From Therapist to six figure freelance dev [Podcast #176]

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​ “On this week’s episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kelly Vaughn. She’s a self-taught software engineer who ran her own developer agency. She was also the founding CTO at financial technology startup. Kelly runs the popular Ladybug Podcast focused on women in tech.

We talk about:
– How to freelance and ultimately create a developer agency and get clients
– Tips for navigating the current developer job market
– How to move from freelance to working for someone else
– Tips for recognizing burnout so you can know when to take break

Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com.

Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity’s mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org

Links we talk about during our conversation:
– Kelly’s website: https://kvlly.com
– The Ladybug Podcast talks about tech, career, and code lead by women in tech: https://ladybug.dev
– Kelly’s engineering leadership newsletter: https://modernleader.is
– Kelly’s new burnout-focused newsletter: https://afterburnout.co”

Contents
– 0:00 Platform Over-Reliance and Early Career Lessons
– 4:03 Learning New Languages Ruby on Rails to Python
– 6:46 From Neopets to My First Client
– 10:04 Scaling an Agency to 25 People
– 13:42 The Agency Rollercoaster and Retainer Wisdom
– 19:07 Navigating the Direct-to-Consumer Market
– 24:23 AI Distrust, Creativity, and Augmentation
– 31:54 The Burnout Revelation Losing Joy
– 40:02 The Dual Company Struggle and Debt
– 46:12 The Road to Recovery Paying Off Debt
– 50:42 Lessons from Running an Agency
– 56:03 From CEO to Engineering Manager
– 1:02:59 Understanding and Addressing Burnout
– 1:13:42 Advice for the Job Hunt   Read More freeCodeCamp.org 

#programming #freecodecamp #learn #learncode #learncoding