Reader, you are not good enough to become a successful developer.

That's what a lot of people think of themselves.

Today I want to help you to become good enough and to fight the well-known "impostor syndrome".

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Why do you feel not good enough?

Firstly, wanted to mention that it's okay to feel that you are not ready.

Most beginners in all other different industries feel insecure when they are starting.

Even when I started working as a barista, initially I wasn't confident in my coffee-making skills.

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And the reason why a lot of people in tech have an impostor syndrome is actually pretty trivial.

It's because of social stereotypes. A lot of people see coding and the IT profession as something completely magical.

Moreover, there are THOUSANDS of different technologies and programming languages out there, so after learning a few, you don't know if you learned enough because there are so many other technologies to learn.

However, a lack of confidence can cause many troubles during the job search.

If you aren't confident in your skills, how can you make hiring managers confident enough about hiring you?

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How to feel more confident?

Luckily there is a step-by-step framework to feel way more confident about your skills and knowledge.

I'll use the Front-end Developer position as an example, but it's the same for all other positions.

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Step 1. Learning

The best way to become confident about something is just to dedicate a lot of time to that thing.

You can be insanely insecure about your cooking skills, but if you'll cook 10,000 dishes, and learn from your mistakes you'll automatically become good and confident about your cooking skills.

Same with coding.

If you'll follow the right learning roadmap, and spend a lot of time practicing, you'll feel more confident.

So always start with LEARNING.

And never learn just a programming language, always learn TECH STACK around that language.

As with just programming language, you won't be able to build a lot.

For instance, for the Front-end do not just learn JavaScript, but learn the whole tech stack (HTML, CSS, JS, React, Redux + UI Library + Next.js (optional)).

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Step 2. Building

Now you know the Tech Stack, it's time to build something cool.

At this step it's important to build not a test learning project, but a fully functional app.

For example, you can build a ToDo or Movie app while learning React.

But for your portfolio and confidence, you'll need to build something complex, like content scheduling software or educational platform, etc.

After building your app dedicate from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to click a lot around it, try it on different devices and fix all bugs, it has to be good!

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Step 3. Collect Feedback

Now it's time to ask OTHER PEOPLE to give you feedback on your project.

Ask your friend and family of course, but IDEALLY find another more experienced developer.

Most likely you'll hear something good and something bad about your app.

At this point, it's important to be cool about negative things. Don't take negative feedback close to you heart, use it to improve yourself.

FIX ALL OF THE BUGS, and ask for a re-review.

After some improvements, you'll finally get positive feedback.

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Step 4. Become Confident

Now you can confidently say this to yourself:

And the answer to that question is - YOU ARE READY! YOU CAN DO THE SAME THING FOR OTHER COMPANIES, SO YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE JOB!

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Content & Personal Updates

Last week I was shocked by one LinkedIn post and what happened in the comments, so I recorded a video that shows what's wrong with the market, and how you can win even in the current market, you can watch by clicking on the image or here.

Also, we've officially started the beta test for ZaCode. (You can see it by the fact that this newsletter is one day later than usual 😅)

It means 2 things:

• We'll be fixing a lot of bugs that users will find
• The app will get 300 times better in the next few weeks by implementing the feedback from the users

After that, it'll be time for a bigger launch and for a lot of marketing efforts.

If you also want to join the Beta Test with a 90% discount, reply to this email with the word "BETA" and I'll send you details. I'll take only 5 more people.

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I'll be honest with you, working full time, running a blog, academy, and launching an app is extremely challenging, I work all day long 7 days a week. And I feel that I need to work EVEN MORE.

I'm super thankful to my great students (Nikola, Amir, Stevan, Sonya, Vladyslav) who helped a lot with the app, and to the best designer in the world (Nastya) and to everyone who supported me. THANK YOU!

I promise to keep working hard towards my mission. But by the end of the year, I'll definitely need a vacation 😅.

Okay, enough of my self-reflections, see you next week!

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Best regards,

Andrew "Probably good enough" Zacker

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