Self Taught Web Dev -What Should I Do?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045239

by techsin • 11 years ago

12 19 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi, I need advice about my career direction. I'm going to be very honest about everything, i feel i'm my own enemy here & pretty lost, but i'm sure of one thing that i love learning.."sorry for the essay"

I'm college senior, live in NYC.

For last 4.5 years I've been learning web development. (11th grade upto now). I taught myself photoshop, illustrator, html/css3(by heart), javascript, jquery, less, bootstrap, underscorejs, phonegap, chrome extensions, git, some linux, gruntjs & concepts...encryption, security, caching, scaling.

I'm learning nodejs/express/mongoose & apis

I've made few extensions for chrome but never published them. ( 1. take urls of all tabs open & send them to a mailing list, 2. timer that reminds me to get up & exercise after 20 minutes, 3. list of pre written messages that U can email).

Yesterday i started & finished email scrapper for gmail. my brother, a seller on ebay, wanted to personally send email to all his buyers in one go. Using nodejs i made a scrapper that reads all emails, save body in string, extract emails into an array & make .csv file.

But never did paid work. in ads i see salaries from 30k to 190K for experience 2 to 5 years. Where do i fit?

I don't have portfolio, or contributed to open source, or go to meetups, or resume with dev experience or much experience of anything.

why not? i don't know. I've searched for role model/mentor but no, i can't even do that. My most projects don't get completed because only one thing which i couldn't figure out, & could be explained to me by 9 min in person help. But I want to be self supporting adult and get tangible experience.

I've seen comments here like "i was intern in college & making $xx/hr" or "people just know syntax make more than this".

perhaps share Ur story how U got the job. What i fear is that i get stuck with bad small company that barely cares about its website & pay accordingly. I need to know what to do to get that 80k job.

miaowmix• 11 years ago

Why not try a remote job? You can stay @ home and test it out? This way if the company isn't to your liking you be able to break the contract a little easier and less of a hassle. Or, why not try pro bono and as you are doing pro bono work you can create a portfolio in the interim?

just some thoughts.... Please don't take any advice to heart without thinking everything through.

Good luck!!

techsin8• 11 years ago

I tried Elance but my ratings were 0. and it only allowed very specific skill. Do you know any other good place.

trcollinson• 11 years ago

First, work on typing more professionally. I received my first paid programming position while I was still in high school working for a collection agency handling data. At the time I was very excited and they informed me that I got the position for a few reasons. First, I was relatively inexpensive. Second, I was very professional in my interview and my resume was light weight but highly polished. Third, I had some of the technical skills they needed, but they felt that with my professionalism and my work ethic I would be able to complete the work. They were right, I did well and I moved on from there.

So, for you, I will go down this list. First, set your salary expectation according to your experience. Have you had other, non-technical positions before? If so, get ready to leverage them appropriately. If not, get ready for a very low salary for your first position. It is highly unlikely you will make $80k on your first position.

Second, work on your professionalism. "U" is not a word. "i", the first-person pronoun we all know and love, should be capitalized. You need to watch your punctuation. You don't need to be perfect, but work on your writing and presentation skills. How you present yourself really does matter.

Where you should be perfect, or as close as possible, is in your resume. Make sure it is polished. Make sure it presents you well. When you go in for interviews look your best. Lately in our business there is an attitude that everyone can come in looking like they are hung over after a long night of coding followed by partying, dressed like a skater, and often riding on a skateboard. You can look like this as long as you have skills to back that image up. If you are really Junior, and you are, you better look like the type of guy who is going to show up on time and get his act together to get some work done.

Third, be ready to show off and discuss your technical skills and most importantly, how you are going to acquire more. They are taking a risk on hiring you. There is a cost to hiring, training, and letting a developer work on your code. You need to show you will provide more value then you take back. From what you write above, I think you will have no problem showing your value.

Finally, getting a job, any job, is a numbers game. Apply to 20 different positions. You will interview at a bunch and you will get the one job you are looking for. After that, learn all you can and then feel free to move on when the time, and your skills, are right. Good luck!

techsin8• 11 years ago

i wrote all of it in good proper english but then had to trim it down a lot to bring it under 2000, and for some reason it still didn't work. So i deleted paragraph or two. Converted "and" to &, You to U...etc.

