally had a job again, but I was still pretty discouraged, because...
It made NO sense at all.
Why didn't anyone seem to value my my coding skills?
But I was finally starting to catch on, because I understood...
Well, that crappy QA job was my "in," and I swore to myself I'd be writing software again soon.
One day I overheard a developer named Brian talking about a problem he was struggling with. Brian was a new developer, and he was way in over his head.
So I popped over to his cube and we thrashed out a solution.
Before long I was a "stealth member" of the dev team, and a trusted mentor and adviser.
Finally they went to their boss and said, "You have to hire John. We can't hit our deadlines without him."
I had discovered the principle that would come to define my career:
The most successful people in any walk of life are successful because they've created massive value for others.
Take a "famous" software developer like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, for example.
Uncle Bob built his reputation by sharing his wisdom on UseNet, and now he's one of the most trusted and talked-about experts in the field.
What kind of consulting fees do you think Uncle Bob can command these days?
Or look at Scott Hanselman, who has built a massive following by teaching everything he learns on his blog, podcast and conference presentations.
If Scott decided tomorrow that he was done at Microsoft, how long do you think it would take him to find a new job?
In every job I've made it my aim to add more and more value above and beyond "just" code.
When I took a contract with the Idaho state government, I made it my mission to help every member of my team become a more productive, more fulfilled developer, and started Simple Programmer as a way to share what I was learning with my team.
Word spread about my blog, and soon thousands of people were reading every month.
These developers started to look to me as a leader, someone whose voice and opinion deserved RESPECT.
As a result, I got promoted to project lead—at the highest hourly rate of any contractor in Idaho state history.
Then one day I got another lesson:
I was sitting at my desk when my phone rang. It was a hiring manager from a multimedia software company."
Hey John, we all read your blog and love it. We have a position opening up, and we'd like to hire you for it."
I wasn't really looking for a job, but cool. What's a good time for me 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."
That floored me. What a turnaround!
Just a few years ago I couldn't get employers to so much as look at my resume if I begged them to...
When I started finding ways to give more value in my career, I suddenly had more opportunities than I could say "yes" to—and with those opportunities came FREEDOM.
And I'd get edged out even when I ACED the technical interview...
And now I was getting "walk on" job offers!
When you focus on always giving value, you're making "deposits in the emotional bank account," as Dale Carnegie wrote.
When you do this, before long people look to you as an expert, authority and even a leader...
And you start attracting opportunities without even trying.
Unexpected job offers.
Lucrative freelancing and consulting gigs.
Speaking invitations.
Book deals.
Business partnerships.
This is the real secret to landing the BEST software development jobs and opportunities—you know, the "mythical unicorn" jobs you sometimes hear about...
Where you're working with a team that's as passionate about learning as you are...
Building software that solves REAL and interesting problems...
Where you're challenged to grow and develop your technical skills...
And where the pay and job perks are TOP TIER.
After that surprising job offer, the opportunities started coming fast and furious.
And when you have more opportunities than you can say yes to, that means you have OPTIONS.
You're in the drivers seat, and that gives you a tremendous feeling of security and confidence.
Do you know how great it is to know that you can stroll into your boss's office and say, "I quit!"
Because you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could send a couple of emails and walk into a new job tomorrow morning?
When you have options like this, interviews aren't scary anymore. You radiate confidence, because you don't need them, they need YOU.
In short...
Here are just a few things that happened to me over the next several years:
Don't get me wrong, I kept studying and learning new programming languages and platforms and architecture patterns.
But my career stayed stuck in neutral until I made a shift from always trying to be the "rockstar" coder with the hottest technical skills...
And focused my attention on giving value in ways that really matched what employers wanted and needed.
As I shared that value with as many people as I could, they came to respect me as an authority...
And they'd seek me out so that I could help them even more.
But we're all adults here, and I know you can handle it.
Ready?
It's called:
"Marketing."
I get that reaction every time I bring this up.
Let's be perfectly clear about something here:
There is a LOT of nasty stuff that goes on under the banner of "marketing."
You don't want to be associated with any of that, and neither do I.
But don't let those scammy tactics blind you to the underlying truth that...
Marketing is fundamentally about helping people solve problems.
And isn't that what we excel at as software developers?
When you "market yourself" the way I'll show you, by always looking to give deliver overwhelming value, it feels completely natural.
In fact it's even satisfying.
