I love how Primeagen's hair has become part of the green screen now

I heard a candidate say he didn't learn JS because React is the future.

"Shortcuts are just long delays" is such a good quote! I always looked for shortcuts and ALWAYS ended up on delays

"Know the reality, and then defeat the reality." Absolute pog champ

It's very similar in the engineering industry, everyone says that there's a shortage of engineers, yet what they really mean is that there's a shortage of senior engineers. Junior roles are not coming up, and when they are they're incredibly oversubscribed so it's hard to get one. I think some of it has to do with the current job market, like it's very common now for employees to leave a company after 1-2 years, and as anyone who's onboarded juniors knows you're probably not getting a huge amount of impact from those hires until year 2 at least. When you look at it from a companies perspective, say I'm offering $60k/year for a junior role (let's assume all salary, no stock just to keep it simple) I'm probably spending $100k-$150k on a junior before they start to provide positive value. At which point they might leave anyway for a role somewhere else. Meanwhile I could offer $200k for a senior and they're going to make an impact from like month 3. They might leave after a couple of years too, but there's more time where they're being productive, and less time when they're getting up to speed. There's just very little incentive for companies to hire juniors, and it's going to be a problem down the line because you only get seniors from people having been juniors in the past, but in a world driven so much by current stock value and maximising immediate profit there's no room to do what you need to do to solve the problem (actually hire juniors, give them enough incentive to stay etc).

How exactly is a Junior Dev supposed to get experience if nobody will hire them in the first place? Employers don’t really give a shit if you have 10,000 hours or 1,000 personal projects built up from your 60, 80-hour weeks or whatever. They want you coming in with 3-5 years’ worth of PROFESSIONAL job experience right out of the gate. Don’t act like you can just hustle your way out of a chicken-and-egg problem.

"What? You can repair a pipe?...every other plumber can do that, how about you stand out". I hate you people.

You shouldn't need 10,000 fucking hours to land an entry level position

LMAO "I'll stand out with my weather app"

Primeagen's points are valid, bit I'm not convinced it's the issue. It's just simple supply and demand. I graduated with aerospace eng degree around 2010 when the industry was going through layoffs and cuts--there was very limited openings for internships much less entry level positions. Pivoted into EMT and firefighting and it was the same. Most FDs were on a hiring freeze so there became a huge backlog of EMTs and paramedics waiting for their chance while others left. When FDs started to hire again in mid 2010s, it was incredibly competitive.

May be it's a European thingy, but as far as I tried get a job as a Junior Dev, I don't even have the opportunity to say "I know React and Tailwind..." The only thing that represent a value here is: "the industry based experience" Who cares that you've made "xyz" site with a JS and a Java backend? Or you know how to solve leetcodes in Python, C, C "shark"? Or you know Docker and Git, and his "hub"? Nobody cares! The main question is: "Do you, or do you NOT have any experience in the tech industry?" or in an other terms "Do you ever been employed (= "paid" $€) as a dev?" "No? Ok, then we don't even call you back" Tech company has the luxury to chose between 86, 1+ years " industry based experienced" devs for 1 "Junior" job. Why do they even care about the "bootcamp/ newly graduated" newbies? even though: PERSIST & RESIST!

Dude i cannot spend more time with myself learning. To get experience i need bigger projects, thats why i need junior position to begin with!!!

so now I'm NOT supposed to make a weather app??? do you know how hard it was to do that the first couple times?

In my opinion, the shortcut to 10k hours is quality mentorship. The hours is all about accruing experience and learning from the mistakes along the way. A mentor that gives useful feedback and criticism can help you recognize and learn from mistakes more quickly and effectively. You still need to do the work and put in the time, but you don't need the full 10k hours.

We need to get rid of this idea that juniors take 6 months to kick into gear at a company, this is wild. Not all juniors have the same skill level, and many companies have products in which an average junior can start contributing in 3 months or less. Companies generalize this and with how shit interviews are, they can hardly distinguish a B-Tier Junior from a S-Tier one. Of course, there are companies in which this is the case, but then again, we should not discount how much a convoluted development process slows down contributions from new hires. Pair the 6-month cost-sink assumption with the fact that switching jobs every 2 years, on average, is better for an IC, career wise, and it becomes super clear why there's no incentive to hire Jrs. But let's not act like a big part of the problem is on the Jr, who has very little control over this stuff other than their own skill.

