What are the short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals of coders in the Finxter community? Let’s find out!
Overview
Here are some meta stats about our survey:
- How Many? 63 survey respondents
- When? Survey date is January 2022
- Who? Finxter Email List of people generally interested in programming
- Survey link: https://forms.gle/cbfCH9mxRYtH8SrS9 (feel free to participate before reading on—I’ll write a follow-up article on the updated results in a year or so)
I have categorized the goals into different categories. Here’s how the raw data looks like:
| 1y Goals | 3y Goals | 10y Goals | |
| Make the World Better | 2% | 2% | 14% |
| Job | 18% | 18% | 11% |
| Freelancing and Business | 16% | 20% | 25% |
| Money | 7% | 13% | 27% |
| Learning and Growth | 48% | 36% | 16% |
| Personal, Relationship, and Health | 5% | 9% | 4% |
| Coding Projects | 4% | 2% | 4% |
If you visualize it, you obtain the following interesting figure:
Understanding the Data
Here are a couple of interesting observations regarding goal setting of programmers in our community:
- Make the World Better: Goals in this category are relatively unpopular (2%) in the short- and mid-term but significantly become more popular (14%) in the long-term.
- Job: Goals in this category are relatively popular (18%) in the short- and mid-term but become less popular (11%) in the long-term.
- Freelancing and Business: Goals in this category are slightly less popular than job-related goals (17%) in the short-term but gradually increase in popularity to 20% in the mid-term and 25% in the long-term.
- Money: Goals in this category are relatively unpopular (7%) in the short-term but become more popular (13%) in the mid-term and (27%) in the long-term.
- Learning and Growth: Goals in this category are super popular in the short-term (48%) but significantly reduce in popularity in the long-term (16%).
But what does this mean? Let’s try to extract some insights from the data next! 🙂
Interpretation of Data
- Do Good — Later! Respondents want to spend their energy to make the world better in the long-term but are too busy chasing success in the short-term.
- Job? No Thanks! Respondents want to create their own business, more than they want to work in a job, because they seek the independence and monetary advantages that are associated with it.
- Be Rich! Money is a very popular 10-y goal of many respondents — and they want to acquire it by learning, finding a coding job, or creating their own business.
- Why Money? Freedom and Purpose! Creating a business and advancing the career, as well as learning are only a means to an end: make more money and reach more independence and freedom to achieve happiness.
Raw Survey Data
Do you want to get your own insights? No problem here’s the raw data:
| Your 1-Year Goal? | Your 3-Year Goal? | Your 10-Year Goal? |
| Educate 1M people per month | Educate 10M people per month | Educate 100M people per month |
| Quit my job | Make six-figures on Upwork | Be a Millionaire |
| Crack an entrance exam. | To grow spiritually and to learn computers | My dream job, travelling to atleast five countries. |
| to be data scicentist | to be Area Manager | To be CEO |
| . | . | . |
| Learn python and start earning good out of it. | Python expert | Some Innovation may b using my skills |
| Do it as better as I can and learn as much and I can in my job and outside | Being able to work from a remote job or being in a position and country which passion me | Running my own little engineering company |
| Complete my own Flask web app. | Learn biomolecular modeling. | Apply what I’ve learnt and update myself on the new technologies out there. |
| Use Python profesionally | Be capable of securing a Python based role | Be wealthy & retired |
| $2000/M | $6000/M | $10000/M |
| Learn as much about technology as possible | Connect the dots and form a big picture of how it all works. Use it to gain a deeper understanding of tech | Apply my knowledge and create my own technological solutions for the benefit of mankind |
| Get a job using coding | Progress with career | Be at the top of the field |
| Study greatly | Obtain a job | To work in Denmark 🇩🇰 |
| Work and improve my skills in data analysis | Learn to use A.I. | Buy my own farm, far from civilization 🙂 |
| Mastering a computer language | Having an App in the market and earning money from it. | Living from My pasive income, helping others to get out their Prison of thinking(a Prison You don’t taste, feel or see) |
| To be a fulltime freelancer | Machine learning expert | To have my own technology business |
| Become a Python Developer | Become a machine learning engineer | Become a data scientist in FAANG company |
| Being Python programme with earning 50$/h | Change house for a bigger one 🙂 | Being Happy and able to spend money for whatever I want 🙂 |
| Python Pro | Earn 150k a year | Multi Millionaire |
| Complete python courses and become confident in coding | Become a successful freelancing python coder / data analyst | Become a data scientist |
| Get a Job in programming | Become an experienced programmer | Work as a Freelance programmer |
| Learn class | Create a discord bot | Create muti-player PvP game |
| To save up money for stuff to build a house | to save up more money for my house | to hvae my house built |
| Jump to a Software developer Job | Improve my developer and managing skills | Can chose my work and work where I want. |
