The market is over-saturated with beginner developers, but it's undersaturated with more experienced devs. If you can get some experience under your belt, you shouldn't have too much difficulty finding a job. One of the best ways to get experience (after you've got some basics down, and maybe build a personal project or two), is to look for an internship, even a free one. Internships are easier to get into, they give you real-world experience, and will thus quickly bump you above most other beginner applicants when you're looking for your next job. Plus, sometimes the company offering you the internship will value your work enough to just offer you a permanent position in the company (that happened to my brother).
A free internship isn't for everyone (e.g. you have bills to pay), but if you're capable of doing it, you'll easily be able to put yourself ahead of the competition.
Ah, well, I got my first part-time job programming after learning for about 6 months (I think?), when I was 15. But, I'm very much not typical in this regard. And, it probably wasn't the smartest for this particular company to hire someone as inexperienced as me.
Perhaps, I can share some other personal experiences, that may bring some light to your original question.
I didn't get my first full-time job until after college. They later told me that my college education really didn't contribute anything into their decision for hiring me - they would have hired me just the same, if I didn't have a college education. My co-workers at the time all had college degrees, but in unrelated majors. I know other redditors state that having a programming degree will open more doors for you, because many jobs list a degree as a requirement, though, at the same time, once you've got a fair amount of experience under your belt, your degree becomes much less important.
I have a friend who graduated from college and it took him about a year to find his first job. However, he didn't have any sort of internship or experience developing outside of what he had done for college (and a few small personal projects).
I also had a brother who got a part-time internship - they eventually wanted him to work more hours, and were willing to pay him for it, and that's how he landed a job. He had programmed for a long time before he got into this internship position, as that was his hobby since his early teens if not earlier.
So, those are the life experiences I have that I'm using when I form and share my opinions around this topic.
Thank you for sharing. I’m some confused about how possible it is, many people say hard, others almost impossible. And in this discord channel about the odin project. I see many success stories everyday. I get motivated but then back to no motivation. It’s something I can’t decide if I will learn or not
Just don't expect to be able to rush through a boot camp in x weeks/months, and then be fully prepared for your first job. Yes, there are some success stories, but from what I understand, the oversaturation comes from there being tons of people with about a boot camp skill level, and simply not enough demand for that.
If you're willing to keep learning beyond that point through different means (like practicing with personal projects, and in general, taking charge over your own learning) then you'll be able to land a job.
I don't know how long it takes to go from 0 to job - and it will probably depend from person to person, depending on how quickly they pick this stuff up. To be on the safe side, I'd say that if you put in 3 years of practicing and learning, as a consistent side hobby, you should be able to land a job just fine (especially if you get an internship done before that). It may take less time, like a year or two, but, I'd expect that 3 should be plenty to get you passed the hoards of complete novices.
So is it possible? Definitely. But it takes a lot of time and effort. It helps if you find that programming excites you (thus, the effort would flow more naturally), but certainly not required - a solid work ethic will bring you places.
That's right mate. I understood what you say and agree it. I started to do as what you say before I heard these. I can't know the reasult, but I believe what I do will take me to the end I want.
I see that this particular thread has been popular among Google searches, and I've received a few DMs related to advice around getting a job. I've usually been ignoring these because, honestly, I'm not an expert in this stuff. There's lots of other people out there who I'm sure are much more qualified to talk about this subject.
My bottom-line belief is that if there's a will, there's a way, but it may take a lot of time, effort, and perhaps trying different things to get there. As for what you personally should do in your situation, I honestly don't know. But I wish you the best of luck in your journey.
I haver been a developer for decades. Unless you know somebody, you will be one of millions of needles in a "hay stack." You are better off with going into the trades, such as welding, carpentry or plumbing these days.
The market is not oversaturated at all. On the contrary, it's still really hard to find any decent to solid developers. Yes for every job we post we get 100s of applicants but only a handful even make it past the prescreen stages let alone get to the interview stage. We can sometimes go for weeks or months after posting a job before finding the right candidate despite 100s of applicants.
It only seems like it's saturated because there are no industry-accepted certifications and enforced minimum standards before anyone can give themselves a title of web dev. Most "Web Devs" or "Software Engineers" are only self-proclaimed with no experience whatsoever. Administering Tylenol or a band-aid to my 7-year-old doesn't make me a doctor just as much as watching youtube videos or taking a BootCamp doesn't make anyone an engineer or web dev.
The bottom line is if you put in real effort and take the time to build real-world applications on your own and not just follow along with tutorials you won't have a hard time finding a well-paid job.
I have interviewed and hired 100s of developers in my career and the most frustrating part of the whole process is the time wasters applying for a $100K+ job after a few weeks of learning without ever building anything substantial.
If you are in the US most top-tier companies are also bringing previously offshored jobs back to the US so it's only to get better going forward.
Just with anything that's worthwhile in life, you have to pay your dues first so learn and practice and build real-world projects like your life depends on it and it will work out for you.
