Junior Web Developer looking for a job

Starshine

Starshine

Jedi Master
FOTCM Member
Hello fellows,

I recently decided to switch gears, and took a Web Development Course at Le Wagon : Web Development course | Le Wagon
As a teenager, that would have been my go-to direction, so it feels like going back to the source, this time.
I say this time, because I can say I changed gears many times so far.

It is a 9-week full-time intensive coding Bootcamp, leading to a level 6 French RNCP certification, which I passed with success! This would correspond to a license degree in the US.
Learned HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript ES6, SQL, git, GitHub, Heroku and Ruby on Rails. Or only scratched the surface, but eager to learn more :D

Now that the bootcamp is over, I need to earn money and keep on practicing!

I was wondering if some of you might have:
  • Leads or contacts for work opportunities.
  • Ideas of projects that would be helpful to the Forum and at the same time be of value in a portfolio.
 
Did you think of picking a specialization? Something having a demand on the market, like React or Vue if you are into programming? Besides RoR the stuff you learned is useful but it's basics and you won't make good money with it.
 
I'm not yet able to say which specialization I would pick. I can say I really enjoyed discovering the RoR framework and philosophy too, even though that's not what's most wanted on the market, the community remains well alive and the idea of compressing complexity is appealing to me. Rails 8 beta got out yesterday and DHH opening keynote confirms that. There are many well-known companies using it.

We took a quick look at Vue during the bootcamp, but we mainly used Hotwire stimulus and turbo to replace AJAX for our projects. I am aware that I need to gain experience and be project oriented. I'm mostly looking for a first professional experience, and the market is contracting, especially for juniors like me, as there are many and companies are mainly searching for mid-level to senior profiles.

For now, I'm still wondering what's the best approach, but I need to keep on coding. The plan for now is to start asking around if local businesses need a website and build a portfolio from there, while looking at job opportunities too.
 
Just learning Javascript, HTML and CSS is not enough. You would like to pick up Angular/Vue and .NET as well.

And Ruby? I thought it went extinct years ago...:lol:

Starshine said:
I'm mostly looking for a first professional experience, and the market is contracting, especially for juniors like me, as there are many and companies are mainly searching for mid-level to senior profiles.
Click to expand...
Look for some sort of apprenticeship in some company. Several months of apprenticeship allow a company to get to know you better, you gain lots of experience with real projects and afterwards they can decide to hire you on a permanent basis. That's how it works at least in Germany.
 
FWIW @Starshine when I moved into software development, I had trouble finding my first job as well. All of the jobs required 5 or more years experience with specific technologies before they would even consider you.

When the .NET Framework 2 was released I saw job advertisements asking for 10 years experience with it, and it hadn't been out for a year!

The same old conundrum - "How do I get experience if no one will employ me ?"

So I settled on taking a job with a small company, and I asked for a really low salary, which they could not say no to. All I needed was a year (at least) of experience, and I was willing to take crap pay to get it.

So yes, I got that experience and from then on I was OK.

For the front end stuff, I personally try to avoid, since it seems every week another front-end JavaScript framework is released that everyone has to get familiar with, and it gets more and more complex every time. The back end and database areas are easier to keep up with.

From what I see, you should get familiar with what you see advertised - At the moment it seems to be Angular, React and Vue.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Good luck finding work 🙏
 
Hi @Starshine, congratulations for completing the course!

I have good experience with LinkedIn in the aspect of job finding. It's worth creating a profile there and start developing a network. If you have an interesting profile, you'll be encountered by the recruiter.

I agree with other members here that the first job is often very little paid; it was true for me too. Basically, you don't need a degree at all, but you need to prove yourself to the employer. I'd aim for a job at some startup, as very often they just need hands to work for a little less money, but you gain the experience of being involved in everything and a glimpse into how the business works because of the flat structure.

Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with what technologies are used in West Europe, and how long they'd be popular. I have heard that large logistics software used in the Rotterdam Port runs on .NET runtime. I personally was involved in rewriting a backend from Ruby to Go because of the performance and lack of workforce for an American client, so I'm not sure if Ruby isn't a technical debt for some of the companies that they want to get rid of. But yeah, so much software has been written in whatever technology you'd even imagine that even COBOL specialists are still very sought for. When you gain experience, you can more easily switch technologies, as there are basically the same concepts for most object-oriented languages. Some folks are even jumping at the Elixir/Erlang ship to learn something new (and Elixir's syntax is inspired by Ruby, so this might be of interest to you, especially Elixir-Phoenix tandem).

I'd add one thing to the technology stack that you are getting familiar with: Kubernetes. Knowing this monster and having a certificate for a Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) could land you a job alone.

