The Scrimba Podcast

πŸŽ™ About the episode

Meet Jamie Baker πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§! Jamie is a recently hired new developer who used to be a butcher. Recently, he took the plunge to leave his growing business and, at 38, start his first front-end developer job after only interviewing at one company!

This is a story of perseverance and knowing when to niche down. You will hear how Jamie started coding, why he loves CSS, and how he fell in love with Shopify. You will learn why you should be enthusiastic about the tech you're working with and why if you're sending too many resumes, that might mean you need a better strategy. Jamie also talks about his typical day as a developer working at Velstar, a Shopify agency,  why honesty and people skills matter, and why you shouldn't sleep on domain knowledge. There are also some fun quick-fire questions!

πŸ”— Connect with Jamie
⏰ Timestamps
  • How Jamie started learning CSS by hosting a football forum (01:54)
  • How Jamie landed his first paid gig while knowing only CSS (03:16)
  • How Jamie decided to go from a craft butcher shop owner to front-end developer (and discovered Scrimba) (04:33)
  • Jamie learned to code alongside his day job (07:29)
  • His butcher shop had a Shopify website, and Jamie loved it (08:01)
  • Today, Jamie works in a Shopify agency (09:17)
  • How Jamie decided to narrow down his focus on Shopify-related jobs (09:58)
  • Community break! (11:32)
  • How Jamie left his business and started a coding job at the age of 38 (13:11)
  • The job Jamie got was the only job he applied for! (13:54)
  • Jamie's personality and people skills played the biggest role when it came to him getting the job (14:29)
  • Find what excites you! (18:44)
  • Quick-fi e questions: Favorite coding courses? Is CSS a language? Why is everybody wearing headphones? (19:28)
  • What Jamie's typical day at a Shopify agency looks like, and why you should put yourself in the shoes of the user (21:50)
  • Why you should be honest with your prospective employers (23:27)
  • Has the career change been worth it for Jamie? (17:00)
  • Next week: Saron Yitbarek, the founder of CodeNewbie! (29:20)
🧰 Resources Mentioned
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Creators & Guests

Host
Alex Booker
Host of The Scrimba Podcast
Producer
Jan Gregory Arsenovic
Producer of the Scrimba Podcast

What is The Scrimba Podcast?

Learn from inspiring developers about how they found meaningful and fulfilling work that that also pays them well. On The Scrimba Podcast, you'll hear motivational advice and job-hunting strategies from developers who've been exactly where you are now. We talk to developers about their challenges, learnings, and switching industries in the hopes of inspiring YOU. This is the podcast that provides the inspiration, tools, and roadmaps to move from where you are to work that matters to you and uniquely fits your strengths and talents.

Jamie Baker:
The industry my business was in is a rapidly growing industry. It was a lot of work, a lot of stress, and I thought, I just don't enjoy this. I don't love this anymore. I knew I loved coding and I thought, do I push myself real hard for a year or so to be able to do something that I really love for the rest of my working life? And I thought yeah, let's do it.

Alex Booker:
Hello, and welcome to the Scrimba Podcast. On this weekly show, we speak with successful devs about their advice on learning to code and getting your first junior dev job. I'm Alex, and today I'm joined by Jamie Baker, who funnily enough, used to be a butcher before learning to code on Scrimba, and recently landed his first junior developer job. Jamie applied to one job and he got it. Lucky? I don't think so. Jamie had an actual strategy, which was to transfer his technical knowledge of Shopify and empathy as a Shopify user to work at an agency developing, you guessed it, Shopify websites for clients, and it worked a treat. Now, Jamie gets to earn while he learns and experience how software is made firsthand. Of course, it wasn't an easy transition and you'll learn about some of Jamie's challenges and how he overcame them in this episode. Basically, at the age of 38, Jamie decided to leave his own butchering business behind to follow his passion for coding. That's how serious he was. Until he actually got the job as a developer, he was learning to code alongside his full-time work, which is really tough.
Let's see what we can learn from Jamie about managing your time. Oh, and please don't forget to share the episode if you like it. It's a free podcast with no ads. The more listeners we get, the bigger and better guest you will get to learn from. Thank you. Here's Jamie.