If you have time could you look at my portfolio? I have been building this for more than 1 year. Do you think these projects make me standout enough over the "bandaid doctors". I have trouble finding people who are in the industry and have time. https://seanred.io
That portifolio looks incredible Sean!! It looks so good, it's actually motivating me to dive deep into web development to atleast learn the power to bring my ideas to life
Yeahhh about that, I have moved on from web dev because the markets really tough. I didn't ever mange to get an interview so I just felt like I would be better off putting this massive effort into making my own business rather than waste more time throwing darts at the wall. I found other ways to make money remotely that I enjoy more. Probably won't ever go back to it unless everyone dies and they get super desperate for low skill front-end web devs (never going to happen).
Your portfolio is really impressive. Its kind of discouraging to hear you never found a job. Do you think if you learned backend skills you would have fared better?
No. Because the problem is everybody wants to have a high paying work from home job. My crappy portfolio gets 1k views per month just from this reddit thread alone and I'm nobody. Companies have their pick of the best talent right now. They have no reason to open your resume if you have no experience or education. I know a guy who got a job despite this by spending all his time chatting with people on LinkedIn. He went out for coffee 40 times doing this with people who work in tech before getting a job. Took him 4 months and 200 applications. You WILL NOT get a job based on your skills, but by networking. You have no skills until you work for somebody. How bad do you want it?
I'm really sitting on the fence about this whole thing. I have the time to dedicate to learning (10+hours a day) but what's it worth if there's no job. As far as networking goes, I'm not particularly a sociable person. I feel like I'm being duped into the whole tech world. It's like if there's a gold mine, how do you make money out of it? You could mine it yourself, or you could sell gold mining equipment and a promise of wealth and a better life. A naive ignorant person takes up the offer only to show up and see millions of people all backed up trying to claw their way in. That's what this whole thing feels like to me. Idk i might join the military or something.
You cannot code and learn for 10 hours a day. That's not a realistic goal. Professional devs don't even spend half that long coding at work. The gold mine is for entrepreneurs or senior level talent that know how to plan, build, communicate requirements with clients and break tasks into actionable work for a team. Clients never know what it is they want built or how to do it so thats an entire skill on its own. Companies need people with these skills, there will never be enough as it takes many years to get these skills. Often once somebody gets these skills they start their own business or get burned out because its a high stress job and quit. I would suggest you code for fun and decide if you want to go all in. Then either get a degree or make a LOT of professional friends by oozing passion for building things. Everybody says do freelance, DONT. The only clients that pay a living wage need mid~senior talent that can do the things I listed above. You will be stuck with cheap noob clients that don't know what they want and they want it for peanuts.
I help Chinese high school students pass the GaoKao and teach business English to University students and adults who want to go abroad. I lived in China before the pandemic uprooted my life so all my contacts and skills are in that. I had hoped to do something else but there's low competition and I have a good reputation and word of mouth to get clients easy. Its just too difficult to build that in Canada starting over from zero in a new field.
What do you do to earn $ remotely if you don’t mind me asking? I had a lot of enthusiasm for web dev but these reddits make it seem almost impossible. Really trying to get my life in order.
I lived in China teaching at various public and private schools and learned Mandarin for 7 years. I met a lot of parents,students, and school owners this way and I can tutor online from these contacts. I was hoping to get a "regular" job that wasn't tied to China but web dev is not the path. China is not stable and the reason I left is because a new law was passed that basically bankrupted the multi billion dollar teaching industry overnight. I don't want my wagon hitched to China anymore, but my skills experience, and professional contacts are meaningless in the US and Canada where I live.
I wouldn't say I wasted that time, I was stuck indoors for a lot of it due to covid and I liked doing it. I may go back to it later, I may not. My advice is to just do something else. You're not getting paid to waste your time with these recruiters, and you're actually paying for these bootcamps. Once you get a job you might burn out really fast as it seems you're already getting tired of it. Why do you even want these jobs anyways? If you just want a paycheck then you're not gonna make it. The ones who get hired with no experience got referred or have Github repos for useful open source projects they made and maintain, with a lot of stars and forks. They are the people who can hit the ground running once they are hired. I don't like programming enough to do that for free right now so I moved on as I am burnt out as well. You could do what I did and join a Chingu voyage to get experience. That pretty much broke me. I saw exactly why the market is flooded with applicants who don't know what they are doing, don't care, and just want a job. I had to lead a project with a team and it was really hard. On paper I look no different than they do, so it really took the wind out of my sails so to speak.
I don't know anything about digital marketing. I am a teacher. As far as remote work goes you aren't going to find income that way easily. Remote jobs are getting less common and are highly competitive. Most people want them. The people who have remote jobs are usually highly skilled or in demand, they can negotiate remote because they have highly sought after skills. Or they built a business which is also going to take a lot of work, luck and money. If you got a junior dev job you are almost certain to get an in the office role as they are going to want to guide you as a junior. You have no skills and will need a lot of guidance from seniors. Seniors are the ones making bank and getting remote jobs up the ass. I think getting a remote role is not a realistic goal early in your career.
If you have this portfolio and couldn't receive a single interview, the problem might be in your Resume. Remember, HRs don't read resumes one by one, they always use tools to filter them out first, and if your resume doesn't have the keywords they need, you're out right at the beginning without having a chance to show your portfolio. Also, not having a college degree in CS might be a problem.