And let me tell you, it's so much better than putting yourself through the degrading meat grinder of the job hunt process.
Now I fell into all of this entirely by accident.
Each of the principles I've shared with you here... these ideas that have propelled me to successes I never thought possible...
Took me YEARS of trial and error to uncover.
If someone had taken me aside when I was a brand new developer at 19, and walked me step by step through what I know today...
It would easily have saved me a decade of struggle, frustration and rejection...
And instead of feeling trapped and stuck, and wondering why no one seemed to recognize what a talented and hard-working developer I was...
I'd have had a clear plan for building exactly the kind of career I most wanted.
Well, it's a little late for that now—for me, at least.
But not for you...
Because I've taken all the road-tested knowledge and hard-won experience I've accumulated over the last 17+ years...
And put it all together into the kind of all-in-one training program I wish I'd had 20 years ago...
How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer is a systematic way to build up your reputation, authority and goodwill...
By always looking to give enormous value before you ask for anything in return.
When you do this consistently, you'll find that you're no longer struggling to chase opportunities.
Instead, you're attracting the very best opportunities to come to YOU.
And as your career grows YOU grow, becoming a better and more fulfilled software developer.
This course contains my entire system for:
The course is presented in 6 modules, each building on the ideas in the previous modules, brick by brick, until you've assembled your new career-enhancing platform.
In each module, I'll personally walk you through a handful of key concepts.
Then I'll show you the practical, step-by-step actions to take that will quickly begin to build your reputation and authority in your chosen niche—and start earning the respect your knowledge and accomplishments deserve.
Here's just a glimpse of what you'll discover:
This module lays the foundation for everything else in the course.
To start, we're going to bulldoze away a whole pile of lies that have roadblocked your success in your career up until now.
Lies about what it means to be a professional. Lies about your skills and your true value. Lies about what companies really want and need in the developers they hire.
The mindset shift you'll make here is critical. Without it, any marketing techniques you try will likely backfire and leave you feeling cheap and unprofessional.
Then I'll show you the crucial building blocks in your new "authority-building" plan.
You'll see how all the pieces fit together at both a "strategic" level (the "what" and "why") as well as a "tactical" level (the "how").
In this no fluff, 13-chapter PDF you'll discover:
And a LOT more.This cornerstone module has been offered elsewhere for a suggested price of $29.
Value: $29
Now that you understand what marketing IS (and just as importantly, what it ISN'T), you're ready to begin building your own marketing plan.
And it all starts with establishing your brand.In this 8-chapter "crash course," I'll walk you step by step through the process of developing your brand—which is the image you project in the software community.
You'll finally get clear about where your career is headed, and how you can reach your goals while staying true to your core identity.
I'll also show you:
The 8 chapters in this module span 106 minutes of HD-quality video that you can watch from any device you choose.
This module contains as much meaty content as courses I've sold for $147, but I've decided to include it here as part of the low package price.
Value: $147
If your brand is the dent you plan to leave in the world, a blog is the sledgehammer you'll use to make that impression.
Your blog is your "home base," a digital avatar that shows the software development community what you stand for.
Creating a successful blog is like a Jedi building their lightsaber. It's a rite that marks your passage into maturity as a programmer.
When you have a well-maintained blog, your peers sit up and take notice of what you have to say. And potential employers and clients know that you are a serious practitioner of your craft.
In this 154-minute, 7-chapter video series, you'll watch over my shoulder as I show you how to "build your lightsaber." You'll see behind the scenes of how I work at Simple Programmer, including the tools and workflow I've used to build a blog that receives more than 1.5 million page views a year.
You'll also discover:
By the time we're done, you'll have a blog you'll be proud to show to your peers and colleagues.
This module could easily sell for as much as $147 by itself, but it's include in the low package price.
Value: $147
You've defined your brand, and you've built your "home base."
The next task is capturing the attention of your fellow developers—and the team leads and hiring managers at companies you might want to work for.
Many developers jump straight to this step without laying the groundwork that we covered in the first 3 modules. As a result they wind up running in circles—and decide that "marketing yourself doesn't work."
But you won't have that problem, thanks to the firm foundation you established in modules 1-3. Now you're in a great position, where every little bit of legwork goes a long way, and each tiny win moves you further down your chosen path.
This module is a whirlwind tour through all of the different tools you can deploy to start to build your reputation and audience. And there have never been so many ways to get your message in front of the right people.