Good luck!​
 
Hello @Starshine ,

I had an idea running in my mind since now 2 to 3 years, about "When i have to hire a new colleagues" (I own a small IT company and we develop and support our solutions here in Luxembourg). This idea was to focus first on the level of awarness of the new employee, then in second on his skills. There's a lot of more to say about this idea, the idea was also linked to the forum and its members.

I have also a +/- good experience of hiring but not much anymore on the dev side : i have an IT dev diploma, but did not much develop since i started to work, the lone thing i still develop is an old scripting language on Windows which is named Kixtart, the father of powershell. So i mean, i may also be able to advise you on some points.

In a nutshell this would be good to have a chat with you, one evening, via TG (telegram). Just let me know back, do not hesitate to send me a PM.
 
Thank you for your responses. I now wonder if this post is in the right section.

My LinkedIn profile is not really optimal, since I have not much to showcase, I decided to explain my journey till now and that's about it, I hesitated displaying my past work experiences, since they have nothing to do with IT.

I'm still considering different options, including going straight into an MBA Full-stack developer work-study program, just to get that first work experience. Although I'm not thrilled about spending 2 years on minimum wage, it could be manageable. I have some admission tests to pass this week for at least one school.

Getting back to my idea of asking small businesses if they need a website, my brother-in-law just asked me if I could do something for his website, for which he pays €120/month and is only a showcase website built with WordPress with a contact form.
It seems quite expensive to me, as there is almost no maintenance required.

So I was wondering which options are out there to respond to this type of small businesses just needing a showcase site, for example?
There are so many different ways to get things done, it's hard to even know where to start.

That's where I discovered the Jamstack ecosystem, and inspiring web devs like Joost van der Schee and Ryan Postell.
They use Static Site Generators like Hugo, Jekyll or11ty coupled with headless CMS for content edition. It seems quite appealing to me to head towards these kinds of solutions. Faster, more secure, less resources, better SEO. Optimizing the code and getting closer to vanilla tech, that's something I'd love to pursue.

Thank you, @dredger, here is my telegram, it would be a pleasure to talk about it! During my bootcamp, I discovered how brainwashed most people are on the IT world. It's kind of scary. The woke have done their due over there too.
 
Starshine said:
Thank you for your responses. I now wonder if this post is in the right section.

My LinkedIn profile is not really optimal, since I have not much to showcase, I decided to explain my journey till now and that's about it, I hesitated displaying my past work experiences, since they have nothing to do with IT.

I'm still considering different options, including going straight into an MBA Full-stack developer work-study program, just to get that first work experience. Although I'm not thrilled about spending 2 years on minimum wage, it could be manageable. I have some admission tests to pass this week for at least one school.

Getting back to my idea of asking small businesses if they need a website, my brother-in-law just asked me if I could do something for his website, for which he pays €120/month and is only a showcase website built with WordPress with a contact form.
It seems quite expensive to me, as there is almost no maintenance required.

So I was wondering which options are out there to respond to this type of small businesses just needing a showcase site, for example?
There are so many different ways to get things done, it's hard to even know where to start.

That's where I discovered the Jamstack ecosystem, and inspiring web devs like Joost van der Schee and Ryan Postell.
They use Static Site Generators like Hugo, Jekyll or11ty coupled with headless CMS for content edition. It seems quite appealing to me to head towards these kinds of solutions. Faster, more secure, less resources, better SEO. Optimizing the code and getting closer to vanilla tech, that's something I'd love to pursue.

Thank you, @dredger, here is my telegram, it would be a pleasure to talk about it! During my bootcamp, I discovered how brainwashed most people are on the IT world. It's kind of scary. The woke have done their due over there too.
Click to expand...

Hi @Starshine

If all you need is a static website (html / javascript) you can use Github Pages and it costs nothing as far as I know. I'm not sure if you can use it for commercial use, but you certainly could use it to showcase your skills, and make a personal website with you CV and links to LinkedIn etc

Especially if you can demonstrate that you can hand-craft the site by yourself, without the use of static site generators, which tend to generate a lot of bloat.
 
There's a good program out there on self-employment, business development strategies, sales, etc. Autonomy. I took the course last year, found it to be excellent. Kind of like a business school for libertarians. People from all over the world with all manner of skills and experiences networking to help everyone.
getautonomy.info

Ignite - Get Autonomy

Gain the high-value skills for lifelong success in just 12 weeks. AUTONOMY will show you how to consistently call upon a toolbox to decipher and resolve the problems, challenges, and conflicts which arise from daily life.
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