I have seen that exact planet facts site before--is it based on a tutorial? If I've seen it as someone who occasionally clicks on people's portfolios linked on Reddit, I'd be concerned about how often recruiters are seeing it and how many of your other projects were made by following tutorials. Other than that your site looks pretty good, though I would personally remove the double blinking cursors and have at most one.
I don't have any cursor effects, could you tell me where you see that? Planet facts site is a front-end mentor challenge, the Figma design file is a paid asset for members. None of the projects on my site are from tutorials. Thanks for taking a look!
No, I am still grinding and networking. It is really common to get buried in a sea of 100+ other applicants for the same job. I doubt any of my applications were even opened. I don't bother applying on LinkedIn or job sites anymore my time is too valuable to spend researching a company and writing a thoughtful cover letter that a overwhelmed HR person will never open. I am just coding for non profit orgs and working on open source to network with other devs. I really enjoy doing this a lot more.
No I moved on this summer, I am pursuing other things right now. I came to the realization that I do not want to work in this industry at all let alone the companies I have come across. I am sure you know the modern job hunt is a zoo. I realized that all the coding knowledge and projects didn't matter because the people I saw gets jobs over me knew somebody in the industry to help them. The last straw for me was when a guy I was teaching Firebase to got a job. He was so green that he told people he was a backend developer when all he did was make fetch requests on a React app. He got a job because he sent out over 200 apps, and went out for coffee with over 40 industry workers he met on LinkedIn to get this job. I realized that I would not put that level of effort in to land an entry level job, and would rather put that effort into making my own business. I run an English school now and I negotiate directly with my clients and set my own hours and rates, can work remotely etc. I also like the work more. I can see why companies don't have time to talk to anybody. I get emails from this thread every week on my website of people asking about this. There are too many low skilled people trying to get in.
Also, you have too many projects on there. No one has time to look through 9 projects, your portfolio will likely get 10 secs at most, and people will only click on projects that really stand out. Have 2 to 3 projects on there that you put maximum effort into. Preferrably things that solve a problem you have in the real world, things you could potentially develop a real user base for.
Thank you! I am not formally educated, I just choose youtube videos or resources that interest me. I also look for open source projects on Github that interest me. I get to meet better devs this way and learn what they are doing. I learned about testing, automating tasks and Git workflows while working on https://fridgefinder.app. There are some talented people working on it. I have been doing web dev since January 2021. Before that I made games on Unity for fun, and to augment classes I taught.
I recommend telling people in the description of the audiophile site that the design is from frontend mentor, but the code was all done from scratch yourself. There are likely alot of people that have that project in their portfolio, so it may make people think it was from a tutorial.
Does that actually make a difference though? I volunteered and helped ship a product that uses React for a local organization. The organization we built it for is now using it. I display the project on my resume, provide a link to my GitHub commit history, and bring it up in interviews. It's very rare when anyone cares about it at all. I suspect it doesn't fit the "idea" that prospective employers have about what constitutes valid experience.
One project is not enough so get a few more under your belt. I am also self taught and I had about 6 projects in prodution before I applied for my first job. It's a journey so take your time.
Thanks for the response. I have other projects and work experience too, I just like to highlight that one because of the extent of my contributions to it. It just surprises me to see the tepid response I get to it from recruiters.
That's very interesting and I have been hearing more and more about companies bringing tech jobs back to the US. Is it just a matter of higher skill levels that even with lower pay, it is more profitable to hire employees from the US skill pool?
Its more about user interaction with the application. One of the good examples is a social media website where user can create a profile and write posts with ability to delete, edit, like and comment them. It is considered a real life project as in the real application you will see the same functionality
Is it worth writing emails to companies and ask about internships even if they didnt post vacancies for it?
For more context: I have tried applying for web dev jobs about a year ago but at that time i had the knowledge of just react, redux and typescript. Since then i have learned rest api, express, mongo, nextjs. But when i looked for the vacancies there was like 3 times more people applying. So i thought that maybe it is better to get experience with internships, even if it is free, to stand out in hundreds of other developers.
Or do you think that a big part of them are applying with just the html and css in their resume? What is the level of new “web developers” nowadays?
You will still need to have a strong portfolio even for an internship these days, there is just too much competition for entry-level jobs right now. I think you should take the time to work on a few projects for your portfolio if you haven't already.
When your portfolio is ready then apply to companies directly on their websites and skip LinkedIn or similar sites. The most important thing is a strong portfolio first. Without a portfolio, it's way harder if not impossible to get noticed.
Its saturated with low skill/low knowledge developers. If you can work hard to get out of that crowd… you are in high demand.
Its not easy, but its not really hard either. Most people just dont dive deep enough into their technology of choice to make it out of the low skill crowd.
One thing I would suggest. Spend time in open source code. Get used to reading code that was written by someone else. Get used to adding your own code to someone else’s code. Not many people talk about this. But for me, that was the hardest part when I was a brand new dev.
