Holding this position costs me the thing I'm supposed to be selling.
That first Sunday runs four hours, and three of them have no code in them at all. No Java. No SQL. A squirrel, an airplane, and a car with an engine in it. Part of that room paid for a software course and is counting the minutes until somebody opens a terminal. They're not wrong to count.
Sometimes I feel bad about it, because my thing is talking. I don't like myself. I don't like watching myself either. English is my second language and I hear every seam in it. But if the coding can be done by the machine, most of what we do is going to be talking. In meetings. In interviews. Convincing people. So while coding is important, my classes are also important.
I have this anxiety about people falling asleep while I'm talking. There's something called karma. When I was in high school I was always sleeping, and my teachers were very mad at me.
So I spend the three hours. And I do apologize, because people need to listen to me for very long, and I am the one who is supposed to get tired, isn't it.
I pay for it by being the man who talked too long on day one, and by knowing that some of that room will be sick and tired of my ugly voice before this is over.