Spoom• 11 years ago

Why, then, are your comments all in the same style?

dutchrapley• 11 years ago

The industry needs more people like you, passionate and eager to learn.

Start networking. You never know who you might meet. You have a better chance at landing your first job through an acquaintance as opposed to answering a help wanted ad.

Start attending meetups, now. My top recommendation would be OpenHack http://openhack.github.io/new_york/ While you don't have a portfolio of projects on a website, you most likely still have them on your computer. OpenHack may be good place to showcase what you're working on if someone shows interest. Those projects also come in handy for when you start landing interviews. I always took a computer to job interviews to showcase what I was working on and even did some live coding. There's also another advantage to doing it this way: You are in control of the interview and I feel it's a much better approach than sitting through a Q & A with a hiring team. It says, "I came prepared."

For your first job, don't undercut yourself on salary. At least make enough to live. Even if you find a company is horrible, you can still leave yourself open to other options. You might even land your next job, doubling your salary, through someone you worked with and recently left said horrible company. It may take your 2-3 employers to get to your desired salary.

I landed my first job through a random conversation with a neighbor (before that I was college dropout and an office temp for two months trying to land said job). It paid $28k and half of my month's pay went to cover rent for a studio apartment. I ate PB&J and an apple every day for lunch. The job was copying text from Word documents and PDFs, marking them up with HTML. At the time, the company was building a hosting subsidiary. 2-3 nights a week, I spent 3-4 hours volunteering my time with that effort, through which I picked up Linux. I landed my second job through a previous co-worker. Every job offer I've ever taken started with an acquaintance.

My recommendation is to pick an area/skill set and focus on building that out. Looking at what you listed, I'd most likely recommend JavaScript for you. Take a look at a front end JS framework like Angular, Backbone, Knockout, or React. Maybe even try all of them out. Eventually, you might have questions. As you do, Open Hack might be a great place to get help and pick up a few pointers. As you become familiar with JavaScript, look to expand your horizons with a JS backend technology like NodeJS and look at exploring frameworks/platforms like Meteor, DerbyJS, or Express.

If you do decide to go the JavaScript route, here are some resources to get you started.

http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/

http://eloquentjavascript.net/1st_edition/contents.html

http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/

http://www.addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpattern...

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninga by John Resig

JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov

As a side note, some of the most brilliant people I've worked with didn't have CS degrees (Music, History, English, etc). Their key strength was that they were passionate about what they were doing and were constantly learning.

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” ― Socrates

techsin8• 11 years ago

I've always believed in the quote "don't let school get in the way of your education"

techsin8• 11 years ago

I've read about 4 books on javascript including eloquent javascript, and video by Crockford. I've also done courses about javascript which really really helped on udacity such as web development, oop in js, patterns in js.

I really do have to focus, i'm making simple apps in phonegap to chrome extension to web layout in PS to apis in nodejs.

magic_beans• 11 years ago

Stop reading books about js and start writing code. The only way to get to that $80k salary is to build, build, build. \

Step 1: build a portfolio. No one will even look at you without some sort of code under your belt.

techsin8• 11 years ago

Also in your opinion, what is that i should do?

Internship, Commercial Personal Project, low level job, unpaid work at startup, chrome extensions, or phonegap or nodejs?

I am wondering because if i chose something that doesn't scale well with experience. For example graphic Design doesn't have as much potential as Back End Dev.

mattmurdog2• 11 years ago

Honestly, it's up to you, but you have to begin somewhere even if it means at a low pay small company that doesn't care about "its website & pay." The skills you will learn working in a team/work environment is invaluable. The goal is to first get your foot in the door which ever way you can. Establish yourself, build some reputation and credibility. This is real experience, the kind that will eventually get you to the job you desire.

Always remember, no matter how good you think you are, there are other people out there that are better than you. You've had 4.5 yrs of self taught experience? When I was your age I've already had over 10. It was never above me to take that $50k job or that sketchy Craigslist posting that netted me just $500 for weeks of work.

techsin8• 11 years ago

I've always believed that everyone is better at everything from me. Thus the crazy need to learn everything.

