S1E1: Knowing when you’re ready to make money with your skills with Adda Birnir

Laurence:
Hey, it's Laurence Bradford from the Learn to Code With Me podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For this very first episode, I am so happy to have Adda Birnir, the co-founder and CEO of Skillcrush. In our conversation, we talk about Adda's own journey from photo editor to coder. We also talk about how to know when you're ready to start making money with your own coding skills. As some of the listeners may know, I write regularly for the Skillcrush blog. So I was really excited to get to connect with Adda on Skype. What I really love about Adda is how she started off doing something that is seemingly so different from coding and programming and ended up making a total career shift into the world of tech. And not only that, she also started her own company to help teach others these really in demand digital skills. Alright, let's get into the interview.

Hey guys, I'm here today with Adda, the founder of Skillcrush. Adda, thanks so much for talking with me.

Adda:
Thanks for having me.

Laurence:
So, could you introduce yourself quickly?

Adda:
Yeah, my name is Adda Birnir. I am the founder and CEO of Skillcrush and we are an online education company that works with people who are making a career change and who are interested in making a change into the technology field. So we help people learn new skills and then figure out how to put them to work and make money doing them.

Laurence:
That's awesome! So, I want to kind of backtrack a bit and talk about what you were doing before you created Skillcrush and really even before maybe you got into tech. So, what were you doing before you got into tech?

Adda:
Before I got into tech I was working in the art production field. So, I was working for, I did some production work on set, meaning on photo sets or on film and television and commercials and stuff like that. Sounds a lot more glamorous than it was. I basically realized that that wasn't really, as it turned out, where my passion was. I had graduated college with a BA in Studio Art and in Photography which is what led me into the production world. And although there were parts of it I enjoyed, it's an unstable way to make a living. Everyone basically worked freelance and it just really wasn't my passion. I started looking for other opportunities and I was lucky that, because I had photo skills and photo editing skills in particular, I had a little bit of a background in digital skills. I found my way to an online magazine and that was really my first introduction to the world of tech and just even knowing it existed.

Laurence:
Yeah, that's really cool. I feel like a lot of people kind of go down a path like that. Where they have some of these skills that can easily transition into more technical skills, I guess you could say. However, I do consider photo editing on photoshop and things even like video editing or audio editing, I think those are really technical and can be really advanced once you get into it.

Adda:
Yeah, it's absolutely true. Honestly I had pretty good digital skills at the time because I was lucky enough. It's funny, it's just total happenstance. I happened to be in college right when the film, and by that I mean the film industry, not the movie making industry, but the actual film industry was kind of transitioning from analog film and dark rooms and all that stuff into digital. And so, it's funny because I was still shooting film in college but I scanned all my negatives instead of doing the more traditional processes and through that, I would scan my negatives and I would learn to clean them up and print them. That was really fortuitous as it turned out.

Laurence:
So you got this new job, you're working for a digital magazine, when did you start learning to code then?

Adda:
Basically, my title was photo editor but I really was a glorified, one of those, I literally just cropped images and uploaded them into their CMS for seven hours a day. And lucky for me I guess, I got really good at that job because it was very manual and very just rote. So I got to the point where I could do my job in a couple hours a day and then I would just spend the rest of the time swiveling around in my chair like “What are they doing over there?” I was seated in the production department which was also really lucky. They could have put me on the editorial team but they put me on a production team. So that was my first introduction to even meeting somebody who was a coder, who was a developer.

I had obviously come from college and there was computer science around but, computer science, when I was in school, it's funny because people ask me all the time “did you study computer science?” Not only did I not study it, the idea of taking computer science classes never even crossed my mind. I didn't even think about it. It's because at that point it had no relationship to my life and what I was interested in.