I havent finished the video yet but I need help on understanding something, What more does a junior dev need to know to get a job outside of the basic weather crud app? They arent the ones designing system, or anything intermediate cause they are juniors, so why would they need to know more than what is need? The advice to stand out is good advice, but to keep it honest if I gotta learn how to design and build a complex system for a junior job I'm starting my own thing at that point

100k CS engineering degrees will get you a job at Starbucks these days.

The time where common projects can get you ‘in’ is not acceptable anymore Today, you have to have some internship/work experience, faith, right time, and possibly connections

Why do I always have to learn vital lessons after it’s too late

But how do you know you are learning and studying the right things if no one will give you a chance on actual production? How does one know that they are bringing something new to the table? Do I just code for 80 hours on end? Writting and trying to make as much as I can? Do I have to get through years of writing shit code to become a good software engineer?

Time gated proficiency ratings are useless. I know bad juniors and good juniors, bad seniors and good seniors. Just because someone has been working for 20 years doesn't mean they've improved over those 20 years. And no the ratio of good programmers to bad ones is not noticeably higher or lower among the seniors compared to juniors.

This is why I think taking an operating system class which walks through pushing the power button and all that actually happens before the machine lands you at a login prompt was great. It lets you know there massive ocean of things that exist that are deep and complex that engineers workon that a boot camp will just never reveal. It makes you think about memory management, instruction pointers, registers, etc, etc, etc. It left no room for a feeling of "I totally get programming and am engineer" for raw dogging some php for a blog.

People out here calling themselves carpenters when all they've built is a birdhouse.

Its like being an 'anything'. Am i a musician because i own a guitar? Do i need to know a minimum number of chords? Songs? Just years of 'experience', which might be little more than tuning it?

If a person can make a weather app on their own, they are good enough for a junior position. The job market is brutal at the moment, and companies has an opportunity to pick and choose exceptional people for mediocre positions.

For sure. The 30 vs. 80 hour week is a great comparison. I moved into a programming role (Data Engineering) with no CS degree, background, or having wrote a line of code before within 6 months which makes people react in two ways: either amazed or think programming is really easy to get into. I lost my job during the pandemic so had a lot of time. I did courses for 2 months and then spent 4 months spending 8+ hours per day coding, watching KZfaq videos, and applying for jobs Monday to Friday, 8+ hours per day just coding on Saturday and a "day off" on Sunday limiting myself to around 6 hours. When I say coding here, I mean actually coding. Not following tutorials, not taking ideas from other places. Literally coming up with ideas, learning new skills along the way, and seeing if I can do them. I completed around 60% of the projects I started. I regularly get people asking me on Reddit how this is possible because they've been trying to break in for 12-18 months. When you ask them how long they spend programming and they reply with maybe 2-3 hours per week following courses and completing certificates, there is absolutely no surprise people can't break in.

I feel for juniors. The senior+ job market is just as bad right now. Companies are looking for someone with a decade of experience in their exact tech stack and experience in their business sector. With how many tech layoffs have happened companies have their pick of the litter and they're waiting for that magical unicorn to show up in their pipeline. re 80 hours -> 10k hours to become an expert. I think there's something to be said about the quality of time spent learning. Intentional practice and study will get you to that expert level "faster". It's still going to take a shit ton of time and effort, but you'd get there in say 8k hours instead of 10k. If you spend 80 hours watching tutorials a week it might take 20k hours.. but if you spend 60 hours building passion projects, tooling you actually need, etc.. it might take

Man, I feel like Prime could do great at preaching. You know what I mean? A real GOspel.

What market?

I feel prime never really went over on the solution for jrs to stand out. Fresh grad here finished my bs in June 2023 and still no luck. Not even getting interviews. 75% of the entry level positions I see posted recruits some type of front end framework too. I’ve gotten two interviews in the last 3 months and my last one he asked if I had two years of react experience and I said no but I’m eager to earn and develop my skills and I am a fast learner and he said “sorry I require 2 years of react experience, thanks for your time”. It’s getting ridiculous out here man

If you want to break into the industry... spend a good amount of time trying to make friends and connections. A recommendation from someone at a company is worth just as much as a good portfolio and leetcode profile IMO. As an autist it sucked trying to build these connections but that's how I got an internship that led to a fulltime position as a 27 year old self taught dev. I did the grind every night after work doing personal projects for a year and half until I got the part time internship. I still had to work my full time 40hour a week job on top of the 20hour a week internship. It was 16 months of getting 5 hours a sleep every night and then working 12-14 hours a day but it was so worth it now that I am a full time Dev. The phoenix cannot rise without first being engulfed by the flames :).