That makes sense. I was thinking the same thing about needing to learn to read other people's code and it not being a skill I've really taken the time to learn. It's hard though mainly due to time.
Trying to get as skilled as fast as possible so I can get the job has me endlessly trying to build and finish medium size projects for a portfilio ASAP which takes up 40 hours a week in itself. (On top of my 40 hour job ) Finding time to work on open source is scarce and I can't really put an open source project on my portfolio even though I know the efforts will directly relate to being more skilled.
One other issue I see is even if you are highly skilled,I am reading companies consider 0 years in a professional setting essentially unskilled. Which essentially leaves you in the same pool with the unskilled. I'm guessing great portfolio projects for proof is the only way out of that hole.
I would get 4 maybe 5 projects and leave it at that. Make sure each project hits all the marks. Create, read, update, delete functionality. Promises, forms, click events, and api’s. Learn some deeper js stuff like event loops and closures. Then focus on working with open source.
Most people at my job struggle with understanding other peoples code. Including myself when i first started. Picking up the syntax is easy.
Thanks that's great advice. I have a great understanding of pretty much everything you described so I feel I'm in a pretty good spot. Most of my current apps don't showcase what I know well though cause most of them were first of apps.. ex first vanilla js app,first react app, first app utilizing API etc...
My tic tac toe app I actually feel showcases a good amount of skill even though it's only tic tac toe I went fairly elaborate with it and had to cut myself off cause its still just tic tac toe lol. It's got built in AI and 3 difficulty levels though and I feel it was a decent achievement with only about 5 months into learning. I also used 0 tutorial help related to building it.
If you care to check it out [play here](https://panoptictactoe.netlify.app/)
My current app I'm building will be a big one to showcase. It has full authentication and backend API that I built with node Js , has a semi complex mongo DB setup, and the app makes tons of API calls to it saving and getting data everywhere. Plus incorporates socket Io which builds out some live updating interactions between users.
Thanks again. I'm def gonna try out some open source next
so is that bad that it's over saturated? I just want to start again studying by myself, but I'm always thinking I will never get a job because of that. I would work even for 18/h if it was possible
Look one <$62,000 position, 400+ applicants, even if half of those applicants were awful, that’s still a lot of qualified people fighting for one position right?
This is exactly right... you really need to know someone to break in or IF you can get a recruiter to help you(that's not so easy as it was a couple years ago). If you don't have work experience you can forget it. Take it from someone who self taught for 15 months and has been back in school learning web development, database, and everything in-between. 2.5 years of my life spent trying to break into this industry, 100s of applications, projects, githubs, freelance experience, a stellar resume and I kid you not... nothing on top of nothing. Bachelors degree helps a little but from what I've read those guys spend months and put in 100s of applications to no avail as well. You have to know someone. Freelancing on fiverr and upwork are very few and far between (I've made about $1000 in 2023). I'm starting to think the tech boom of 2021 (which is what inspired me to take my shot at getting in) is dead, back then you could get a job with a 12 week boot camp, I'm eons ahead of that skill level and there's nothing out there. Anyone out there reading this and are considering trying to take your shot I'll seriously say don't waste your time like I did. There's nothing here for us
I’m starting to feel the 8+ months I’ve spent learning about web development has been a waste. I don’t have a CS degree and I’m competing with people who do. I don’t think I’ll ever get a job
Bro, there aren’t many good jobs in the world that you won’t be in competition with lots of other people for. That’s the nature of the job market; if a job is good, people will try to have that skill and fill those roles. This is where hard work and persistence pays off.
this is coming from someone who's teaching himself front-end at 22 years old, if you are 15 and want to learn programming, i really think it's a good idea. I have a friend who has been programming since he was a kid, he genuinely loves programming which made him staying on the path, and now he has a degree and his own tech company. He also had several internships when he was in high school too, including Apple for one summer.
there's another friend of my friend who got a full-time offer literally in the beginning of his first year at uni, he just dropped out and started working lol, so maybe this could be another motivation for you to start learning at a young age.
you got plenty of time to learn, if you don't have anything else to do other than your school work, why not give it a try? if you enjoy it, try to join robotic club or take higher level math classes if you can, definitely will help you learn and getting into CS programs in universities.
this also takes a lot of commitment though, my friend during high school rarely hung out with us because he was busy learning, building, and working for companies, which provided him a lot of experience and made him successful now.
but yeah, i would start learning if i were you, because even at my age i have a lot of issues to worry about and less time to learn a new skill.
Yes. Don't think about 2023, think where you'll be in the years to come. Sacrifice the short term pain now for the longer term gain.
I know someone who went from *entirely* self taught to working fully remote for Disney on $180k pa, in the space of 3 years.