So being in this online magazine and working on this team with developers, that was my first moment of being like, “Oh, something you do could be relevant to me or something I'm interested in could have this technology component and have developers working on it.” So I just spent a lot of time, I'm a pretty curious person so I spent a lot of time asking them questions and being like, "What is it you're doing, how does it work?" It was clearly this thing that was so important to the way the company functioned and our ability as a magazine to get the magazine out and to make money and to be doing what we were doing, it was all because of the work that these three guys were doing in this office. It was just such a mystery to me what that meant and what they were doing and how any of it worked and how any of it came together. It was a total black box. So I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of answers that I didn't really understand and basically was that annoying person who's really curious and also always volunteering to help.

We have a developer on the Skillcrush team who got a job as an admin assistant, so basically a secretary at this organization and just kept volunteering for any, she just kept saying, “I'll do anything,” and finally they were like "Here, do this totally terrible grunt code work." And that was really what I did too, so that was the first time I ever saw code was at that job and it was really, I think they were having me edit XML files. It was like the worst of the worst but for me it was like a whole new world. I was excited to be doing it and feeling really cool. But it wasn't, I wouldn't even say that I was coding. I was looking at code and editing text, but it was my first introduction to trying to look at it.

Laurence:
That's really interesting. Did you learn from books or did you learn online, or was it mostly on the job?

Adda:
The whole process kind of me starting my code knowledge awakening where I actually really started to learn to code probably took six to nine months. I think part of that was because there really weren't a lot of obvious ways to do that. It's amazing to me, this was in 2008, 2009, so it's not that long ago but at the time there really wasn't anything. There was no Skillcrush, there was no, I think Lynda existed but I didn't even know about Lynda yet at that point. I remember I was introduced to it at my next job. I think Lynda also at the time wasn't super focused on technology, it was much more video editing and photo editing and that sort of thing. There really weren't a lot of options.

What happened to me was that I was at that online magazine working and I was starting to learn some things and I think that the developers of the job were reading some books and I remember being like "I'm going to learn Ruby on Rails." I don't what any of this means. But I started to get exposure to the idea that there's books you can read and then I actually changed jobs and I got this job at a digital agency.

This is sort of my famous story, I think it had kind of been percolating at that point and I had gotten to the point where I understood that there were these things called programming languages and coding languages and there was HTML and CSS and JavaScript and PHP and Ruby on Rails. I think that was the extent of my knowledge at that point and I was interested in learning them. Basically what happened was I changed jobs to this job I thought would be more secure and within seven weeks I got laid off and when I got laid off they laid off everyone at the company who wasn't a technical employee.

It was kind of this perfect storm of, I'd been wanting to take time to do this thing, I hadn't had necessarily time to devote to it, and here was a really big, swift kick to really do it. In a way, it obviously felt terrible at the time to get laid off but it was a really big blessing because it made it clear that I really needed to take action on this and it also gave me a lot of time in which to do that.

And then honestly, in terms of how I actually learned at that point, I think I had bought a book, like I had wandered into the computer science department at Barnes and Noble and bought some book, I think it was called the Visual Guide to Learning HTML or something, it had CSS in it. I remember looking at it and being like, “I can't really make heads or tails of this,” and then I think I found something online and then just started playing around with it.

The absolute key to my success at the time was that I had these friends from where I had worked who could guide me. They kind of took pity on me because they knew I was unemployed, so I would be on G-Chat and I would just ask them questions and then I would do a little something. I think I had a lot of free time so I would go in and talk to them and that just made all the difference in the world because they were able to kind of send me links to resources that were useful to me, guide me in “this is important to think about, this is not important to think about,” look at my code when I had a problem, teach me how to Google for stuff. That was a big lesson for me. For example, I had this one friend who was this coding guru, from my perspective, and I would get stuck and I would ask him a question and he would pause for a second and then he would send me a link back from Google and it was just one of those things where, it took like 10 or 15 times before I realized he was just Googling for the answer so I was like “Oh, I can do that.”

That was kind of my process. It was really not streamlined and I think that I missed a lot of really important things that I could have, I think my process was much longer and slower and not as comprehensive as I would hope it would be for someone else who was starting out today. It was hard and I was stumbling my way through it and I was trying to piece it together myself with no idea of what I was really trying to put together.