Bro, you just spoke to my soul. Thank you.

I graduated from a US University (a big name, you've seen them play sports) with a Bachelor's in Computer Science & got a 4.0. When I graduated I didn't know the difference between a Frontend and a Backend. The entire education system is f*cked

I find this ridiculous. Its like all Juniors should have developed like 2 enterprise software projects that are at a senior level to get there first job. I know you are supposed to stand out and all but man, the requirements are insane. Its like you should spend 2 years of unpaid software development before you are legible for your first job even with a degree. I know senior devs who had little to no experience on the very first job and became really excellent senior devs in a few years.

Serious question, do you need creativity or a creative project to "become that engineer" or is it enough to build a clone of an advanced tool? Say like a GitHub feature clone? I also think some engineering projects are not technically challenging but the business logic is crazy hard and sometimes that gets overlooked. Like I may not need to use multiple workers and manipulate buffers and stream them to the client, but the business logic is complex, does that make sense?

I sympathize with jr devs in this market, I was also in it a year and a half ago (no personal projects in my resume either). My best advice to y’all are do your best to maintain some positive energy (really important in interviews) and don’t just shotgun generic resumes. After shotgunning for a month I ended up spending the next month doing cover letters for the companies and was able to land one in about a month of doing that. It’s really just luck but doing cover letters and refining your resume increase your odds pretty significantly. Good luck!

How do you work 80hr per week if you don’t even have a SWE job? Do 80hr of projects?

Sidenote, but the 10000 hour rule is a significant oversimplification of the underlying research. There's nothing magical about 10000 hours, and depending on the field, it can be much more or much less to achieve mastery (which, as it stands, is also a somewhat arbitrary term). The 10000 hours is also in reference to deliberate practice - not general experience - which means the quality of time spent is equally important. It's true that quantity will increase the rate of learning up to a point, but if accumulated fatigue starts significantly affecting the quality of learning, there is a point at which the marginal learning rate for each hour is negative (because it spoils your next session). Fatigue resistance is individual and highly variable - it's a matter of knowing how hard you can push yourself and backing off at the right time.

Why stop at 80 hrs a week? Only ppl coding 25 hrs a day deserve a job

the idea that once u spend alot of time you are guaranteed success is a bit silly. The quality of the hours is far more important than the amount of time.

I changed careers after getting laid off. Started online college, started building my own games in Unity, when I found a new job I was working full time, doing full time classe , and giving time a week to work on my game. When I was at work or driving I was listening to audio books, podcasts ect on topics tech topics outside of pure programming. It's hard to change careers, especially if you need to make a living still. When I got my first job what impressed them was not what programming I could do, but my passion for tech.

Last coding bootcamp I took I helped 9 people graduate who paid me and told me they learned more from me than the professors. I had prior training from studying software applications programming at itt tech , and almost done with a cs degree, They all work in the field now, when I asked them how they got in most of them told me they just lied on their resume , been over 2 years since that last course and still not even a single interview, wasted almost 6 yrs of my life on learning software helping others get into the field and never got a single interview so I’m done

When you throw out these numbers I usually take it as including both the time you spend working for pay in addition to the time spent learning and practicing on your own outside of work. It's a lot less daunting when you realize the 4 hours your spend hacking together a new data structure counts. You don't need to spend all 60 hours in an office for a job you might be trying to leave.

As someone who has learnt to code on my own and through a bootcamp; I can say that there is just so much you can do without getting some industry exposure. I didn’t get to learn about microservice architecture or clean code until I got my first job last summer. After worked with my current company for 5 months I started to work on my side projects again to apply what I had learnt. I think it would have taken me over 1 years to learn what I learnt in 5 months. The idea of coding for 80h a week seems good but when you don’t know what tf to learn and how to do it properly. So you burnout quite quicker and your code can tell

trying to get into the industry has been very demoralizing. I have a family to support, and once schools done, the money stops flowing and I need a job. internships have also become competitive. The interviews I've gotten have literally said "school is not enough". for Internships. its fuckin wild.