Jamie Baker:
I've always been interested in nerdy things, if you like. I was a part of an online forum for a football team and we had a lot of friends on there. It got shut down and we were, what are we going to do now kind of thing. So I thought, why not? I'll give it a go. So I set up a community site on a really old platform called NING, which I believe still exists. It was quite restricted in what you can change. You could only change CSS. So I built that up and they had their own creators community with other people and everyone was just hacking the hell out of their sites using CSS and nothing more, which is quite a challenge. People got really, really creative in changing layouts and things. Obviously, you couldn't do any JavaScript. You couldn't edit the HTML, [inaudible 00:02:40]. People find these really cool workarounds. I think that's when I fell in love with CSS, which a lot of developers hate, but I absolutely love.

Alex Booker:
I'm quite surprised to hear you mention that you love it right off the bat. You're right, a lot of people don't like it. What do you like about CSS so much?

Jamie Baker:
I was going to say the simplicity, but that's probably quite controversial. I think it's a instance of you want that to be read, you tell it to be read, it's read. Then from there, there's so many things you can do that just happen without too much in the way of lines of code. That's what really drew me into coding.

Alex Booker:
Were you doing this professionally or was it just a hobby with your mates?

Jamie Baker:
It was just a hobby and then I got approached by someone that was running a site. It's a guy down in Cornwall, Robin, who's in his 70s, really, really nice guy. Asked for some help with his site. He runs a site that deals with PIEs, not in the traditional eating fashion, psychologically informed environments, which is a pioneering method used in homelessness and social care. It's all about creating the right environment to avoid conflict and make people think and feel comfortable. It's quite interesting when you get into it, but probably not relevant. Robin asked me somehow with that and that was my first paid job and I absolutely loved it. Me and him sparked up a great friendship. We've met a few times and we created this lovely site. That was probably eight years ago or so. He's actually just retired from it. That was my first professional taste, if you like.
Then from there, I did solo bits and bobs, just some small sites for people, mostly on WordPress because I didn't know any more than a bit of CSS in all honesty. Well, that was the first toe-dipping into coding and I loved it.

Alex Booker:
Well, that's really interesting in terms of timeline, because it sounds like you had your first exposure to CSS and a little bit of freelance work eight years ago, but you're only now just getting your first full-time professional job as a developer. So that tells us that maybe you ramped up and started taking a career change more seriously in the last year or two. What were you doing as your full-time job and then what caused you to shift gears and focus only on programming?

Jamie Baker:
Back then, I was working as a butcher, [inaudible 00:05:02] manager for a butcher shop, which I'd done for quite a large part of my life. I fell into it by accident through a Saturday job at school. It got to a point where I was [inaudible 00:05:13], should I go into coding full-time? Should I still do this? An opportunity come up just over six years ago now to open my own shop. So myself and a good friend of mine started a business, butchers. We did quite a lot online, which I set everything up on a Shopify store, obviously through lockdown, and therefore, we got really, really busy and the business expanded quite quick. Sadly, I, for my own mental health, had to choose between coding and running the business. So the coding side got put to one side, and over time I was like, I miss it, I miss it. Then Robin, the guy I mentioned earlier, got in touch with me towards the end of 2021 for some help with something and I helped him. I was like, oh, my god, I've missed this so much.
When you just get your teeth into something, you're like, oh, I really, really miss this. So I said to my wife, "Listen, I want to try and do this full-time before it's too late." I'm 38 now, so probably quite late to get into a full-time coding job. Just after Christmas, so early last year, I thought I'd start a course. I know I needed to learn some JavaScript and be able to write coding more industry standard rather than just hacking away [inaudible 00:06:30] at things knowing nobody else see what's in the background. Yeah, I started a course then and it was just watch a video, walk away, try and do something, and it just didn't sink in. Then I stumbled upon Scrimba and I was like, oh, this is cool. You can pause it and change the code. And from there, that was my evenings. In between working 50, 60 hours a week, my evenings were spent with Scrimba, so me and Per were very close.

