A Wake Up Call for Computer Science Students

You're 13 minutes away from changing what your CS degree actually turns into. Not your GPA, not your intelligence, your trajectory. So, let me talk to you like a big brother for a minute. I want to tell you a story I don't usually tell. [music] And by the end of it, I want you to answer one question honestly. Am I hireable today as a junior developer? Two years ago, I was sitting in a glass meeting room in Kangnam. You know those rooms? Everything is transparent except the pressure. Floor to ceiling windows, city skyline, a table that costs more than my entire yearly salary back when I was teaching [music] English. And I caught my reflection in the glass and thought, "How did a guy who wasted his 20s end up here?" Because not that long before [music] that, I was 30, broke, lost, carrying the kind of quiet regret you don't post on Instagram. Then coding saved my life. Co hit. We built a mental health journaling [music] app. I led a team. And now an 8 figureure company was telling me, "Build your own team." 10 months, e-commerce platform, social network, 250,000 users waiting, real traffic, real money, real consequences. And I knew one thing. If I hire wrong, this collapses. So I started interviewing. Thousands of résumés on paper, all identical. CS degree, same stack, same projects, same bullet points. Then I asked one question. Tell me about a time your code failed in production. He froze, smiled, looked at the ceiling like the answer was written there. Our project didn't fail. We tested locally. [music] It worked perfectly and the room went silent. Not normal silence. The kind where you hear the air conditioner. Because in that moment, we all knew he had never shipped anything real. Not a dumb person, a smart person trained to survive exams in a job that requires surviving reality because real engineering is 2:07 a.m. Phone vibrating off the nightstand. Slack exploding, payment API timeout, users can't check out, money burning every minute, and no one lets you say, "Wait, let me review my lecture notes." You either understand the system or you don't. That's when I realized a degree is not signal. Proof is. Now, fast forward. I run a mentorship. And this is where Julian comes in. Julian was the student doing everything right. Good university, good grades, responsible, but every time we talked, he had the same plan. I'll start building after this semester. I want to finish this course first. I'm preparing. Preparing for what? For a future that only rewards people who ship. [music] And I could see the same thing I saw in that interview room. Potential zero signal. [music] Therefore, despite him doing everything he had been told to do, he was already on his third year postgraduation looking for a developer role with only a CS degree to show for it. So when he came into the mentorship, I asked him the question, if you had to get hired in 90 days, what would you build? Because for the [music] first time, we weren't talking about classes. We were talking about value. That was his turning point. Not dramatic, quiet. He stopped trying [music] to be a good student and started trying to be a useful engineer. First real project, not [music] perfect. It broke constantly. Deployment failed. O didn't work. Database wiped once, but something changed. His messages changed from I finished another course to users can now reset their passwords. Prod bug fixing it. Need to redesign [music] this flow. That's when you know because the language of a builder is different from the language of a student. Time started disappearing for him. Not because he was forced because the work mattered. And within months the same person who was preparing had a deployed system, [music] real features, real problems, real thinking, signal. And once you have signal, you stop begging for [music] opportunities. You start choosing them. Around month four, we started getting some [music] real heat because by then he had proof. Three fullscale apps [music] with users from our community and multiple drafts of resume specifically tailored each time they were sent out to [music] different types of companies. The result was five interviews for every 40 applications. That's the part no one tells you. Hireability [music] is not about finishing your degree. It's about becoming valuable before it ends. [music] Because when I was hiring, I never said, "Oh, here's a guy or girl with 4.0 GPA. Give them [music] production." No, that didn't mean [ __ ] I said, "This person has users. This [music] person has broken things and fix them. This person understands reality." AI made this even more [music] brutal. If your identity is, I write code line by line, you are competing with [music] a tool. But if you're the person who can look at a vague idea and say, "If we build this first, we reduce risk." You become the person the tool serves, that's [music] engineering, thinking in systems. And Julian learned that early. Not because he was the smartest, because he became the [music] most useful. So, let me tell you the uncomfortable truth. Most CS students are [music] not behind. They are under signaled. They're busy. Perfect notes. another certification, another tutorial. All the things that feel productive and produce nothing the market can see. Your degree is a tool. Your portfolio is an asset. Your thinking is the currency. Frameworks expire. Prove compound. And here's the part I need you to hear. You have the biggest advantage in the world right now. Time. Early time. every semester without a real system pushes your job one year away. Julian understood that. And once he did, everything accelerated. Not because he learned more, because he started