Laurence:
Yeah, you said a few things that made me think of some other questions, things I'm really curious in. You mentioned that, going back to when you were in college, you said that you never even really thought about computer science. I am totally in that same boat, I totally agree. When I was, throughout high school, throughout college, it didn't even cross my mind to learn how to build websites or learn how to code or do anything with computer science. Before you met these friends later, it sounds like they helped you a lot, was there anyone in your life that was "in tech?"

Adda:
Yeah, I grew up with parents who were professors. It's funny actually because one of my main mentors now is a friend of the family who was a computer science professor who I used to babysit for. But I just, it's funny because as you say that it also occurs to me that when I was in sixth grade, my sixth grade teacher had a boyfriend who was into tech and he came and taught us how to build websites and stuff. The irony is that I was always interested in building websites. I think the breakdown for me was understanding that that had anything to do with computer science. You know what I mean? They were just completely separate. It would never occur to me that what my family friend did had something to do with building websites. I have much more exposure to it now too, but there's still like “what is it exactly?” I think this is kind of the criticism of computer science in that it's not super, super practical, especially when it's taught in undergraduate. For me, I was always very interested in the practical side of things, but the connection between the practical side and computer science was never clear to me.

Laurence:
Yeah, interesting. Because I talked to a lot of different people and it sounds like some people, and when I say people I don't just mean this podcast, I just mean in general, it sounds like for some people they really don't have anyone in their life in tech. They're one of the only people that don't know friends or family members. But then for others, it's like, there may be a lot of people in their life that are "in tech." It's just interesting to see how it's different.

Adda:
There definitely wasn't a lot of people and this computer science professor also started a company but no, I feel like I knew enough to know that it was a thing that people do and that was pretty much the end of it. I didn't really have any understanding of it growing up.

Laurence:
Don't want to get too into it to me but actually my dad has always been in tech, so it's kind of interesting that I never even really thought of doing anything with it until after I was in college, but that's a whole other story.

Adda:
I think you bring up a really good point, which is something we work on a lot at Skillcrush is, I think this is a really common experience and it is so interesting. It's kind of this funny block that so many of us have. I feel like people just write it off and are like “I don't understand that, this is too complicated for me.” It definitely feels like it's this black box. And then I think for anyone who has said “open that door,” they're like “there's this whole world out there it's an amazing opportunity. It's creative, it's interesting,” and all these things that we didn't expect. It's such a revelation and then I feel like it's once you fall into the looking glass you're like “everyone, you have to know how amazing it is over here.” It's just still confounds me, like why does that dynamic play out?

Laurence:
That's interesting, because I can see for some people, who don't have any exposure, they don't have any family members, friends, whatever that are in the tech scene or what have you, I can see how they would never be introduced to it. But I just look back on my life, like there were so many times I could be easily introduced, so easily started sooner but I just didn't. Again, who knows why exactly, but things happen the way they do.

Adda:
Don't let it happen to you! Learn what we're here to tell you.

Laurence:
Yeah, right! Going back to you and your whole story. When you really learned, that sounds like that was after you got laid off and you had a lot of free time.

Adda:
Yeah, that was the first time I actually sat down and said, “I'm going to build a website from scratch and I'm just going to sit here until a website comes out.”

Laurence:
When was the first time you made money? I guess technically maybe you did before when you were editing XML files and whatnot?

Adda:
No, I think that was like an extracurricular activity I was doing at work. It was probably like a couple months into learning. It felt very clear to me that I needed to start doing this work for other people and I think it was just because I was like “Okay, I'm starting to learn this skill but I need to do something with it.”

I remember I went on Idealist.org and I offered to make this woman a website for free because she was looking for a website and then I started building that website and shortly after I started building that website for free, I managed to get a job building a website. It was a freelance project and I remember I totally dropped the ball on the free website. Which I think it was another learning experience. Free work is great because you can be completely unqualified to get it, but then what I learned was when there's money involved you really, you make sure to deliver.

Laurence:
Yes, definitely.

Adda:
The way I got the paid job was literally like I had a friend from my online magazine job and I don't even remember if I told her directly or if she just heard that I was learning to code, and she had a friend who was looking for a website made.