Alex Booker:
Oh, I think a lot of people would feel the same way. You spend a very intimate period, hours and hours probably with your favorite Scrimba teachers. It's cool to see because when you finish the modules, you definitely feel grateful for all the time you spent together. I see in some of the events we host, people see Bob Ziroll or Tom Chant and they're like, "Oh, my god, Tom, Bob, I love your courses." You can tell there's a unique bond there.

Jamie Baker:
It's weird because the teachers never met you, never spoke to you directly yet you feel like you totally know them when you've been on that journey together.

Alex Booker:
Were you doing this alongside your full-time job, were you?

Jamie Baker:
I was indeed, yes, which was pretty tricky. A lot of late nights and a lot of tiredness. I also got my [inaudible 00:07:38] last September, which ended up with quite an intense run-up as I ramped up towards getting a job, which I wasn't really expecting so soon in all honesty, but it all happened quite quickly. Yeah, it's pretty tricky learning, especially as you're a bit older, dare I say, in between running a business and working those long hours, but I did it somehow.

Alex Booker:
Did I understand right, your butcher had a Shopify website, so someone could literally go online, order a sirloin, order some beef cheeks, whatever it happens to be, and then your business would send that to them HelloFresh style and some ice probably to their door. That's pretty unique.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, it's cool. We actually delivered everything ourselves. Originally, we were just doing click and collect, and then when COVID hit, we decided it was safer to close the shop and just deliver. So we got a van, got a driver, and just made all the deliveries ourselves.

Alex Booker:
I guess you don't have to be super technical to create a Shopify account and spin up a basic store, but knowing your nature, liking to tinker with things, especially CSS, I'm sure it was too much to resist the temptation to adapt it a little bit for your needs. Is that where some of the coding part came back into your life and ramped up a little bit?

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, absolutely. It was great that it was my baby, that website. A lot of the websites I've built in the past for other people maybe were pretty static, just basic business sites. So to have a live site with the customer interaction and sales coming through was really cool and it was a good peering into the bigger, busier side of online trade, if you like.

Alex Booker:
Well, I happen to know that the job you ended up getting, it is like developing a Shopify website essentially. Am I right?

Jamie Baker:
We're a Shopify agency.

Alex Booker:
Oh, okay.

Jamie Baker:
We build for quite a lot of big brands now. We've got French Connection, Castor, Avon, and a few football teams and whatnot.

Alex Booker:
No way.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, it's really cool. The business is only, I think they're about seven years old now and the guys here that started it seen a niche that Shopify was emerging and getting bigger, but there was no agencies dedicated to purely Shopify. So they spun something up and it's gone from strength to strength. It's a really exciting place to work.

Alex Booker:
How did the opportunity come about, Jamie?

Jamie Baker:
From listening to the Scrimba podcast, I knew it wasn't easy to get your first developer job listening to other people's stories. So I [inaudible 00:10:09], how can I narrow this down? What do I like? Then I thought, I wonder what Shopify jobs are. Are there any specialist Shopify jobs? Because you can have much less people applying for those, especially as I had a few years of experience running a store, although not on the coding side so much. It's that experience of the platform and how everything works and the benefits of. So I did a course on Liquid, Shopify's template, single language, I'm not sure if you are familiar with, and went from there really. I've seen the job come up here and applied for it and just forgot about it. I didn't think I was anywhere near ready to apply. I [inaudible 00:10:52] Scrimba for about six months at the time, and that was around work, so it wasn't progressing as rapidly as I'd like anyhow.
I totally forgot I applied for it and somebody got in touch with me about God, five or six weeks later, said, "Do you want to have a chat?" So we had an initial chat, then a second chat, and then they asked me to do a test, which was the week before my wedding.

Alex Booker:
Oh, my goodness. This was like a take on task or did you jump on a Zoom call?

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, it was take on. So I said, "Listen, I'm getting married next week," and they said, "Ah, it's okay. Take all the time you want. It's fine." They were really, really cool, really understanding.

Jan Arsenovic:
Coming up on the Scrimba Podcast, did Jamie got a job because he was lucky or-

Jamie Baker:
I've always loved Shopify.

Alex Booker:
I will be right back with Jamie in just a second, but first, Jan the producer and I wanted to read some of your feedback and do some shout-outs to the Scrimba podcast community. Jan, did you read that one from Apple Podcasts where the person said I was a charming host already?