building in public, shipping, getting feedback, working like someone was already depending on his code. That's when a student becomes an engineer. Responsibility, ownership, reality. In the month of February, I received a message from Julian. He did it, man. He got the six-f figureure job at the government contracting company as a full-time software engineer in his home [music] state. And I couldn't be more proud. So, this video is not me calling you out. It's me calling you forward. You don't need another course. You need one real system, one that proves someone can trust you. So, here's what I want you to do. Close the 10th tutorial. Open your laptop and ask what can I build that makes me hireable? Ship it, break it, fix it, let users touch it, feel that weight. Because the moment you feel that responsibility, you stop being a CS student with a degree and you start becoming the engineer companies trust with the future. Julian did it. You can too. And if you stick with me, we're going to get you there. So comment below. I'm starting today. Tell me where you are. [music] Tell me what you're stuck on. I'll answer every single one. And remember, if I can do it, you can do it, too. Coding saves lives. >> Yeah. So, I was like a computer science graduate, >> you know, >> couldn't find any, you know, couldn't like land any interviews or anything. Struggling a bit, >> right? >> Um, did get one interview, but I like failed it miserably, of course. Um, so I was doing like small freelance work, but obviously, you know, you want the after doing that for a bit, you want the full-time like developer thing, >> right? >> And then >> yeah, I guess I came across you guys. I saw like the YouTube channels before you guys were at like 10K or something. >> Mhm. >> And I just liked your guys' energy. >> And then I learned about the like program that you guys do to like help people out like me. >> Are there people with like degrees that are struggling or people currently in school or people looking to just start out? >> And yeah, I just applied and >> accepted to your guys' program. Yeah. So, I guess I like started applying like a couple months ago. I had only said I was only trying to like apply for jobs that I was like highly qualified for. So, I said only about like only 30 or 30 or 40. >> But, I was able to essentially like get a bunch of like interviews. I got like interviews with five different companies and then eventually the first one they gave me an offer, I just jumped at it. So, yeah. It's like a It's like a government contractor. So, the interview process was like the first was like a phone screening. >> It's like over Google team or Microsoft Teams or Google Meets, one of those two. >> Yeah. >> Um, so then that went well and then I was invited to the like on-site which was it consisted of like a technical round and then like an HR round. So I the technical round was just like talking about my projects. Um and then also you know the live coding question >> ask one of those like a lead code style like ask question. Um and then yeah so then after that they essentially it was the like the HR round and I was just ask like the simple you know like HR questions everyone is used to hearing about. >> Yeah. Right. Right. And then yeah, and then like few days later, I got the got the offer email. >> That was nice. >> Yeah, that's the faster than uh we expected, which is really awesome to hear, man. And >> that's just a testament to all the work that you put in here. Like um >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Like you put in a lot of work that you created like what how many projects? Two or three. They're all really polished. >> Yeah, like three or four. >> Yeah, three or four. Yeah. And uh not many people can do that within just a couple of months, but uh you really wanted it and that's what it shows you know in the quality of um you know the job that you were able to get and also like how many of those 40 applications that you sent out how many of them you know you were able to get interviews for which is the ratio is quite amazing actually. >> Yeah it's good. >> Yeah. So my main thing is I just didn't know what to learn, right? >> Like >> you look at the jobs like the the jobs all over the place. There's so many different jobs, right? Like they all ask for cuz you know the the whole meme of like the tech jobs, you know, they ask for like 15 different things. >> Yeah. >> I just didn't know what like core like tech stack that I should like learn >> or whatever. >> And I also wanted like guidance on like you know the structure on the structure of like how like the project should look. I guess. >> Yeah. >> Um I knew I needed to build projects. Like I said, I just didn't know like the tech stack or like the structure. And of course, I wanted like some help. Is that help with that as well with someone like Phil? >> Yeah. >> Um was like of course like experienced for years with with this type of stuff, >> right? For sure. For sure. >> You know, Julian, you know, he was like one of the only one-on- ones I accepted over the my trip to Hawaii. >> I remember getting to my Airbnb. >> Yeah. And I was like, I got I got to talk to him for a second. And uh you know, he was he he built a bunch of stuff. He built some like interview helper. He built um you know, a bunch of stuff. He helped me with a couple stuff things. And uh now he has a job, full-time job.

🤝 Discover how to make $8,000 a month in tech: https://letphil.com/ 🌐 Let Phil's FREE Community Discord Channel: https://discord.gg/RBhnbd3kxv 📸 Follow my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letphil.code/ 00:00 My Big Brother Advice to CS Grads 07:47 Free Sauce From My Mentee