Just like there is"work smarter, not harder" there is "learn smarter, not harder." I've been in the business for 25+ years and seen plenty of folks (myself included) get sucked into the more hours mantra. Problem is, doing 80 hours of the same dumb or incorrect thing over and over isn't as useful as learning and embodying best practices upfront and correctly. Are there unicorns out there who do 80 hours of "smart" work? Sure. But as the unicorns they are, they are genetic anaomlies and also already have the highest paying jobs. For the rest of you, learn smart. Find mentors. Read good books on best practices - and then follow them. Understand design patterns, event loops, memory management, and other behind the scene concepts. Hell, write a complier in a langauge that isn't JavaScript (or your chosen langauge). That'll teach you lot. But you don't need to burn yourself out before you even get your first job.

Here is how I see it, the main causes of job market's fatigue: - covid: 10% (and shrinking) - AI => 20% ( no idea how it's going to effect the market in the future) - "hiring less" trend => 20% (will shrink as the economy heals and competition increases) - recession => 50% (and growing, It'll probably take 3-5 years for the economy to get on its feet)

Taught myself to program basic when I was 9. By my teens I was writing assembly. Comp Sci in college, programming classes were a snoozefest. Even so the first 5 years in the industry were rough, a couple of them brutal. Sounds like nothing has changed since.

80 hours / week is crazy

I’m 24 years old with a CS degree and 1.5 years of XP. I never saw the hype in learning React + Web Dev. I’ve always learned towards game dev/graphics just because it was different and challenging. IMO the people who are learning Web Dev will require more time in finding a job since they’re creating the same projects as every other cs student.

I'm wrapping up an 80 hour week of coding right now as a junior dev. My mind is melted. It kind of reminds of returning home after a 3 day drug bender music festival, except now I'm smarter instead of stupider.

Intense all day every day work to learn is way more effective for learning. I did it in a crap job at the start of my carreer and now I have a good job and have achieved some cool stuff!

Well I like the fact that he claims that neither a portfolio or open source work is beneficial. Then what the hell are u supposed to do as a junior if not that? Your experience building a portfolio doesn’t matter and your experience contributing to open source software doesn’t matter, then what? Only industry experience matters, but juniors cant get in so they cant get any industry experience. Bullshit! Im about to start my PhD soon, so i absolutely could not care less about this market. The only reason i mention this is because anyone who complains about the market is automatically labeled as some sort of “hater” that is salty they cant crack into junior roles. I hold a masters degree in CS from an R1 institute, i have about

It's just about who can endure the most at this point and also learn new tech / languages to stand out. Good luck brothers.

I'm not a software engineer, and I'm in Norway, but I am in my final semester of actuarial science and dataanalysis (Masters degree), and I applied for a handful of jobs in early to mid january, and out of 6-7 applications I got interviews for all and 3 who offered me jobs. I am currently choosing between a Business Data Analyst and a Price Modelling and Portfolio Management (both for the same insurance company) and a consulting job (Insight & Data, Capgemini). Feels like the finance market here is craving competent data analysts with sufficient mathematical / statistical background (in addition to finance theory),

Genuinely the only "shortcut" is solid mentorship which is very rare to come by. It's not the same as following tutorials, good mentorship can short-cut many headaches without hurting growth.

I still think contributing to OSS is a valuable learning experience -- but with some sane guidelines: - read through the docs - read through the source code - every time you come across something you don't understand, take it upon yourself to learn and figure it out. Other than on-the-job experience, this is where I've learned the most. - Make contributions that 1) provide value and 2) require the least amount of maintainers' time

this is so depends on what you want to do. if you just want a job, any job, work for free to build your experience until you have enough to charge. if you want a high paying job, do what everybody is too scared to do, which means Rust yes JS/Python no, Database engineering yes, buidling websites no. If you're in it because you want to do, make something, then just build what you want to do and do it from scratch.