Jan Arsenovic:
I think I did actually. Even though some people would apparently like to hear it again, I'm going to read three other things today. Alex88 on Apple Podcast says, "Love it. Great advice for junior developers and so many inspiring stories. Thank you." On Twitter, Cal Codes said, "The Scrimba podcast is easily the best podcast for newbie developers and even professionals out there. Practical advice from real world people who have gone through the exact same thing you're currently going through just has a very reassuring effect. And the Coding Mermaid shared the podcast episode with Randall Kanna and wrote, "What a great podcast. If you're just starting your career as a developer, I strongly advise you to hear it." The episode's title is Becoming a Standout Developer with Randall Kanna.

Randall Kanna:
When I got onto the hiring manager's side, I realized so many people didn't know what I thought were the basic things in getting the job.

Jan Arsenovic:
I'm going to link to it in the show notes. If you're learning something from the show, please tweet about it if you're on Twitter. You can also leave us a rating or a review in your podcast app of choice. Next week on the show, we'll have Saron Yitbarek, the founder of CodeNewbie. Stay tuned because I will play a clip at the end of this episode. But for now, we're back to the interview with Jamie.

Alex Booker:
These take home tasks can be tricky because if you do a Zoom interview, it's like 60 minutes in the calendar, done and dusted, but with a take on task, sometimes there's guidance about how long to spend on it, but you want to put your best foot forward and deliver something you're proud of. I can easily take evenings and evenings to come to life.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, of course. It did take a lot of work. There's a few tricky elements in there, but I give it a good go and put a lot of hours in and they come back and said it was absolutely brilliant, which was pretty heart-melting at the time. It was great. So we had another chat. It went from there and suddenly, I was leaving my business and starting a coding job.

Alex Booker:
Absolutely incredible, man. That's so inspiring as well, changing career at 38, but also you've built a successful business, it sounds like, and you spent a lot of your life dedicating yourself to the trade and the craft, and then obviously you felt like it was time for a change. A lot of people feel that way, but they don't actually action out. Meanwhile, you learned to code in the evenings, kept an eye out for opportunities and it sounds like they were pretty keen on you as well, which must have felt amazing.

Jamie Baker:
Oh, it was. It was really good. It was the only job I applied for too,-

Alex Booker:
What?!

Jamie Baker:
... which is pretty crazy.

Alex Booker:
You're serious?

Jamie Baker:
I know.

Alex Booker:
Talk about that. Was that a luck thing or do you think that maybe you just focus your sniper scope, so to speak, and just pick the one you felt you had a fair chance out?

Jamie Baker:
I think it was luck and timing. As I said earlier, this business is rapidly growing and they're constantly looking for new developers, so they were willing to give someone a chance, I guess, just to get another body at the desk. That obviously worked in my favor to have done myself down massively there, but that worked in my favor. So yeah, I think there was a lot of luck. I almost felt a bit guilty because I've listened to the Scrimba podcast and seeing people's struggles on Discord and whatnot saying, "Yeah, we've applied for thousands of jobs, never heard anything back." I think I would say my personality and people skills played the biggest part. It may not be the same at every business, but there's a big ethos here about getting the right person, not so much... Well, obviously, they want people that can code and so forth, but it's all about the person and attitude. So that, I really, really love that. That played into my hands too because I'm very much that kind of guy.
So that gave me a lot of confidence in making the move to this business. So yeah, I guess things just fell into place really naturally for both me and the business. It's worked out great. So yeah, definitely some luck there.