I think one of the things that's kind of funny when you work in tech, you end up in this funny position, when you're really, really deep in it and you've been doing it for years and you're really qualified, you end up in this funny position where you have all these people like "I need a website built, can you help me with that?" And you're like, "No, you would never pay me enough money for it to be worth my time." You are often trying to pawn off friends' projects on other people and I think I just happened to be the right person at the right time.

She had a friend who needed a website built and was like "Oh, I know somebody who is smart and hardworking and is trying to learn this and therefore is not going to charge you a lot to do it." So, she put me in touch with this woman. I can't even tell you, I probably charged her $500 or something, and she wanted a WordPress blog and I was like, "Alright, I'm going to figure this out." And I took my little HTML and CSS skills and started playing around with WordPress and just figured it out. I was unemployed so I really had nothing else to do and I needed the money desperately. I just kind of forced my way through it. So it happened fast, not because I was qualified but just because, luck and necessity. I didn't have the option to turn down $500 at the time. I was completely unqualified to do the job and was terrified that I wasn't going to be able to deliver but I just had to go for it.

Laurence:
There are definitely a lot of people out there who have been learning for a few months, maybe even a year and they just don't feel ready to get paid work yet, whether freelance or a full-time job. Is there any advice you can give people that feel that way?

Adda:
It's hard because you're just not going to be ready. You're not going to feel ready. I think that you have to realize that if you're applying for a junior level position, the thing is that people understand what they're hiring for. And what they're hiring for is someone who has a basic understanding of what it's all about and who's ready to work hard and learn quickly.
I think that if you're applying to a good place, they shouldn't be putting you in a bad position where you could screw up a bunch of things. I think about how we approached that situation at Skillcrush and obviously sometimes we do make the mistake of putting someone who's not ready in a position where they should, not in coding but in other departments. This is the same dynamic that plays out in any team. I guess something to think about is trying to put yourself in a position where it's going to be a supportive environment where you're going to learn.

I think that, I don't know know how to best articulate this. It is really interesting to me, we had a student who took our class and learned HTML and CSS and then got a job as a Junior Developer and then was promoted to a Senior Web Developer and then confided that she still didn't feel like she knew JavaScript very well. And it was interesting to me because I would think that, as a Senior Web Developer, like that would be a requirement. I feel like maybe this is a bad story for me to have told. What I'm trying to articulate is that it is amazing that people do get really far with really bad skills. It's not like I support having bad skills, but I also just think it's like good to recognize that because, you're always in a process of improving your skillset.

I look back now, knowing what I know now, I think about what kind of code I was writing back then and it's horrifying, but that's also why it cost $500. I didn't charge $50,000 because that was totally inappropriate for the kind of work that I was doing. It was sort of a market demand situation. She wanted a website, she wanted it for $500. I could deliver a $500 website and so can anyone who's a beginner who's learning. That's a completely reasonable thing.

The reasons why people get paid $150,000 a year is because they really know how to do stuff and they are building Enterprise and really fancy, up to coding best practices kinds of websites. But nobody gets there without starting with the really, really janky website first. You have to kind of embrace the not-knowing as part of the learning process and that the only way to get from not being ready to being ready is to like work through a whole bunch of projects.

The problem is that it's really nice to be like, “I'm just going to take a million classes,” and I will say that something we think about a lot at Skillcrush is how do we create in the classroom environment a scenario that's going to be as similar to what you might deal with in the workforce. That is something that is really top of mind for us. Because what I see is that, in most instances when you're taking an online class or doing an online coding tutorial, it's just so far removed from it's actually like to work as a developer. It's not that it's bad, it's just that you have to understand that typing in a window is like 1/10th, if not 1/100th of what it actually means to be a developer. What it actually means to be a developer is to know what to type in the window and understand all the different constraints and the complexity of the system you're working in, and deal with the client and make sure the client's happy, and learn how to market yourself and sell and convert and explain to people what you're doing and make sure that things are backed up correctly. There's just so much more that goes into actually what it means to work than just “I can correctly answer a quiz question on some JavaScript built-in method.” So I just don't think there's any way to get ready.