Hot take 1 His suggestions is vague. His words are either implementable or not. I'm not saying he is right or wrong. But. Here's why 1.) Time is not unlimited. You can't say to someone. Hey, you needed 10,000 hours before I consider your application. 2.) Money at some point in time. While grinding that 10k hrs, you'll probably spend some money. But your money is not unlimited. 3.) Other priorities. Not everyone would be able to put. Programming their one and only priority. The worst is if that priority doesn't pay off. 4.) Difference in type of experiences acquired. Two people can both have 10k hours of experience. And yet one of them might be better than the other. 5.) Category of experience. If someone is on a different experience, he/she won't really get the other one. For example, someone with work experience is not the same as someone with a freelancing experience (even if let's say they both have 10k hrs). 6.) Method or absorption of learning. Some people have good methods of learning. Some people have a good way to absorb what they learn. 7.) Etc. Hot take 2 You can't really stand out. (Instead, you should stand proud) No one really stands out. Here's why. The thing you learn, the techniques, advance methods, hours of experience, etc. They have all been done or can be done by others. Also, people can catch up. Someone who doesn't know to invert a binary tree, could someday can. Instead, before you present yourself. You should be able to stand proud of what you learned or accomplished. A person who learns in depth of something is technically better than someone who learns a lot of shallow things. Hot take 3 technically, there's a solution or solutions. An example of a solution is exposure. If we can expose someone to working experience before they work. They can have an idea on what's going on. Which technically makes life easier.

10k hours is a insane number, that is like 10hrs of working every single day in almost 3 years. I dont think you can keep that pace with family and other stuff to cool of your head of tech things. 100k hours is like a lifetime.

jr’s not prepared to put in work outside work hours is the biggest red flag to me. if there’s no drive, there’s not much ROI especially in todays markets. I’m already happy if they mention this channel over lunch, cause it means they still learning and investing time in career building. Even if they don’t do rust or squeel.

Was bit upset about my 60 hours work week for last two months. Thanks for cheering me up.

5:35 I have noticed that when you have a cool after-hours project or learn a new language, you regain a bit of energy when you finish your 8h work and start learning the new thing. It's like a small boost, just because it's something new and different. Try it, it's like the cool side of the pillow. Also, nice hair...

I really hope this was aimed at people switching careers with bootcamps. I’m getting my degree in CS because I enjoyed programming. I have had internships each summer, but I want to work in industry specifically because it allows you to have a life, something I didn’t have in school.

So what the fuck do you make lol? In order to be a junior dev I have to also be a designer and own a startup and create some magical new project that no one has ever seen before lol

Re: 10k hours topic → I recommend the Ted talk on "the 1st 20 hours" by Josh Kaufman. It's a nicer short goal towards building confidence and proficiency. Won't be a master, but that's the 10k level. You just need a sooner "win" to help get you there.

so what should you build to stand out?

I had to create a reporting application with almost zero programming experience. I spent 100 hrs a week for months. I can hit file new now in studio and actually do stuff. Putting in the hours makes all the difference.

negative content L

I agree, Dev work is a CONSTANT feeling of being uncomfortable If you are not willing to search for answers, create solutions to problems you never experienced, and/or be thrown into the deep end then this field is not for you

Just stream on twitch once a week for 2 hours and put "programming streamer" on your resume to stand out. Hiring is a game of impressions, HR filters most people and they cannot tell the difference between water and orange juice.

How do you get experience if you can't get a Junior Dev role?

Honestly, talent tends to just be unconscious relevant hours of experience. Those puzzles that increased your problem solving skills that you were obsessed with when you were 5 years old, finally paying off.

I think something worth mentioning is that there has been a lot of layoffs in tech in the last 3-4 years, simple supply and demand issue. There is less demand for devs meaning only the best and experienced get the roles. But this can change as it has before many times.

Hear me out, a hyperbolic time chamber, but for coding.

Yes, people confuse optimum with absolute... In gym is the same... More volume == More growth.

Why does he think that all these entry-level candidates are just people who spent a couple weeks in a bootcamp? Do bootcamps even really exist these days? A huge chunk of these junior devs who can't get hired in this market spent multiple years and thousands of dollars to get through college. I'm not saying a CS degree entitles you to a $150k+ FAANG job, but you certainly shouldn't have to spend years of self-teaching AFTER getting a degree in order to land your first low-paying dev role.

For those in a university program, go to career fairs! I just had a life-changing job offer given to me from a connection I made at my STEM career fair.

Who could have predicted that a cottage industry of bootcamps pumping out juniors would be bad for the job market? This is why other professions have some level of protectionist gatekeeping built in - whether it be university degree or other qualification, or even some sort of professional membership. As long as we are so militantly inclusive we are going to have this problem. Pendulum needs to swing the other way - some people (lots of people) just shouldn’t be developers.

There is no jr market. Apply to all jobs.

Will dust off my Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition. Thanks for the tip Primedude.