Alex Booker:
I think when it comes to personality and culture fit and stuff like that, it's not about everybody being the same, it's about finding a good fit. When you join a company, when you do an interview and you feel like you're really getting along with the team and the interviewers, unless you're a bit deluded, it's probably quite a mutual feeling and that could be a super, super positive indicator that things are going to work out. Like yes, you need a baseline of competency, obviously, but your personality and how you vibe, essentially, the energy you have with the team, that can make a massive difference as I think you're alluding to. You had this relevant experience for Shopify, and I really want to zone in on that because I think it's super interesting. When you learn to code and you follow any coding course, the only place that it makes any sense to start is with the technologies. You start with JavaScript, HTML, CSS. You move forward like that.
But companies don't really necessarily care about the technology. They care about solving problems for their customers, whether that's agency work or whether that's building a product, for example. Then there are lots of opportunities to specialize and work around specific tooling or use cases or domains. In your case, you already had this experience with the tool Shopify and the domain around e-commerce. You could empathize probably with some of the problems and challenges that the agency customers now have. That's not something that someone can learn overnight necessarily. I think companies will sometimes recognize your potential and your technological skills, even though you don't have experience in the space. They might say, okay, well so-and-so has got all the skills. We believe they can be trained up. But obviously, if you're going into a competitive market, they will probably honestly choose the person who already has that experience if they're out there.
What this represents to me, Jamie, I think is a really interesting strategy, whether you were doing it intentionally or not. It's just that instead of learning broad technologies like JavaScript, which of course is the foundation, but going one step beyond that and focusing on a specific toolkit or solution, I think that makes you infinitely more hireable. Yes, you'll be less perfect. You'll limit the number of jobs that you're perfect for. So instead of applying to a thousand jobs, maybe every month, if there's just 10 or 20 that suit your specific use case. But I think your conversion rates when you apply to those jobs, your likelihood of success is going to be so much higher. I think so many people try to be all things to all people, whether that's writing a blog post, whether that's creating a product or positioning yourself as a job applicant. But if you can actually narrow down your focus a little bit, that's a very valid strategy. If I was to hazard a guess, maybe, of course, there's an element of timing here.
I never like to use the word luck on the Scrimba podcast because I think luck is what happens when hard work meets opportunity. There's no denying you put in the legwork, but you see what I'm saying, right? That fit was perfect and it's no wonder you managed to narrow in on it more easily. When someone says, "Alex, I applied to hundreds of jobs, thousands of jobs," all that says is that they didn't have a strategy.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, I guess so. Finding that niche really did help. It's not just finding a niche. I wanted it to be something that excites me, something that I know a little bit about and something I'd be really passionate to get involved with. I've always loved Shopify, their whole brand and their documentation, guides, constant updates to the platform all the time. It's a really exciting space. They're constantly developing the platform. It's not just putting together, there you go, we'll maybe update some bits here and there in a couple of years. It's constantly changing and evolving and getting bigger and better. So it is far from boring.

Alex Booker:
What do you say, Jamie, we do some quick fire questions and then when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about your day in the life working at an agency?

Jamie Baker:
All right. Yeah, let's do it.

Alex Booker:
I sprung this one on you, didn't I?

Jamie Baker:
I know.

Alex Booker:
Who is your favorite coding teacher and/or coding course that you remember?

Jamie Baker:
It's difficult. As I mentioned earlier, Per was always very close to me and Kevin Powell, Mr. CSS himself. I got a lot of inspiration from Kevin. I actually dropped him an email when I got the job and he sent a lovely email back, which was like a nerd hero sort of wow. His overwhelming passion for CSS was something that really, really drew me in, especially as I said earlier, a lot of people are, "Ugh. I hate CSS. Why is it so complicated?" And Kevin just lives and breathes it, which was really, really inspiring.

Alex Booker:
Per and Kevin, combined GOATs, greatest of all time.

Jamie Baker:
Oh, yeah.

Alex Booker:
What was your first coding language, Jamie?

Jamie Baker:
CSS, if you call it a language. That's a controversial thing, isn't it?

Alex Booker:
Yes, yes, yes. CSS is a coding language. What technology have you got your eyes on to learn next?

Jamie Baker:
I'd like to learn React eventually. I'm not pressuring myself too much, but we're doing quite a few headless builds here now, and it seems to be getting more and more popular and dare I say, standard-ish. So that's something I'd really like to get involved with, but I'm not going to kill myself to learn it just yet because I'm still learning a hell of a lot of other things.

Alex Booker:
Do you listen to music while you're coding?

Jamie Baker:
Yes. Yeah. That was interesting. When I first started my job, actually, I come into the office and everyone's just sat with the headphones on. I was like, oh, I don't like this. This is really weird. But now I put my headphones on. I get it. It all makes sense now.