In this 9-chapter, full color PDF I'll show you more than 2 dozen techniques for getting people to sit up, take notice, and even start to look to you as an authoritative voice in your field.
My suggestion: Pick 2-3 methods that play to your natural strengths and interests and focus on those.
With so many options to choose from, you DON'T have to do anything that's too far outside your comfort zone. This way you can "get your name out there" without feeling inauthentic, phony or pushy.
In this module, I'll show you:
This book is NOT available for sale anywhere else.
Value: $29
Social media just might be the single best way to "get your name out there"—it's so important I've devoted an entire module to it.
To make social media work for you (and not against you) requires a solid strategy. This module kicks off with a look at what social media can and (just as important) CAN'T do to help you build an audience and advance your career.
Then we'll see how each social "channel" can fit into your overall plan.
You'll also learn:
This 9-chapter module is presented in a downloadable 58-page, full-color PDF.
Value: $29
Ever find a job that looked perfect, send in your resume, and then... Crickets?
More developers lose out on potential job opportunities due to resume mistakes than for any other reason.
Whether you're applying for a job yourself or responding to an invitation from a company that's eager to recruit you, there's a lot hinging on your resume.
In module 6, I'll show you how to steer clear of the resume mistakes that can torpedo your chance to land your dream job.
This quick-reading 14-page PDF will point out:
Value: $19
But I wanted to load up your "tool kit" with even more career-building tools, so here's what I came up with:
This course is like a set of Lego bricks. You can mix and match them many different ways to build the future YOU want.
That's why I decided to sit down 1-on-1 with 11 software developers to find out how they have applied these principles in their own careers.
The programmers you'll meet in these interviews run the gamut from "celebrity developers" like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin and Jeff Atwood to workaday programmers who've more recently discovered the power of building a brand.
In these conversations you'll learn:
These video interviews span more than 4 hours. And each of these 11 developers value their time at a MINIMUM of $150 per hour. (Several of them bill at $250 an hour or more.)
That means this collection is easily worth $600 based on sheer "time on the clock." (But the insights you'll glean are worth far more that that.)
Value: $600
This 2-page PDF gives you one-click access to the 30 career-building tools and resources mentioned in the course (plus an exclusive discount to have your resume polished by a professional CV writer).
Value: $5
This checklist walks through all of the steps in the How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer system on one page.
You can print it off and hang it next to your monitor—it's your roadmap from unknown developer starting at square one to respected expert, standing side-by-side with the top developers you admire from afar.
Value: $7
These uncut transcripts are perfect to keep handy as a quick reference when you want to refresh your memory without scrobbling through the videos.
I’d highly recommend printing these PDFs out and keeping them with you while you watch the videos. You can underline key points and make notes in the margins.
The transcription alone would normally set you back $260, but you get both transcripts as part of this package at no additional cost.
Value: $260
Your personal network is your #1 career asset—and an insurance policy against tough times.
This poster-sized infographic gives you 20 tips to build a far-reaching network that will bulletproof and enrich your career.
You'll discover... The BEST time to add people to your network... A way to ask for a favor without feeling like a mooch... How to make more friends in two months than most people make in two years... And more!
Value: $7
All together, this package is valued at $1,279.
And to be honest, it's worth even more than that.
This course is the sum total of the wisdom I gained over more than a decade of struggle, failure, experimentation—and eventual success.
If someone had given me this course at the start of my career, it could easily have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income, not to mention a more satisfying and fulfilling career.
For example, let's go back to that miserable job I took in New Jersey. Knowing what I know now, I'd never have accepted $45 an hour. I was worth more than that.
Even if I'd only managed to bump my rate up a measly $5 an hour, I'd have earned an extra $8,800 over 11 months I spent there.
And if I could have negotiated my rate up to $60 an hour, that would have amounted to almost $25,000.
Are you beginning to get the picture?
Look, I've met and talked with thousands of developers in the Simple Programmer community, and I am continually amazed at how much untapped potential many developers have.
In fact, the biggest reason many developers are stuck in their careers is the same intelligence and love for their craft that makes them excellent programmers in the first place.
When you're doing something you love, you don't realize how rare and valuable your skills and knowledge truly are, and it's easy to let yourself settle for less than you deserve.
That's the real value of this course.I'll show you how to raise your worth in your own eyes and in the eyes of your colleagues and future employers.