I'd also wager a good part of the solution is being diligent in selecting difficult projects to build. If it's difficult, by its very nature it's forcing you to overcome obstacles as a dev some other devs in your position wouldn't have. Each hurdle is another wall between you and the rest of the pack. Just keep building. And don't settle for what everyone can do or is doing. Push yourself until you can get the recognition. Obviously recognition isn't exactly the right motivator here, you'd ideally like to be building what interests you, but if recognition will get your foot in the door and getting your foot in the door is the goal, you already know what needs to be done. Edit for clarity's sake: I don't even mean objectively difficult. I mean difficult for you given your current experience. The experience builds your problem solving skills, which in turn lowers the difficulty of larger and larger obstacles. So don't try to just brute force up the mountain if you don't have it in you -- aim for small climbs.

Jr programmers vs senior programmers and AI

Is it just in the west or everywhere? I feel its not that bad in 3rd world countries, or at least here in the arab world. Maybe because we are still lagging behind? But then again, im an undergraduate so I dont know

"how do you fix the problem" There is no problem, just how things are.

Thank the Prime I just got a "medior" job at a company that will most likely be safe and I can "turn into a senior" over the next ~3 years or so, of course, who knows what changes the years, AI, wars, economy, etc will bring

"Then I don't think dev is for you" - Well first off there, buddy, is that this bootstrap garbage has no cred when you don't have an income from doing actual development work. Those lucky enough to land a long term jr position out of college have an enormous advantage over someone who gets stuck bussing tables while doing codecamps in their freetime. I really don't have any patience for this bootstrap garbage coming from the development nobility, and I really can't come up with a better analogy other than to say that it smacks of nobles calling peasants lazy or uncommitted. I don't know what its going to take to make developers cut the BS and look inwardly to see that we are literally the problem. Its not that jr developer's resumes aren't impressive enough, its us. Hi. We're the problem, its us. We're not supposed to be impressed with a jr developer's resume. Can the developer do the work that you have in mind for the position, after a little bit of training?? Then hire them. Thats it. Stop thinking that you should be impressed by a jr dev's resume, your majesty.

I've been working as a developer for over 4 years now and it was crazy how easy it was to change jobs a few years ago, I remember I was able to opt among like 3 positions just like 2 years ago. I'm currently having a much harder time now that I'm willing to get a new job since the project I was working on for the last 2 years is finished and the company does not need as many devs anymore. Fortunately I work for a outsourcing company and they were able to allocate me in another project that is gonna last a few months...! I cant imagine how hard it is for junior devs, especially the ones who just know React and at most NodeJs

I dunno, I feel like I work with tonnes of juniors, some of them have been programming 15+ years :) I think you have to love programming and like thinking about it, and love making stuff to get any good at it. Most people don't. Most people read a stupid book, take it for gospel, and never learn to think or make anything useful their whole careers.

"Making defeat into success" 💯

Not even focused on getting a tech job right now, just freelancing for small businesses in my area to gain experience/money/portfolio work -- then I'll start applying when I've done that for a few years. The days of HTML, CSS, Javascript to get 6 figure job are over -- but if you become a complete developer and not just a gipity frameworker you can carve a niche, and eventually stand out with a proven track record.

Shortcut to 10k hours is having an experienced mentor who has professional experience in the field you are trying to enter

People have to realize it's a competition. Every extra minute of work you do makes you 1 min better than your equally skilled peers who stopped. To get hired you have to be enough minutes better than the rest of the applications to stand out. How you spend those minutes is up to you. Differentiat your portfolio. Create a killer project. Get involved in open source. Network whatever... Pick your poison. It really doesn't matter. Non of theses are magic bullets. It's all work.

Long life defeats to success. lol. I love it

I mean...I work because money exists, I probably wouldn't otherwise. So the jobs I had where I worked less than 40 hours were the healthiest for me, I stayed fit, played video games, went out, had some time for myself AND time for mu girlfriend.

Also remember that quality time studying and practicing is more important than quantity, just doing a lot of hours, with no focus or tons of distractions

I guess moving to other areas of CS is more appealing now or i dare say wise.

I personally never made a weather app. When I watch tutorials I take that information and I make something interesting to me. Tax calculators, motorcycle gear expenses, little projects I made for friends and discord groups. That's far more interesting then "I made a weather app." You need to take what you learn and make something better. It doesn't have to be overly complicated, make it fun and interesting and something that you can talk about with others.

Hard work beats tallent if tallent doesn't work hard enough!

I swapped from.js to native dev and it was a nice boost to my career.