Alex Booker:
Do you listen to something in particular?

Jamie Baker:
Whilst coding, I've recently taken to Lo-Fi.

Alex Booker:
Yeah. Oh, you're a true coder now, Jamie.

Jamie Baker:
I'd never heard of Lo-Fi until maybe six months ago. It's good to have something constant in the background, but not to the point that you pay attention to it, if you like. Yeah, it's quite a weird genre of music that seems to fit just right for coding.

Alex Booker:
100%. All right. That'll do us for our quick-fire questions. Thank you, Jamie. Hope that wasn't too much.

Jamie Baker:
Sure, thanks.

Alex Booker:
So yeah, coming back to your work at the agency, it's a really interesting space. We're talking a little bit about strategy in this episode and how to plan your hand for a job. Another vertical or way you can look at this is what kind of company do you want to work for? Do you want to build an innovative product? Do you want to work on a product you already know? Do you maybe want to be a freelancer or take that one step further and work at an agency and do a whole variety of client work? Maybe you can help people decide and get an insight into what it's like to work as a new developer at an agency. What does a typical day look like once you arrive at the office or sign on for the day?

Jamie Baker:
I guess it'll vary from agency to agency a little, but I will give you my instance. It's pretty laid back here in terms of clocking on clocking coffee. It's quite flexible hours. We're able to work from home as is when we want. Day-to-day is arrive at the office, pretty relaxed, coffee, have a chat with guys, and then we get to work, if you like. I mostly work on Shopify sections. So each page, if you like, is broken down into customizable sections.

Alex Booker:
Sounds like components, maybe.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah. Basically, it's just stack components if you like. Then we could have a featured product, for example, and we put this code, the settings into each section so the customer can then... We try and make things as flexible as possible, which as a previous store owner, I absolutely love. There were so many times on my old business side where I was like, "Oh, I wish I could change this. I wish I could change this." So being able to put all these different settings in for people, you're like, oh, they're going to love that.

Alex Booker:
This is what I mean about the empathy part. You can just put yourself in the shoes of the user so easily because you weren't the user not that long ago. How does Shopify work? Is it partly an added, like a gooey type editor where you configure things and then I guess based on your description, you're also doing CSS and maybe a little bit of JavaScript as well?

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, we actually use Tailwind, which I'd never used until I was here. I was a bit, oh, I'm not sure on this. I've looked at it a few times and thought, oh, I don't know. I think I prefer Raw CSS. And I actually love it now. It's so well-thought-out and clever. It's really impressive. But yeah, well, I say quite a lot of JavaScript. I've been allowed to take baby steps with it, really. They've been really understanding. I was honest from the start, which I would advise to anyone too. The feedback I got from my interview was the honesty. I didn't pretend that I knew loads of JavaScript. I said I know basic. I've done bits and bobs. I've made the, oh, what did we do on the Scrimba? I can't remember now. Oh, the blackjack game and so on, but nothing huge. I need to learn more. I want to learn more. They really appreciated the honesty there. Why not be honest? We could get a couple of months into the job and they come back and say, "Hang on. You said you could do that."

Alex Booker:
Oh, that would be so bad.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, exactly. So I would say to anyone, don't try and block yourself. Just be honest and say you're learning. It's more that attitude of wanting to learn and wanting to progress that I found people want to see and hear. You are not expected to know JavaScript inside out.

Alex Booker:
What you're essentially doing when you boil it down is selling yourself. For example, you go to a car dealership and you ask, can this car do that thing? Well, if the dealer can't buy, they won't be like, "Oh, yeah, I can totally go as fast as Lamborghini," but they might redirect your attention and say, "Listen, no, it's not going to go as fast as a Lamborghini, but have you seen these seats? They're so comfortable. There's no harm in controlling your own narrative. So you say, "No. Honestly, I haven't done much JavaScript, but however, it's something that I'm actively looking to improve. Here are the steps I've taken so far and here are a few reasons why I think I'm excited to learn it and why I believe this company will be a great opportunity to learn JavaScript while also delivering value in the areas I already have expertise with, namely CSS and Shopify that has value and weight," and it will carry you through the process in lieu of those hard skills, I think.

