Category: Career Advice

Any monkey can learn to code

I first talked about this way back in 2013. In fact, this is exactly what I said: “But, to be honest, I’ve never really talked much about what it REALLY takes to be successful as a developer. Because, while all that technical mumbo-jumbo is cool… none of it REALLY matters. Yes, you need to know how to do those things… but those things aren’t what MATTER most when it comes to determining the successful from the unsuccessful. Any monkey can learn to code.” Which… okay. Touch aggressive maybe. But, the point stands. I mentioned this is yesterday’s podcast (johnmorrisshow.com)… 51%

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John Morris August 20, 2018

Fake PHP jobs

So, from yesterday… There’s obviously lots of PHP jobs posted out there. But, Leon asked this in response to that video: “How many companies lie about their intentions to hire, to create a false shortage, to argue for more (cheaper) foreign workers?” I’ll keep it real. My gut reaction is: “Who gives a f!@#?” It’s not ALL of them. I know that. And the only way you’ll really know is to apply. It just feels like an excuse to me. And, that gets my inner grumpy old man outta his chair. Buuuuuuut. Let me be civil. I looked it up.

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John Morris August 18, 2018

PHP jobs you can apply for right now

I get a lot of PHP haters who love to drone on about there being no PHP work out there. Or, well-meaning PHP developers who are struggling a bit to find PHP work. Well, this massive list of PHP jobs should cure both: And, do let me know once you get hired. Gives me ammo for the PHP haters. 🙂 Later, John

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John Morris August 17, 2018

Seeking junior developer, 5+ years experience

Wait, what? This comes from a comment I got on YouTube: “Today I saw a job post Jr Front End-Developer 5+ years experience Angular 2.  Recruiters make it hard.” To which I replied: “Oh geez. Chicken and the egg problem.” Why does this happen? Yes, sometimes people are just dumb. But, you see it more than just to chalk it up to “everyone else, but me, is dumb.” This is what happens when an industry gets more competitive. The bar starts to raise. Until you see illogical things start happening. I mean, how are you supposed to get started as

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John Morris August 16, 2018

I suck at web development

Lack of confidence is incredibly common among web developers. But, not many talk about it. As I’ve said, confidence comes from competence… but how do you motivate yourself it put in the work to be competent when you’re feeling like you just suck at web development? That’s what I explain in this video. SkillShare 2-Month FREE trial: https://www.skillshare.com/r/user/johnmorris

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John Morris August 15, 2018

The final blow in the language wars

This really is the definitive answer in the language wars. I mean, people won’t stop battling over it. But, if you just want the answer… this is it. Here’s the question I got: “Do you think there is more job security in Java programming for software as opposed to web development? “I find web development enjoyable but have been focusing on Java because of concern for this… I’m switching careers from social work. Currently in school for CIS.” And, Jesse responded with this: “There is a lot of Java work in large corporate environments – I’ve worked as a consultant

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John Morris August 10, 2018

Tech jobs will soon be obsolete

Job security is an illusion. I’ve said this before. But, lemme rap a little more on it, because if you watch trends, it’s becoming more and more obvious, in my 1000% biased mind, that… Soon, the standard tech job will be mostly obsolete. Every year, Upwork puts out a “state of freelancing” report where they break down the raw data related to freelancing and independent contracting work. In 2017, 36% of the U.S. workforce was freelancing. By 2027, the majority of the U.S. workforce will freelance. More than that, 54% of the U.S. workforce said they’re not very confident that the

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John Morris August 9, 2018

Most developers are frauds

I want you to imagine this for a second. Imagine you’re from a dirty little town of less than 200 people in the middle of nowhere. You can from a dirt poor family that are outcasts in your community. And, you’re surrounded by rich kids. Who never miss an opportunity to remind you… That you don’t belong. Constantly made fun of. Constantly told you’re a dirty nobody. Constantly told that you’ll never amount to s!@#… so why even try? Imagine that was your childhood. Then, fast-forward 10 years and now you’re a developer.. or, at least, trying to be. And, you’re

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John Morris August 8, 2018

Why is PHP still being used to create websites?

This was pretty epic. A real drop-the-mic-er. It was this answer on Quora I saw the other day from Vakrokh. The question was: “Why is PHP still being used to create new websites? Why aren’t all new sites using more modern frameworks such as Django or Rails.” I love how these guys just throw “modern” in there. As if “modern” automatically equals “better”. Anyway, here was Vahrokh’s answer: “PHP is not still being used. ‘Still’ is a word suitable to 2012 PHP, when it has been under an heavy rework and to end users / programmers it looked like it was

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John Morris August 7, 2018

All the web development you’ve learned will be obsolete in a year

You ever watch the movie, Twister? There’s a scene at the end where they’re trapped in this small shed, tied to some pipes as a Tornado rolls right over them, tearing the shed to pieces. Debris everywhere. Legs flying in the air. Complete chaos. But, there’s a moment where, Helen Hunt, one of the main characters, can see all the way to the top of the tornado. And, it’s nice calm, blue sky. Almost peaceful. That’s sometimes how I feel. As I’ve talked about… all the chaos and change coming so rapidly in our industry. There’s so much to learn

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John Morris August 6, 2018

What’s your biggest fear about becoming a web developer?