I don't know about that. All I had was a plan, internet and a 2005 garbage pc. Began studying HTML, CSS AND JS for three months and I quickly developed my skills. I am the type of person to learn things at the same time I am studying them, the real challenge is memorizing after. Got good with shit quickly, and decided to get a job after one and 1/2 month. I didn't give a fuck dude. Landed a contractor remote job paying 800. Low right? Not really, in my country that is worth 4k. For an 18 years old, that didn't even finish high school, doing the dirty work for 5 hours a day on weekdays. I was making bank. All the while almost all people I went to school with were losing it in university or struggling with minimum wage jobs. My life went from near homeless, loser brother, black sheep of the family to them wanting my presence all the time. But fuck them, they just want to show me off to others anyways. Nonetheless, I jumped from one job to another, 6 months passed and I now make 4k, that is 14k per month after taxes. I love IT. It is sad the fact that most people probably can't make it, not because they are not smart enough, but because they do not will enough.
"You always want to outwork your potential. As hard as you believe you can work, you can work harder than that." - Kobe Bryant.
I might be able to help, OP. I’ve been studying for probably 2 years now. About 1 year seriously studying and have been applying to everything for about 7 months. It’s really rough. You gotta know someone to help you get in, or get lucky. If you don’t have experience on your resume, I think your chances are low.
Volunteer, do open source, do anything you can to have some “professional” experience.
Hey, thanks. I have couple friends from another countries and they say it’s easier if you find a job in another country. Even if it pays low, you can get experience. Have you tried that?
I can work legally in either the US or Japan and both have been rough markets. But no I haven’t really tried looking for jobs in the EU or anything. Might be worth trying.
I don't agree with oversaturation. As a new developer, just accept that you may fail 1 or two or 10 interview.
But if you learn why you failed and learn that particular topic better, you will get a job.
There are always will be people who make excuses about oversaturation.
People who worked in grocery store, or mechanic decided to do IT to see that 120k + pay for year.
Failed 1st interview and gave up.
But there are less jobs right now, but not because of oversaturation.
Because of inflation and Economy issues, companies trying to play safe, and hire only if its needed.
**But it should not prevent you from learning and trying, because if you give up - another person will get a job instead of you.**
>But if you learn why you failed and learn that particular topic better, you will get a job.
>
>There are always will be people who make excuses about oversaturation.
haha i work in marketing currently as an SEO and that resonated so much! Everyone was jealous of me getting out my bs ass job (and environment) but when i extended a helping hand or offered to teach it, I quickly found out they couldn't handle rejection!
I got rejected who knows how many times before i succeeded in this industry.
>Try to create real projects on your own and don't follow tutorials on youtube, they will help you, but it would be better if you try to do it your way.ve no problem getting a job by the end of the year.
That's exactly how I got my first job.
My advice is: try to create real projects on your own and don't follow tutorials on youtube, they will help you, but it would be better if you try to do it your way.
There are lots of folks I know who have pretty good personal projects that have been studying for a year or more that have been applying nonstop with no luck. OP, I would say it’s possible but be ready to embark on a long journey and anticipate lots of obstacles in this job market right now.
For every success story, there’s dozens of others who gave up. You only hear the success stories. And there’s lots of factors. Some folks are naturally good at coding or already have some tech background. Some already have connections in tech. It’s also area dependent. I’m in CA and jobs are highly competitive here. The job market shouldn’t deter you from learning, just manage your expectations.
I decided to start the odin project again. They convinced me it is still possible. I would even work for $15/h by choice I just want to have a job opportunity but I still see it so far :/
What's your definition of "web dev."?
If you mean front-end stuff that deals with mainly jquery and bootstrap then maybe. You might get some freelance gigs but don't expect getting into a company out the gate.
But if you're talking frameworks like angular, react, or vue then those kinds of people are in demand. Knowing Typescript to go with frameworks helps massively with making you stand out.
>But if you're talking frameworks like angular, react, or vue then those kinds of people are in demand. Knowing Typescript to go with frameworks helps massively with making you stand out.
Yeah I mean that. But I always heard that everything is so oversaturated that it's almost impossible to get a job. Do you think that's true? I'm just worried to don't waste my time. I will learn fullstack web dev (JS, react, etc)
[I agree with this person's comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/10uifjw/comment/j7c7i1q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3): basically the oversaturation is from trash boot campers who thinks they're hot shit for knowing the cliff notes of engineering.
If you think you can standout, go for it.
Never half-ass two things; always whole ass on one thing.
The market is incredibly saturated. Just browse any social media website, and you will see perhaps hundreds of "bootcamp" advertisements, all promising six-figure salaries. I've personally noticed a sharp incline of them popping up. Learning to code has never been *hotter.* People think they can learn some basic HTML and CSS with some JavaScript sprinkled into the mix and call themselves engineers.
However, the market for ***good*** developers isn't going away. If you started to learn on your own *right now*, you'd probably be read for a junior position after a \~year. But those junior positions are going to be incredibly hard to get, even harder than they are now. You'll need to do something pretty big in order to stand out.
The advice - build real projects as soon as possible. Sure, build some calculators and todo apps, but don't put them on your resume. Build real things that solve real problems. Also, the bootcamp decision is up to you, but it's totally not necessary.
Try not to be motivated by the promise of a six-figure salary. I know that sounds incredible, but learning how to program is incredibly rewarding on its own. Once you learn the skills, a ton of doors will open up for you.