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, totally. Just be honest. If people don't think they're ready to take you on, then that's not the company for you. If people appreciate your honesty, they know you want to develop and they want to help you develop. Because another thing that was quite apparent was they wanted to mold people into their way of working, their practices. So in some ways, if you don't know quite as much on something, you can't be set in your ways. You can be groomed, for want of a better word, and shaped into the way the company works.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, no, I'm just googling the word groomed because I totally agree, it sounds a bit dodgy, but I think it's perfect.

Jamie Baker:
Don't do that. Don't do that, Alex. Not even [inaudible 00:26:35].

Alex Booker:
I think it's technically valid. Yeah, no, great point though. You're malleable and you have the opportunity to adapt their practices, and of course, you want to demonstrate that you're someone who can take feedback and learn, and you're humble and you're willing, and all these things. These sound awesome. Honestly, it sounds like things couldn't have really gone better for you, Jamie. It sounds like it's been a wicked couple of years, getting married, getting a new job, getting the first job you applied to and so on. I can't shake this feeling that this was a monumental transition. A lot of people aspire to own their own business. They build a career and it's very difficult to leave. If you had to reflect on it, what was the core driver to make this plunge and commit to learning to code, and has it been worth it for you?

Jamie Baker:
Yeah, it's been totally worth it. I think the industry my business was in isn't a rapidly growing industry and I was a little unsure long term how things would pan out. It was a lot of work, a lot of stress, and I thought, I don't enjoy this. I don't love this anymore. I knew I loved coding. That was obviously a big, big driver, and I thought, do I push myself real hard for a year or so to be able to do something that I really love for the rest of my working life? And I thought, yeah, let's do it. We can try. I suppose being a bit older and calmer about it really helped too. I think if you are a school-leaver, you are putting that huge pressure on yourself to start your career, whereas being a, I suppose I had the more mature outlook on it, where I would take my time and the right job would come along and I wouldn't stress too much, which bizarrely made things happen really quickly. Yeah, it's been a pretty crazy year as you alluded to.

Alex Booker:
How does wrangling CSS compare to wrangling carcasses and whatever else you would do as a butcher?

Jamie Baker:
It's certainly cleaner.

Alex Booker:
I wanted to say, how does butchering a cow compare to butchering CSS, but I didn't want to comment on your CSS skills.

Jamie Baker:
All the jokes have been made here already, don't worry.

Alex Booker:
Well, Jamie, I think that was such a powerful message to end on. You're spending a year to learn a skill that you'll hopefully use for the rest of your life. It seems like a pretty good investment whenever you put it like that. I really appreciate you taking the time to come out as well and tell us more about your story and working at an agency. Thank you so much.

Jamie Baker:
Thanks, Alex. It's been absolutely great to be on. I've listened to so many episodes of this podcast and found so much inspiration and learning from it. So if I've given a little bit back there, I'm really, really happy to.

Jan Arsenovic:
That was the Scrimba Podcast. Check out the show notes for the resources from this episode and the ways to connect with Jamie. Next week on the show, Saron Yitbarek, developer, speaker, podcaster, coder, entrepreneur, and founder of CodeNewbie.

Saron Yitbarek:
I feel like my road to being a developer was very choppy and definitely not planned at all. I don't really remember what I wanted to be when I was a kid, but by the time I got to college, my intention was to be a doctor, and so I was going to go to med school, much to my parents' delight. They're both pharmacists, so doctor is the ultimate goal. Pharmacist is like second prize. So they were very excited for me to go for gold. That was the plan. It wasn't until I actually shadowed a doctor, I think it was either end of junior year, beginning of senior year that I realized what the job actually entailed and decided that I, in fact, did not want to be a doctor. I really wish I had done that research a little bit earlier and didn't wait until I was almost graduating to figure that out.

Jan Arsenovic:
Saron is in the next episode of the Scrimba podcast. So if you made it this far, please subscribe so you don't miss it. You can find the show wherever you listen to podcasts. The Scrimba podcast is hosted by Alex Booker, and you can find his Twitter handle in the show notes. I've been Jan the producer, and we will see you next week.