Hey, what’s up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got this email from Bruno.
Bruno says, “Hi John, I’m a dev from Brazil and I’ve been following you for years now.
Yesterday was probably one of the hardest days of my life.
I got fired out of nowhere on a company I was working on for years.
I never thought this would happen to me and they didn’t even tell me why.
I’m telling you this because despite the fact that I feel like shit, I immediately
remember some of your advices and now I really wanted to pursue something for myself, stop
working on somebody else’s dream and going after mine.
I had an idea overnight and you always seem like a reasonable person so I thought I could
share it with you in order to see if it’s a really stupid idea or if it could work out.
I’m thinking about building a website to help fired devs find a new job by telling
the world that they’re in this situation, a place where companies could find people
that are desperately in need of a job and find out why they were in that situation,
etc.
Do you think I’m rushing too much?
I’m willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top of the situation.
I’m sorry to bother you with this.
I know you’ve got nothing to do with it.
It would be great if I’d get a response.
Thanks in advance.”
I’m going to give you a little bit of tough love here.
First of all, I sympathize with your situation.
I appreciate that you’ve been following me for a long time.
That shows that you want to—and I can tell you want to improved your situation.
You want to figure out an answer here.
But I have to tell you that no one cares that you lost your job.
No one cares that other developers lost their job.
Again, I’m not saying this to be harsh.
What I mean by this is that a company doesn’t care about your situation.
They don’t care that you’re a fired dev or that you’re in a bad situation.
I understand what you’re trying to do to help people with a business idea, but honestly,
I want you to make this mindset shift yourself because it’s more than just the idea.
I’m not trying to bash your idea.
I’m not trying to bash your mindset because I want you to shift it, because if you have
this idea it means you have this mindset if you follow that.
If you shift this mindset you’re going to be more successful, I promise you.
Shift the mindset from thinking, “What can a company do for me?”
to “What can you do for your company?”
I know I’m making fun of that but in reality the mindset you have to really have is what
value can you provide.
No company cares about your situation.
There are so many people that have this mindset of thinking that, “Oh someone should pity
me because of this, because I’ve got this problem” and they want someone to give them
an opportunity.
No one wants to give you an opportunity, I’m sorry.
I don’t want to give anyone an opportunity.
No one gives someone opportunity.
Someone might want to give to charity to give, but no one wants to give you an opportunity.
They don’t care about how messed up your situation is or how much that it would help
you.
That’s not business.
Business is what can you do for me.
Instead, you’ve got to shift this mindset from thinking about, “Poor me and poor other
devs who got fired” instead to “Look, this is how much value I can provide to you.
This is what I’m about.
I’m about providing value.”
If you come in with a sad story you’re going to get—you might get someone to cry, but
they’re not going to give you a job, right?
But if you come in and you say, “Look, I got fired and I have overcome adversity and
you can’t stop me.
You can’t stop me and here’s why because this is what I’ve got.
This is what I bring to the table.
Yeah, yeah, I lost this job.
Yeah, I went through these hard times, but this is what it taught me.
What it taught me is what I’m going to bring to you and that’s why you should hire me
is because I’m resilient, because I can bring this to you, because I develop these
skills and I learned that no one was going to hire me unless I learned how to teach myself.
I’m the kind of person that you want to hire because I can do all these things.”
What’s the value that you’re going to bring?
That’s what you have to really focus on.
Don’t focus on what happened to you.
When you change that mindset not only is it going to make your message going to be more
compelling and going to get you much more likely to get the job, but it’s also going
to shift in you in how you act and what you do.
Because when you’re feeling sorry for yourself and when you feel like you’re a victim you
invite more of that, you invite more problems and people pick on the weak and they pick
on the people that self identifies as victims.
We could all self identify as victims if we want.
We all had problems.
All of our parents were crappy parents.
All of our parents did things that we could cry about and whine about.
Some of us have had really legitimate problems that we could classify ourselves as victims.
Here’s a good book for you.
It’s by Viktor Frankl it’s called the—anyway.
Rodrigo will find this, my awesome editor.
It’s by Viktor Frankl.
I’m forgetting the name of it.
Anyway, he went through a Nazi camp and he was a Jew at the time and he survived.
He very clearly sets up this mindset of not being a victim, of not letting himself be
that.
That’s something that I think anyone can really benefit from.
I’m still trying to think of the name of that—it’s going to come to me as soon
as I stop this video.
Anyway, I’d encourage you to read that book.
Dang it!
I don’t know.
You know what I’m going to do?
I’m going to look at my phone because it’s on my phone because this is going to drive
me nuts if I don’t do this.
You guys are going to just have to bear with me while I pull this up.
I’m listening to Iron John by the way right now.
It’s a good book.
It is Man’s Search for Meaning.
I haven’t even pulled it up yet, just the fact that I pulled out—Man’s Search for
Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
Anyway, the whole point is really just this, don’t be a victim, don’t let yourself
be that.
Instead, be strong, be a conqueror and provide value.
Talk about the value that you provide.
That’s what companies are interested in.
This is a business world and no one cares about your problems.
Again, I don’t mean to be harsh, but no one cares about your problems, only you do.
Anyway, hopefully you find a job.
I appreciate you following me.
If you like this video, subscribe to the channel and I will give you some tough love.
Take care.