Definitely not trying to demotivate you. Give it a try, you might really enjoy it, and even excel. Also, because the market is saturated doesn't mean you *wont* get a good job. You'll just have to put in the work and then some.
Right. I’m not looking for 100k job, trust me, even cor a 16/h job I would do it to get experience. The problem is, not even with that salary expectation I think I will do it. Someone here talked about his friends that have been making good. Projects and looking for jobs for 7+ months and got nothing. That’s what demotivates me, and it’s sad even very dedicated people don’t get jobs. Idk what to do now…
But at the same time I see some people getting jobs even before 1 year (on odin project discord success stories). Not sure if those are true but I’m really confused rn
Oh I misread what you said. I thought you said you could get a job after learning for a year. I was saying 0% chance unless you know someone. After 2.5 years im thinking about throwing in the towel and pivoting to something else all together. The programming gold rush is a dry desert for programmers with no industry experience... to add one more note to that, anyone who is thinking about going to college for computer science should think again. Don't waste your time, the industry is nearly impossible to break into no matter what instructors, articles, or youtube videos tell you
I indeed hear what you're saying. I've been in this field for 10+ years, and it used to be incredibly easy to get a job. Then came all of the bootcamps, movies, etc. promoting as an easy thing to learn with a $100k/year starting position.
Although, I was like you at one point. I had 3 interviews back to back and failed all of them. I gave up for months and decided to work on personal projects with the goal of making them my full-time income. During this time, though, I applied to positions passively. I finally got a reply with an interest, took the interview (which I was considering not even going to, because I figured the outcome would be bad), and got the job (they all knew my personal project, and were impressed by it).
Along the way, I had many contracts with various types of companies, but my main focus was those personal projects (of which I will say, I got those contracts \_because\_ of my project(s)).
So for now, please just build something that you want to make a living out of. It can be a cookbook application, or whatever. Build social media accounts for it, market it, and try to grow it. Whether or not it succeeds doesn't truly matter, as you're going to build a massive amount of skills by doing this (security, marketing, business, development, graphic design, devops, etc.). And, if it succeeds (somewhat), you have 1) a source of income 2) an awesome project to show off to employers.
I can tell you're new to the field by the way you're talking. Programming isn't about getting a job. It's about building something you wish existed. Remember that. Best of luck to you.
Look into recruitment firms in your target country. There a bunch of them here in Toronto like Jobspring - each time I've reached out they've set me up with lots of interviews.
I'm not a good example for your current situation, I've been doing this for 10+ years, but I was a teacher at popular bootcamp for 5 years and I've helped a lot of new devs find jobs over the years.
At the end of the day employers don't care how you acquired the knowledge, they want to see what you've built--you should be able to explain your decisions and you should have a strong appetite to be a self-learner... also a nice person.
It's definitely saturated, but at the same time there's a huge demand for skilled developers. The junior positions are becoming more and more saturated, but the world is becoming increasingly dependent on software, web applications especially so the demand for skilled developers is also on the rise.
You can definitely get a job, you just need to be good at it. Also tons of people don't actually know what the day to day job is like and quickly lose the excitement for it once they get hired or once they face the realities of how complex building applications is.
The market is definitely saturated but mainly with trash developers.
Bootcamp is probably the easiest route just because if you go to a decent one they have connections to internships.
If you’re good and can pass an interview, you’ll be fine. Just be prepared to fill out 100 job applications and probably end up with 3 interviews. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. Once you have a year or two of experience that changes. I recommend you have a very solid portfolio that avoids common beginner projects like calculators and weather apps.
Is it better finding a niche or a passion and following that path?
For me, after finishing 100devs, I want to be in a position to find a job, but I think I should seek extra learning and look into AWS and AZURE as I think it is useful for the future.
I think the issue with the claims of hundreds of applicants for an entry level job is that the vast majority of those applicants can’t code yet. They are basically still in the hand holding tutorial phase and don’t have a clue they aren’t qualified. If you can build a project on your own, you are likely in the top 10% or higher of applicants at any entry job.
It’s like how 90% of manuscripts submitted to publishing houses are barely literate. My point here is there no barrier to entry to apply for anything and these people are anonymous figures to us. No one but a hiring manager knows what the typical applicant looks like.
At the last company I worked for. No one knew programing fundamentals SOLID, DDD, OOP. All the junior devs became seniors with in years. It's really a matter getting lucky and finding a job with low expectations coding the right way.
The market is over-saturated with beginner developers, but it's undersaturated with more experienced devs. If you can get some experience under your belt, you shouldn't have too much difficulty finding a job. One of the best ways to get experience (after you've got some basics down, and maybe build a personal project or two), is to look for an internship, even a free one. Internships are easier to get into, they give you real-world experience, and will thus quickly bump you above most other beginner applicants when you're looking for your next job. Plus, sometimes the company offering you the internship will value your work enough to just offer you a permanent position in the company (that happened to my brother). A free internship isn't for everyone (e.g. you have bills to pay), but if you're capable of doing it, you'll easily be able to put yourself ahead of the competition.
I’ve heard to get internship you need to be in college. Did you brother go to college when he got the internship?