What do you think i should do though?

Make sites for local businesses.

get internship

develop own product (which i think i can)

Which one of these or combination will help the most to build credibility and compensate for the lack of experience in the field.

mattmurdog2• 11 years ago

Why not all three? If you'e not fully employed, you have the freedom to pick an choose.

I'd try to land an internship first. The benefits of actually having a 9-5 job will help you "level up" to future employers. Sometimes there is stigma with being just a contractor/freelancer, and you'll never learn how to work in a team. When you're doing all the work, you'd never know what it'd like to work with designers, product managers, project managers, etc. These are all invaluable skills and skills/experience that you don't have and will never be able to learn until you get a "real" job. The other benefit is, you will be able to learn on the job. You'll be getting paid to learn, so what's not to like?

If you need extra money, do some local freelancing. I wouldn't try to tackle anything too big because most freelancing jobs suck due to unreasonable client expectations. You'll need to be a unicorn. (Not to be confused with consultation).

And always find time to work on your own project. This is not negotiable. Invest in yourself.

hashberry• 11 years ago

Find an entry level job for on-paper resume experience and keep jumping ship to better paid positions.

You have no paid work experience and no portfolio and no open source code so no one is going to pay you $80K. Gotta work your way up.

I started working at my university as a student webdev. Then got an entry level job at a firm, then kept finding better paid positions. Employers want to see work experience.

techsin8• 11 years ago

how can i bypass that, is it possible to makeup for lack of work experience.

Not that it matters for me. Because 0 times all projects still kinda 0. Lol. But seriously lets say i have 5 months of experience through some job. And then i go for something else what else could help me there then with experience part.

Bahamut• 11 years ago

You are not likely to bypass that lack - I have a MS in Math from a top 15 math program and I took a humbling $51k starting salary in frontend web development. I managed to more than triple that in roughly 1 1/2 years largely on my hard work & a bit of luck.

Of course, don't stop trying, but your expectations meed to be realistic.

cunninghamd• 11 years ago

Read a book called The Google Resume. I think it'll help you position yourself better in the market.

jfaucett• 11 years ago

I see your experience and I'm going to be honest with you about a couple things, because I went the same route in many ways, I'm completely self-taught on everything, worked as a web developer through school to help pay my non-CS degree and then got a job in web development after graduation. You don't say it explicitly but you seem to imply your not a CS major so thats what I'm assuming.

First and most important "most projects don't get completed because only one thing which i couldn't figure out, & could be explained to me by 9 min in person help." This is the worst thing you can say as a self-taught dev. You have to be able to just "figure things out". You have to get projects finished and have a portfolio to get a job, If you can't do this you might seriously want to reconsider a career in webdev because regardless you will always be in the situation where you have to solve a problem and nobody is there to help you. Maybe if you have a CS degree things are different but this is not the case when you're self-taught. As a self-taught guy its all about what you've done and can SHOW that you can do. So remember your Portfolio is everything, work on it, make sure its good but remember it doesn't have to be chalk full of tons of stuff, actually just one very good example that makes people say WOW is more than enough to get a good Job.

I know its hard to force yourself through to getting the projects completed, especially when you don't know how to do something, but the internet is full of tutorials and guides and tons of source code, of which you should be reading a lot and trying to understand it. Reading source code was my number one way to educate myself, and I still recommend this and do it when I need to understand something new. If you don't understand something, take the DOM for instance, read the jQuery source, write your own functions and libraries and then you will know how it works and about its quirks. In college you still have time to do a lot of this.

"in ads i see salaries from 30k to 190k .. where do i fit?" Right now from what you say, you'll be lucky to get a 30k Job - thats my honest opinion.

So my advice on how to get the 80k job is this:

Write code and finish your projects, forget about learning node/express/mongoose etc. If you need to know it to build a project then learn it. Nobody cares if all you know is CSS/HTML and JS if you show them some amazing site you designed and built a frontend for, they will hire you. At the end of the day, tech-stacks don't matter because its assumed you can learn/are willing to learn anything. So do whatever it takes to get some completed projects under your belt and you'll be good to go.

Self Taught Web Dev -What Should I Do?

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