Let me put it this way:If you apply what I show you in this course, you could easily earn yourself an additional 2% raise on your next performance review.
And if you're earning $85,000 (a mid-level developer salary in the U.S.) that means an extra $1,700 in your pocket next year.
Say the year after that you change jobs, and use your new knowledge to secure a 10% raise. That's another $8,670, and now you're earning $95,370.
Think that sounds far fetched?
Recently I got an email from a Simple Programmer fan who used what I'd taught him to change jobs twice in less than 1 month—and increase his income by 300%! (More on this in a bit...)
So given all that...
How much would YOU invest to secure returns like this?
I know I'd happily have paid $1,000 to have someone show me the ropes early in my career, and I would have earned that back dozens of times over.
Now when considering how to price this course, I realized that charging $1,000 would put this knowledge out of reach for most developers—the very people I wanted to help.
And even $500 can be a stretch if you're not being paid what you're really worth at your current job.
So after a lot of thought, I decided to set the price at an affordable
$299
To put that in perspective, that's less than you might pay for a decent SSD.
Many families drop that much or more on their cell phone and cable bills every month.
This investment in yourself is one that will pay off many times over.
Because, as a developer, you have a rare gift:
The skills you possess are valuable and highly sought after.
And when you use the tools I will give you (for less than the cost of a new Playstation), you can apply some leverage to those skills—and results can be truly amazing.
Now before we go on, let's recap:
$1,279 $299
John, I only came across your material by chance when I listened to your podcast with .NET Rocks. Winning your How to Market Yourself course as part of that was the beginning of a very exciting journey.
Before taking your course, I lacked focus on how to get where I wanted. I knew the end-result or where the goal post was, but I had no direction on how to get there.
Your course and book (Soft Skills) have helped immensely. I’ve always been a driven person looking to get better or do that one extra thing that would make me stand out in my life, my industry, my job, and, in fact, everywhere.
But it’s hard to know how to achieve this and benefit yourself without proper direction or guidance.
Your course offered the inspiration and guidance I needed to propel my career further.
Shortly after going through the material, I quit my permanent job to become a contractor. I built up my online presence, I have a successful blog and in just over a year I was invited to speak in over 22 conferences.
Last year I asked you about what it would take to become an MVP.
It took 9 months but I got there in the end and on 01/01/2016 I got my first (and last) MVP award.
In the end, it became an aftermath of my actions and my effort rather than the end goal and this was even better because it was a true recognition of my hard work rather than anything else.
I’m still committed to be the most helpful person in the community and I try as much as possible to be in the forefront of technology to the extend that my family and career allow me to.
2 months ago, I joined Microsoft to work as a senior Azure Premier Field Engineer which was
As a new graduate I struggled to find a job as a software developer. Many, if not all jobs ask for at least 2 years of experience.
I am a few weeks into the course and I am blown away by its value. John gives you a manageable step-by-step guide to becoming a developer and how to "do it right."
The course shows you a straight-forward method to proving yourself as a software developer.
John also supplies you with interviews from very successful developers (including himself) and an interactive email course that he personally responds to.
The biggest eye-opener for me was just how easy it is to make a blog and come up with meaningful topics to post about. John also guides you through ways to customize your blog and keep coming up with new content.
I would recommend this course to anyone who aspires to be a software dev!
I’m a developer. A very passionate one. I love programming. It’s my work and hobby and I’ve been coding since I was 14. I know I have potential and I’m sure I can go much further in my career if I take the right steps.
I tried to go own my own, but I always feel that I’m missing something.
I’ve been following John Sonmez for some years through his blog and social networks because he is an experienced developer with great expertise and knowledge in a vast set of topics that I’m interested in. I saw his own brand growing and John becoming more and more relevant, so I decided to give a go to this course.
After some days reading (and watching) his material I can say that it’s the most valuable advice I have received about how to boost my career. It really opened my eyes. Now I know exactly what I was doing wrong. Not only had it helped me to reveal my mistakes down in black and white, but also showed me dos and don’ts and traced a clear roadmap to gain visibility and to improve my value as a professional.
The book, the in-depth guides and the absolutely amazing interviews with some of the best development professionals out there (watch out for Uncle Bob’s) conform a conspicuous source of knowledge that for sure it’s going to give my career a complete turnaround.In few words, this is a must-have. A unique material, from developer to developer. It’s absolutely worth every penny. Loving it.