Serious question. I made it into a Quora question, I’m asking you to answer: http://qr.ae/TUIJa1. Please answer it over there and not in a comment. I’m building this as a resource I can point people to. Because, I get a lot of this kind of stuff. And, I want to show people they’re not alone. Appreciate it. Later, John

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John Morris August 5, 2018

The cut-throat developers coming for you

Let’s talk competition. This follows on from my post from yesterday, but there are two big trends, in my mind, that are ramping up the competition you’re going to face as a developer. And, it’s only gonna get worse. First, is this the flip-side of what we talked about yesterday. All the new technologies. All the new languages. All the new frameworks. By the time you get one thing figured out, there’s three more new ones to learn. When you’re in this industry, it can be overwhelming, frustrating and a little bit scary. That’s one way to look at it.

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John Morris August 3, 2018

Not sure I’ll be a developer in 5 years

It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come. Back when I started in this developer thing, we were still using ugly-azz tables. There was no CSS. Most web pages were mainly just text. The fancy ones had a few images. Then, this thing called “Web 2.0” happened. PHP became a thing. JavaScript became more prominent. Before I knew what had happened, the internet as a I thought I knew it had completely changed. Today? It’s even worse. The kind of change I went through over a few years… Happens every couple months now. Take responsive design. That first article by

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John Morris August 2, 2018

Most Rich Tech People Had Wealthy Parents

This is another Chris Hawkes video. The gist of it is to go through all these rich tech people and show how they all had already rich or successful parents. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs and on and on. Okay? I never get the point this kind of stuff. He makes some awkward point at the end of it about… (I’m paraphrasing here): “This doesn’t mean you can’t be super successful, but most of these people we look up to had a lot of help.” Great. So, what? What’s somebody supposed to do

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John Morris August 1, 2018

The Code That Stopped An Entire State’s Phone Cards From Working

Job security is mostly an illusion. Any company can go out of business at any time. I was just reading this story the other day from this guy named Steve. This was back in the early 90s. He was working on this project that affected the entire state of Utah. And, had a project manager who didn’t know his arse from… Well, you know. For example… They had no systems for testing. None. Everything was just rolled live immediately. Bug fixes were just tested on production servers. And, his project manager thought it was no big deal. He talks about

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John Morris July 25, 2018

The Moment Every Developer Must Conquer

These are the most important posts I write. I got this YouTube comment from Sir Joelsuf: “I feel like I’m not learning enough and not doing enough. Its been pretty overwhelming. I wanted to replace a full time job with freelancing but its not working out. Working full time wasn’t either and I was getting nowhere and wasted 8 years of my life at a really bad job. I guess I’m at a crossroads.” This happens to every developer. Every developer I know anyway. There’s that moment… when things aren’t going how you imagined. You’re starting to doubt if you’re

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John Morris July 23, 2018

Why Are Developers Still Learning PHP?

Better question: “Why are people still asking why are people still learning PHP?” Sigh. This Quoran gave one of the better answers I’ve seen. Plus how you’ll know if #PHP does ever legit die. You can listen to the discussion here: https://www.johnmorrisshow.com/332/ #webdev

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John Morris July 8, 2018

The Dev Job Rejection That Would’ve Killed ME

I remember when I worked at the pizza joint back pre-coding days. I was in a similar boat. I’d stay up late hitting my head against the wall trying to figure all this coding stuff out. Already tons of self-doubt. If that had happened to me? I don’t know, man. That probably would’ve been it.

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John Morris July 7, 2018

Developer Meat-Gazing

All these amazing applications and frameworks. These coders with their big, beautiful code. And, I’d find myself gazing enviously at them.

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John Morris July 2, 2018

My interview with Ryan Carson, the founder of Treehouse

I just uploaded the interview I did with Ryan Carson. He’s the founder of Treehouse and has a ton of insight into our industry, what it takes to be a successful developer, what companies are looking for, practical steps for going from no experience and no resume to getting your first IT job… ​​​​​​​Plus, answers to the questions YOU asked… And, a bunch more. Watch the interview below: If you want to learn more about Treehouse and support the blog, go to https://johnmorrisonline.com/treehouse.