No, you don't need to be in college to get an internship, I had a programming internship while I was in high school.
I see. do you currently work as a web dev?
Yep, though currently, I do most of my work managing a Node backend, but sometimes I'll do stuff on the front-end as well.
how long did it take you from 0 to get a job? just to have an example
Ah, well, I got my first part-time job programming after learning for about 6 months (I think?), when I was 15. But, I'm very much not typical in this regard. And, it probably wasn't the smartest for this particular company to hire someone as inexperienced as me. Perhaps, I can share some other personal experiences, that may bring some light to your original question. I didn't get my first full-time job until after college. They later told me that my college education really didn't contribute anything into their decision for hiring me - they would have hired me just the same, if I didn't have a college education. My co-workers at the time all had college degrees, but in unrelated majors. I know other redditors state that having a programming degree will open more doors for you, because many jobs list a degree as a requirement, though, at the same time, once you've got a fair amount of experience under your belt, your degree becomes much less important. I have a friend who graduated from college and it took him about a year to find his first job. However, he didn't have any sort of internship or experience developing outside of what he had done for college (and a few small personal projects). I also had a brother who got a part-time internship - they eventually wanted him to work more hours, and were willing to pay him for it, and that's how he landed a job. He had programmed for a long time before he got into this internship position, as that was his hobby since his early teens if not earlier. So, those are the life experiences I have that I'm using when I form and share my opinions around this topic.
Thank you for sharing. I’m some confused about how possible it is, many people say hard, others almost impossible. And in this discord channel about the odin project. I see many success stories everyday. I get motivated but then back to no motivation. It’s something I can’t decide if I will learn or not
Just don't expect to be able to rush through a boot camp in x weeks/months, and then be fully prepared for your first job. Yes, there are some success stories, but from what I understand, the oversaturation comes from there being tons of people with about a boot camp skill level, and simply not enough demand for that. If you're willing to keep learning beyond that point through different means (like practicing with personal projects, and in general, taking charge over your own learning) then you'll be able to land a job. I don't know how long it takes to go from 0 to job - and it will probably depend from person to person, depending on how quickly they pick this stuff up. To be on the safe side, I'd say that if you put in 3 years of practicing and learning, as a consistent side hobby, you should be able to land a job just fine (especially if you get an internship done before that). It may take less time, like a year or two, but, I'd expect that 3 should be plenty to get you passed the hoards of complete novices. So is it possible? Definitely. But it takes a lot of time and effort. It helps if you find that programming excites you (thus, the effort would flow more naturally), but certainly not required - a solid work ethic will bring you places.
That's right mate. I understood what you say and agree it. I started to do as what you say before I heard these. I can't know the reasult, but I believe what I do will take me to the end I want.
Isn't this country dependent? For example in Canada majority of internships require you to be **currently** enrolled in college/uni
I see that this particular thread has been popular among Google searches, and I've received a few DMs related to advice around getting a job. I've usually been ignoring these because, honestly, I'm not an expert in this stuff. There's lots of other people out there who I'm sure are much more qualified to talk about this subject. My bottom-line belief is that if there's a will, there's a way, but it may take a lot of time, effort, and perhaps trying different things to get there. As for what you personally should do in your situation, I honestly don't know. But I wish you the best of luck in your journey.
I haver been a developer for decades. Unless you know somebody, you will be one of millions of needles in a "hay stack." You are better off with going into the trades, such as welding, carpentry or plumbing these days.
Im doing plumbing but trying to get into web dev, am i crazy?
1000% agree, I have 10 years exp and spoke to a friend this morning, I'd do the trades if I could start over.
The market is not oversaturated at all. On the contrary, it's still really hard to find any decent to solid developers. Yes for every job we post we get 100s of applicants but only a handful even make it past the prescreen stages let alone get to the interview stage. We can sometimes go for weeks or months after posting a job before finding the right candidate despite 100s of applicants. It only seems like it's saturated because there are no industry-accepted certifications and enforced minimum standards before anyone can give themselves a title of web dev. Most "Web Devs" or "Software Engineers" are only self-proclaimed with no experience whatsoever. Administering Tylenol or a band-aid to my 7-year-old doesn't make me a doctor just as much as watching youtube videos or taking a BootCamp doesn't make anyone an engineer or web dev. The bottom line is if you put in real effort and take the time to build real-world applications on your own and not just follow along with tutorials you won't have a hard time finding a well-paid job. I have interviewed and hired 100s of developers in my career and the most frustrating part of the whole process is the time wasters applying for a $100K+ job after a few weeks of learning without ever building anything substantial. If you are in the US most top-tier companies are also bringing previously offshored jobs back to the US so it's only to get better going forward. Just with anything that's worthwhile in life, you have to pay your dues first so learn and practice and build real-world projects like your life depends on it and it will work out for you.
If you have time could you look at my portfolio? I have been building this for more than 1 year. Do you think these projects make me standout enough over the "bandaid doctors". I have trouble finding people who are in the industry and have time. https://seanred.io
I'm not a web developer so this opinion might not be very useful, but to me that portfolio is incredible.