I’ve followed John’s blog for a number of years and during that time I couldn’t help but notice that he was becoming a more well-known name in the software development world.
When I saw that he created a course that would teach software developers how to market themselves, it didn’t take me long to purchase it.
After viewing the videos and reading the materials, everything is presented in a very understandable manner and the interviews with other well-known developers on how they established their brand are extremely informative.
The range of topics presented is very broad, but yet they are all covered thoroughly. Plus John’s enthusiasm presenting them is contagious!
I’ve started implemented the concepts covered and already feel more confident and in control of growing my career. I highly recommend this course!
As a software developer, my goal is to try and be as close to the best at what I do. I then got to thinking... what is it that encompasses "what I do"? There is no template that will fit every software developer out there, but for me an on-line presence was an important part of this. Unfortunately for me at the time I had to feel my way around this aspect of my professional life. There were no guides or definite 'how to' tutorials marketed specifically to me, a software developer.
I put together a blog, and started writing about what I loved. As with everything in life it is easy to get trapped in a groove. You need a special kind of mindset to recognize the doldrums in your life. To push the boundaries of your comfort zones and recognize all the areas you need to focus on.
John Sonmez has put together an incredible package tailored specifically for software developers called "How To Market Yourself as a Software Developer". I wish I had this when I started out. John takes you through every aspect of getting your name 'out there' and truly marketing yourself on a variety of channels. Going through the material is not as simple as starting at A and working towards Z. The material has so many branches that leads a person to so much more than just the volume of work you are presented with.
If you are serious about marketing yourself as a software developer, you seriously need to consider his program. It has exposed errors in my approach to certain aspects of my on-line life and promotion of my on-line content. It has changed my way of thinking about the importance of networking the right way and getting my name "out there".
I have had quite a good career as a software developer, but I always wanted to start a blog and do side-projects.
I got caught up in a 'analysis paralysis' on what product/tool to use to start blog, what topics I should write on, how I should position myself etc.
I was so overwhelmed with the options, possibilities and confusion that I didn't started anything at all!
Some of the things I learnt and applied are: What combination of products/tools to use to start a blog; what topics to write blog posts on; the importance of consistency; what is branding; and how to build my network.
I can't say that I am fully following what I learnt, but even with what I've applied, my problem changed from problem of lack to problem of plenty! Instead of wondering what to write about on my blog, now I have too many blog topics in my 'to do' list and not enough time.
I started networking and I now have at least four startup projects that people want me to do or be part of.
I am even on the verge of starting a startup in my native country (India).
I have a long way to go, but I now know what to do.
Look, I know what it's like to put your hard-earned cash on the line, hoping that a stranger will actually deliver the results he's promising. And I've been burned before myself—we all have.
Maybe you don't know me all that well, and you're wondering whether I'm just blowing smoke here.
I'd consider it a tragedy if a little uncertainty stopped you from taking this bold move to put your career on the fast track.
So I'm going to do everything in my power to take all the risk off of you and put it on to my own shoulders.
After giving it some thought, I decided to offer a TWO guarantees instead of one.
Here's how it works...
First, You Get My Unconditional, 90-Day "Love It or Pay Nothing" Satisfaction Guarantee
Buy the course today with complete confidence, because you're not risking a penny.
Take a good look at all the career-building techniques I've packed into these modules.
You have up to a full 90 days to decide whether How to Market Yourself is right for you.
And if for any reason (or no reason at all) you decide it's not a good fit, just shoot me an email and I'll promptly refund every penny—NO questions and NO hassles.
Second, I Guarantee You'll 10X Your Investment in 1 Year, Or You'll Get DOUBLE Your Money Back
Now this second guarantee might seem a little over the top, but I'm completely confident that this course will "deliver the goods."
So here's my promise to you:
If you take the techniques I'm going to show you in this course, and you make a good faith effort to apply them to your career for the next 12 months, I guarantee that this course will pay for itself 10 times over, or I will DOUBLE your money back.
I can't tell you exactly what form this return on your investment might take. It could be a pay bump or promotion at your current job. You might find your inbox filling up with offers for freelancing gigs or high-paying consulting work. Or you might even find that an opportunity opens up for you to get a job you really love—at a salary increase of 10%, 20% or even more.
But I do guarantee that it WILL happen.
Now I want to make sure that a few bad apples don't take advantage of my generosity here, so I will require you to document the steps you've taken and "show your homework."