| Get a job in python-related field | Be a full-stack developer | Full time software developer and working in a big tech company |
| Become a better computter programmer | to Develop software for companies remotely | to Develop software for companies remotely |
| 15+ gigs + 15KUSD on upwork | 3kUSD per month with expertise in Data science and ML | Top earner on Toptal in ML 150k+ per month niche -ML |
| learn python | be freelance | move to the tropics and work as freelance from there |
| Learn all I can about Crypto Currency and Blockchain. | Trade in Crypto Currencies. Actively develop smart contracts and get paid for it. | Ease back on the Coding and Enjoy and share Life Experiences with Family and Friends. I would also love to share my life experience with the younger generation to point out the mistakes I made and in general how to best navigate life. I just do not know how to do this yet. I am hoping you (ChrisM), will help me with this. |
| Comfortable Python Coding with Regular Automation projects at work | Very good Programmer, Over all the Tools of Devops life cycle and Start into Manager Role | Sr Manager for a Devops Team |
| Data Analysis | Data Research | Data Scientist |
| $5k per month | $20k per month | $1MM per month |
| Reaching my health,love, and lifestyle goals. | Livong my life to the fullest love-wise, health-wise ,financial-wise | Inspiring a lot of people with my talents, knowledge, and good heart |
| Learn the basics of python | Having some Form of coding job | Having enough experience for freelancing work |
| Start with upwork and 2nd impart pyhton course | Have a strong presence as freelancer | Have my own education business |
| To get 5 longer term client in Article Writing | Leave the 9-5 job and work full time Python freelancer | Help The Humanity by giving Clothes to Needy all over the world. |
| To restart my career in datascience | To gain knowledge in datascience | Setup my own company |
| not die | have a friend | dismantle all capitalism on earth |
| Launch website with 3 apps | Understand Structural Analysis, software calculations | Build a Professional Grade Open Source Structural Analysis Software |
| Business Development | Give a Job No of Persons | Make a Business in a Private Ltd |
| 1 | no | no |
| being a good python coder and learn oops | get a goos postdoc in astronomy and data science intersection | become a freelancer |
| A | B | C |
| Explore the possibility of self-employment. | Start my own IT firm. | Help in development and bring my ideas of next-gen technology to those willing to embrace it. |
| Learn Python and vie.js | Became system Engineer | Became system architect |
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
| DEV | DEV | DEV |
| to get intermediate level expect at GoLang | to build a great team at work | get retire |
| To attain intermidiate level | To attain grandmaster level | I am 71 , Phd perhaps? |
| Learn Haskell | Finish my degree | Have worked on any major crypto project that had made a positive impact in the world (even if it was a small part) |
| junior django dev | middle django dev | team lead |
| To travel to 3 different locations and read 12 books. | Buy my mother a house! | Have more than a million in my bank account. |
| A little coding | We’ll see | retirement |
| yes | no | no |
| Get Masters certified in electronics | Get FAA-107’$ | Start Businesses |
| Master Python | Master JavaScript | Master C and C++ |
| Switch job by June for increasing my salary by 30% | become a successful Python developer with high level of expertise | Financial Freedom in next 10 years to retire early |
| JOIN FINXTER FREELANCE COURSE AND START EARNING MONEY | ———- | ——– |
| Data Scientist | Starting a new business | Get my own house and car |
| Finish my level 3 computing. Be confident enough in python and computer hardware to apply for positions in a company where I can learn more. | Be in a job that challenges me on a daily basis and have learnt other programming languages. | in 10 year ill be 42 who wouldnt want to retire at 42 lol maybe that’s wishful thinking but who knows my crypto holdings may have made me a millionaire by then |
| To be able to have a steady consistent gig as a freelancer working in the python space. | To be transitioning to embedded systems programming using Rust language | To be an expert and leader in the field of IOT |
| To become successful freelancer on upwork with earnings more then 40k dollar | To become top rated content creator for finxter academy | Become CEO for finxter academy |
Feel free to share your insights with me via our email academy:
While working as a researcher in distributed systems, Dr. Christian Mayer found his love for teaching computer science students.
To help students reach higher levels of Python success, he founded the programming education website Finxter.com that has taught exponential skills to millions of coders worldwide. He’s the author of the best-selling programming books Python One-Liners (NoStarch 2020), The Art of Clean Code (NoStarch 2022), and The Book of Dash (NoStarch 2022). Chris also coauthored the Coffee Break Python series of self-published books. He’s a computer science enthusiast, freelancer, and owner of one of the top 10 largest Python blogs worldwide.
His passions are writing, reading, and coding. But his greatest passion is to serve aspiring coders through Finxter and help them to boost their skills. You can join his free email academy here.