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John Morris November 13, 2017

Legacy

It’s this book I started reading. I was watching this interview the other day… it was the Rubin Report and Dave Rubin was interviewing Owen Benjamin (semi-famous comedian). Anyway, Benjamin mentioned this book called, The Screwtape Letters… And, it sounded interesting. So, I bought it. Anyway, it’s basically this collection of letters between these two demons talking about how to collect souls. Except, you only get one side of the letters… the letters from the demon named “Screwtape”… thus the name of the book. But, it’s not the content that’s got me. It’s the format. Screwtape ends every letter with:

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John Morris November 6, 2017

How Levi got hired in just one year

Got this from Levi: “I appreciate the blunt honesty of your emails. One of the reasons why I’ve been so successful at anything I put my mind to is because I don’t waste my time trying to find the easiest or cheapest path there. I know that if I want to get good at something quickly, I need to put in the long hard hours as well as some dollar. It’s been a year now since I’ve started coding. I’ve probably spent well around 400 or so dollars on learning resources alone. I’ve had a Lynda subscription for about 5

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John Morris June 1, 2017

The mobsters who helped build IBM’s software

That’s the legend, anyway. My little brother works for this company that provides consulting and migration services for a software called Tririga. Basically, what it does is make it easy for large companies to manage all of their real estate… lease, payments, all that. So, take a company like CVS that has 9,600 stores. That’s a lot of lease contracts, payments, etc. This software does it for them. So, I asked him the other day who invented Tririga. And, according to the legend… It was a group of mobsters in Las Vegas. Apparently, they owned a bunch of casinos and

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John Morris May 24, 2017

Nobody cares about your code

Take my Mr. Mom mini-van. It’s only a couple years old. 2015 I think. Not even a year into owning it, it suddenly started leaking. Talk about annoying. This is WHY we bought a new van… to avoid this nonsense. So, I took it to the shop and it turns out the oil filter had cracked (er something). It was from the last place that did an oil change. They’d put it on too tight. So yeah, never going back to that place. But, there’s the thing… I didn’t really care. I mean, I got it. But, I didn’t care

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John Morris May 23, 2017

How to become a Nostradamus of code (so you can get more IT jobs)

My wife and I have this game we play. Whenever we meet someone new, I always get some sort of impression about them. Like, maybe it’s a married couple and I’ll get the sense they’re really unhappy and will get divorced soon. Or maybe they’re pregnant, but haven’t told anyone. Or, sometimes it’s someone who is really nice and seems like a good dude, but I’m like, “Nah, he’s a dirtbag. I can tell.” It’s always something like that. And, then we wait and see… Whether I’m right or not. And, I nail it more often than not. Had a

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John Morris May 22, 2017

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Tim Covello

75 SEO and website clients now. My income went from sub zero to over 6K just last month. Tracking 10K for next month. Seriously, you changed my life.

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Michael Phoenix

By the way, just hit 95K for the year. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve taught me. You’ve changed my life. Thank you!

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Stephanie Korski

I started this 3 days ago, following John’s suggestions, and I gained the Upwork Rising Talent badge in less than 2 days. I have a call with my first potential client tomorrow. Thanks, John!

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Jithin Veedu

John is the man! I followed his steps and I am flooded with interviews in a week. I got into two Talent clouds. The very next day, I got an invitation from the talent specialists from Upwork and a lot more. I wanna shout out, he is the best in this. Thanks John for helping me out!

Divyendra Singh Jadoun

Divyendra Singh Jadoun

After viewing John’s course, I made an Upwork account and it got approved the same day. Amazingly, I got my first job the very same day, I couldn’t believe it, I thought maybe I got it by coincidence. Anyways I completed the job and received my first earnings. Then, after two days, I got another job and within a week I got 3 jobs and completed them successfully. All the things he says seem to be minute but have a very great impact on your freelancing career.

Sarah Mui

Sarah Mui

I’ve been in an existential crisis for the last week about what the heck I’m doing as a business owner. Even though I’ve been a business for about a year, I’m constantly trying to think of how to prune and refine services. This was very personable and enjoyable to watch. Usually, business courses like this are dry and hard to get through…. repeating the same things over and over again. This was a breath of fresh air. THANK YOU.

Waqas Abdul Majeed

Waqas Abdul Majeed

I’ve definitely learnt so much in 2.5 hours than I’d learn watching different videos online on Youtube and reading tons of articles on the web. John has a natural way of teaching, where he is passionately diving in the topics and he makes it very easy to grasp — someone who wants you to really start running your business well by learning about the right tools and implement them in your online business. I will definitely share with many of the people I know who have been struggling for so long, I did find my answers and I’m sure will do too.

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Scott Plude

I have been following John Morris for several years now. His instruction ranges from beginner to advanced, to CEO-level guidance. I have referred friends and clients to John, and have encouraged my own daughter to pay attention to what he says. All of his teachings create wealth for me (and happiness for my clients!) I can’t speak highly enough about John, his name is well known in my home.

Sukh Plaha

John is a fantastic and patient tutor, who is not just able to share knowledge and communicate it very effectively – but able to support one in applying it. However, I believe that John has a very rare ability to go further than just imparting knowledge and showing one how to apply it. He is able to innately provoke one’s curiosity when explaining and demonstrating concepts, to the extent that one can explore and unravel their own learning journey. Thanks very much John!

Mohamed Misrab

Misrab Mohamed

John has been the most important person in my freelance career ever since I started. Without him, I would have taken 10 or 20 years more to reach the position I am at now (Level 2 seller on Fiverr and Top Rated on Upwork).

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