So if you can demonstrate to me that you're following the plan and not getting the results you want after 12 months, I'll refund your initial investment in full...
And I'll also reach into my own pocket and DOUBLE your money back for making the effort.
You literally can't lose here.
I find that many of the developers I meet fall into one of two camps.
The first group mainly wants to get a better job, earn a raise or improve their job security.
Maybe you want to escape your soul-crushing enterprise job and work with cutting-edge technologies in a faster-paced, more invigorating work environment...
Or maybe you're pretty happy where you are, but would like to get a raise from $70,000 a year to $80,000 or $85,000.
Or you'd like the additional security that comes with knowing that at any given time, there are half a dozen companies that are itching to hire you.
The second group of developers wants to shoot for the moon.
Maybe you want to become a high-paid consultant who bills at $200, $300 or even $500 per hour (like I do).
Maybe you like the idea of earning public recognition for your skills and achievements (and even being a little bit famous among the people you most admire).
Maybe you want to land one of those coveted jobs at a "Big 4" company like Apple or Google and crave the challenge of working with the top developers in the world.
Maybe you even want to launch your own business by building a SaaS app or creating training products for other developers so that you can free up your time and generate income without "trading hours for dollars."
Regardless of which of these descriptions fits you, How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer will help you achieve your goals.
There are two basic "tracks," or ways you can use the system I'll give you in this course.
The first path is what I call the "Developer Authority" track. And the second is the "Celebrity Programmer" track.
If your main goal is escaping your current job and earning a nice pay increase, the Developer Authority approach is for you. Here's what you do:
First, go through each of the modules and bonuses in this course.
Then pick 3-5 of the authority building techniques I'll show you. I'll give you dozens of ways to build a reputation for yourself, so you can cherrypick a few that feel most natural and the least intimidating.
Next get started applying these techniques consistently for just for a couple of hours per week.
Developers who take the information in this course and run with it are surprised how quickly they see doors start to open—often in ways you've never imagined.
It's thrilling.
Now the second, "Celebrity Programmer" track definitely requires more time and effort, but the payoff can be astronomical.
For this track you're going to want to go through the material in this course several times, and take CAREFUL notes about each of the techniques and strategies I present.
Then you roll up your sleeves and start implementing as many of them as possible.
I won't lie to you—this takes some work. If you consider yourself an underachiever or a slacker, this is NOT for you.
I know that firsthand, because this is the route I chose for myself.
You'll need to spend more than just a few hours every week. In fact, the more time you can squeeze in to work on this, the better.
What's the upside? Why bother?
Well, you're going to find this will be some of the most rewarding work you'll ever do.
Because what you're building is a real business—an micro-empire that belongs to you and you alone.
You never know where this will take you—I sure didn't when I started my journey. But 5 years later, I looked up and realized that I'd become the top producer of online developer training in the world, and I was earning enough from my business to retire comfortably at 32.
So those are the two paths in front of you. Which you choose is up to you—it depends on your comfort levels, and your long term goals and ambitions.
Either way I'll be with you at every step.
Imagine waking up one day soon and realizing that the days of putting up with YOUR "Tom Shirkey" are over.
And instead of working for a jerk who undermines and belittles you...
You're working with a manager who counts his lucky stars you're on his team.
Your colleagues are all talented developers, committed to learning and growing together.
Every day you're excited to show up to work because you know you'll be solving fascinating problems with cutting edge technologies...
It's the kind of job you'd almost do for free—and you can hardly believe how much they're paying you to do it.
Your debt is melting away faster every month, and there's plenty left over to start saving and investing...
And you have the time, resources and freedom to really enjoy life more.
If that's what you want for your career, this course can take you there.
And it starts today—take the first step now.
Just click the Add to Cart button below.
Then enter your payment info on the next screen and click Checkout.
You’ll get instant access to How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer.
And I’ll walk you through everything you need to achieve your goals for your career.
You’ll have a clear path to finding work that's challenging, with a team that shares your passion.
You'll never again worry about "job security"—because you have more opportunities than you could ever accept.
You’ll have the confidence that comes with knowing that your peers respect you and even look up to you because you've proven yourself as a developer and a leader.
You'll be doing what you love—and earning what you deserve.
That's what's in store for you here.
Just click Add to Cart now...
And I’ll see you on the inside!
- John Sonmez
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