Laurence:
Yeah, you kind of just have to throw yourself out there. I like your advice and I definitely agree with this about starting small and doing smaller projects, or even starting for free. I know the story you said before about how you didn't end up finishing the project and I could totally see that. Of course you'd prioritize a paid one more. They're paying you, you need money to live. For people who are especially nervous, I feel like starting with the free stuff is great. And then you can put it on your portfolio or your LinkedIn, what have you, and use it to get future stuff.

Adda:
Yeah, I think the only reason I'm anti-free stuff is because, the thing that's so great about getting paid is - I'm sure I had a hundred moments in that process where I was like "I can't do this, I quit!" But then "I really want that $500!" I couldn't just give up on it. So that is really the only reason, I mean I think if you are not somebody who is motivated like that and instead it's really uncomfortable for you to charge someone.

Something I see with our students too is that, it makes me laugh but I got this comment from a student recently that was like, "I built my first project for $200 and it was so much work I'm never charging that little again!" And that is exactly what I want people to experience, because I think that is what you will experience. Like, "I'm super uncomfortable, I'm going to charge someone $100 for this website because I'm so new and I'm so unready and I'm totally not qualified to do this." And that's a number I can barely even wrap my head around and then you do it and you're like, "Holy crap, I just spent 40 hours and I built this website and now they have a website they can use and advertise stuff and it's so much value to them and it took so much work for me and $100 all of sudden doesn't make any sense." But I just don't think you can get there without going through that process.

Laurence:
That's a really good point. There's so many benefits that come with getting paid for your work. Aside from the money itself I think it's just more motivation and then less to resent because if you end up spending 40 hours for a $100 project you're going to be kind of angry and frustrated.

Adda:
Yeah, and I want you to be angry, because I want you to start to realize that the skillset that you thought didn't mean anything actually does mean a lot and is really valuable and you are ready to make more money doing it.

Laurence:
I know you guys have this really popular webinar called Coding Your Way to 1k and it's about making your first $1000 in your three months of learning. This is kind of related to what we were just talking about. So what are some of the key things you tell people to do to get to that place where they earn their first $1000?

Adda:
Yeah, I think exactly what I just said is what we work with students on. There's a webinar and it goes with an e-book and a big part of the e-book, what we're trying to accomplish in it is just to give people real-world examples of what it is people are getting paid to do. I think it just feels like such a big blob and you're like “Unless I can do ABCD...all the way through Z, I can't get paid.” But that's actually not true. You can totally get paid for A and then learn a little bit more and then get paid for B. And it kind of builds on each other. So that was a big, big part of it.

It's so funny because every time we do the workshop we always get the same questions: "Can I really get paid to just make a wireframe? That doesn't seem legitimate." But it's like, yeah, there's people where that's their whole job. They just make wireframes. In terms of things that we encourage people to look at, there's so many. Everything from designing websites to wireframes to building out WordPresses. The whole point of the guide is to give you so many examples that you can't say it's not possible.

In terms of what I've seen succeed with students is that, for the vast majority of people the way that they get their first small project is very similar to the way I got mine, which is through their network and through word of mouth. So if you are entering this field and trying to get some work, I really, really think that you should just start telling people that you're learning and that you're looking for work. I bet you could even not tell them that you're looking for work, but just that you've started building websites. In my experience, you're going to be overwhelmed by the amount of people who want it.

Laurence:
Yeah, because everyone, every business needs a website or needs some kind of webwork done, and not even just businesses, but just individuals. A lot of people want their own personal site, even if they're not in tech, they could be in any industry. They could still want their own domain name.com.

Adda:
The thing is that, it's a perfect market for beginners because those people don't tend to have a lot of money. So anyone who's been working longer term in tech is not going to be wanting to take on projects. They just tend to be too much work for too little money. That's a perfect opportunity for people who are getting started.

Laurence:
Another great thing, and I never even thought of this until this conversation, would be to align yourself with those experienced developers who can't take on the small projects that they get so they can pass them on to you.

Adda:
Totally. I still, to this day, get emails all the time from people in my network asking if I can build a website. It's just so funny because I'm like, "No, I do not have time to build your website." I got a request recently from a family member who shall remain nameless but it just cracked me up because I was like, "In what world do you think that I have time for that? I have 30 employees!" I pass a lot of those projects off to Skillcrush students because they're perfect for them.

Laurence:
I have a similar situation where people will contact me pretty often about building a website or even different kinds of full-time jobs that are related to coding and whatnot. I go to a co-working space and there's like a community forum type of thing and people will post there all the time that they need websites. So I feel like there's a lot of opportunities besides job boards out there, just through who you know.

Adda:
Yeah, and I feel like the benefit of doing it through your network is that then they can be hiring you personally just on your personal reputation. I think that it's harder to hire a beginner or trust a beginner with a project when you don't know them personally. If I posted somewhere and was like, "I'm learning HTML and CSS, give me your WordPress project." That's not a very attractive sell, but to someone who knew me, who knew I worked really hard, knows that I will always figure out a way to deliver on what I said I will deliver, even if it is outside of my current skillset. Obviously they're a lot more comfortable recommending me.

Laurence:
Thank you, so thanks so much Adda, and I have one final question for you.

Adda:
Absolutely.

Laurence:
Say if there's a person who has no technical experience whatsoever, but they want to transition into tech. What is one thing that they could do today to take a step in the right direction?

Adda:
That's a good question. The best thing you can do for yourself is put yourself in a position where you are going to be a part of a community. So whether that's an online community or an in-person community. A great step would be to look up meet-ups and be like, is there a meet-up.

I think sometimes when you're doing online coding tutorials, even though you're learning more, it can still feel kind of alien and foreign. Whereas I think that if you were to meet some people, or talk to some people online, it's starts to become very human, much more quickly. So I think anything you can do to start to interact with people who are also learning to code or in the tech community, I think that is going to cut your learning curve to a quarter. Because you'll be able to ask questions and get feedback.

I guess I think that a lot of people want to believe that there are so many resources out there that they can sort of cobble it together themselves, or Google their way into figuring it out. It's not incorrect, you can, but you will learn so much faster if you are interacting and talking to other people, especially other people who have, who are further ahead of you on the learning curve. Anything you can do to put yourself in that position is a good step.

Laurence:
Awesome, I definitely think that's a great answer, to get out there and get into the community and get active. So, where can people find you online?

Adda:
I'm really bad at doing anything myself. You can find me occasionally tweeting on Twitter @addabjork but most everything I do is through Skillcrush, so I would just say go to skillcrush.com, sign up for our newsletter, we have a free 10-day bootcamp that's really awesome and will give you a nice intro to the world of tech and all the programming languages and what it's all about. And we have a blog with a ton of free resources that I think people will like. That's really where you can find me.

Laurence:
Thank you Adda.

Adda:
Thank you!

Laurence:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me and Adda today. And I hope you enjoyed the very first episode of the Learn to Code With Me podcast. You can get the show notes for this episode at learntocodewith.me/1. In the show today we talked a lot about getting your first client and the best ways to go about that. It's a well-known fact that the best place to start is with the people that you already know. I mean, pretty much everyone nowadays needs a website. However, what happens when you run out of building websites for the people that you know? How do you take yourself to the next level? The answer is online.

Nowadays, any savvy employer, recruiter, or even client will Google your name. And what shows up on the results page is going to shape their impression of you. One of the best ways that you can curate your online presence is by creating a portfolio website. Basically, a place where you can show who you are and what you can do. Because I think online portfolios are so important, I created a free portfolio course. You can sign up for this course at learntocodewith.me/freecourse. Inside this free course, I'll show you what makes a great portfolio site, the different things you should include on yours, even if you have no real work experience, and more. Again, the URL to sign up is learntocodewith.me/freecourse. Thanks so much again for tuning in. I really appreciate it. I'll see you next time on the Learn to Code With Me podcast.