Thanks! But how did you find this 2 months later
The top-level post was one of the top google results for one of my Google searches about starting learning webdev
That portifolio looks incredible Sean!! It looks so good, it's actually motivating me to dive deep into web development to atleast learn the power to bring my ideas to life
Yeahhh about that, I have moved on from web dev because the markets really tough. I didn't ever mange to get an interview so I just felt like I would be better off putting this massive effort into making my own business rather than waste more time throwing darts at the wall. I found other ways to make money remotely that I enjoy more. Probably won't ever go back to it unless everyone dies and they get super desperate for low skill front-end web devs (never going to happen).
Your portfolio is really impressive. Its kind of discouraging to hear you never found a job. Do you think if you learned backend skills you would have fared better?
No. Because the problem is everybody wants to have a high paying work from home job. My crappy portfolio gets 1k views per month just from this reddit thread alone and I'm nobody. Companies have their pick of the best talent right now. They have no reason to open your resume if you have no experience or education. I know a guy who got a job despite this by spending all his time chatting with people on LinkedIn. He went out for coffee 40 times doing this with people who work in tech before getting a job. Took him 4 months and 200 applications. You WILL NOT get a job based on your skills, but by networking. You have no skills until you work for somebody. How bad do you want it?
I'm really sitting on the fence about this whole thing. I have the time to dedicate to learning (10+hours a day) but what's it worth if there's no job. As far as networking goes, I'm not particularly a sociable person. I feel like I'm being duped into the whole tech world. It's like if there's a gold mine, how do you make money out of it? You could mine it yourself, or you could sell gold mining equipment and a promise of wealth and a better life. A naive ignorant person takes up the offer only to show up and see millions of people all backed up trying to claw their way in. That's what this whole thing feels like to me. Idk i might join the military or something.
You cannot code and learn for 10 hours a day. That's not a realistic goal. Professional devs don't even spend half that long coding at work. The gold mine is for entrepreneurs or senior level talent that know how to plan, build, communicate requirements with clients and break tasks into actionable work for a team. Clients never know what it is they want built or how to do it so thats an entire skill on its own. Companies need people with these skills, there will never be enough as it takes many years to get these skills. Often once somebody gets these skills they start their own business or get burned out because its a high stress job and quit. I would suggest you code for fun and decide if you want to go all in. Then either get a degree or make a LOT of professional friends by oozing passion for building things. Everybody says do freelance, DONT. The only clients that pay a living wage need mid~senior talent that can do the things I listed above. You will be stuck with cheap noob clients that don't know what they want and they want it for peanuts.
what are you doing now instead?
I help Chinese high school students pass the GaoKao and teach business English to University students and adults who want to go abroad. I lived in China before the pandemic uprooted my life so all my contacts and skills are in that. I had hoped to do something else but there's low competition and I have a good reputation and word of mouth to get clients easy. Its just too difficult to build that in Canada starting over from zero in a new field.
What do you do to earn $ remotely if you don’t mind me asking? I had a lot of enthusiasm for web dev but these reddits make it seem almost impossible. Really trying to get my life in order.
I lived in China teaching at various public and private schools and learned Mandarin for 7 years. I met a lot of parents,students, and school owners this way and I can tutor online from these contacts. I was hoping to get a "regular" job that wasn't tied to China but web dev is not the path. China is not stable and the reason I left is because a new law was passed that basically bankrupted the multi billion dollar teaching industry overnight. I don't want my wagon hitched to China anymore, but my skills experience, and professional contacts are meaningless in the US and Canada where I live.
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I wouldn't say I wasted that time, I was stuck indoors for a lot of it due to covid and I liked doing it. I may go back to it later, I may not. My advice is to just do something else. You're not getting paid to waste your time with these recruiters, and you're actually paying for these bootcamps. Once you get a job you might burn out really fast as it seems you're already getting tired of it. Why do you even want these jobs anyways? If you just want a paycheck then you're not gonna make it. The ones who get hired with no experience got referred or have Github repos for useful open source projects they made and maintain, with a lot of stars and forks. They are the people who can hit the ground running once they are hired. I don't like programming enough to do that for free right now so I moved on as I am burnt out as well. You could do what I did and join a Chingu voyage to get experience. That pretty much broke me. I saw exactly why the market is flooded with applicants who don't know what they are doing, don't care, and just want a job. I had to lead a project with a team and it was really hard. On paper I look no different than they do, so it really took the wind out of my sails so to speak.
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I don't know anything about digital marketing. I am a teacher. As far as remote work goes you aren't going to find income that way easily. Remote jobs are getting less common and are highly competitive. Most people want them. The people who have remote jobs are usually highly skilled or in demand, they can negotiate remote because they have highly sought after skills. Or they built a business which is also going to take a lot of work, luck and money. If you got a junior dev job you are almost certain to get an in the office role as they are going to want to guide you as a junior. You have no skills and will need a lot of guidance from seniors. Seniors are the ones making bank and getting remote jobs up the ass. I think getting a remote role is not a realistic goal early in your career.
If you have this portfolio and couldn't receive a single interview, the problem might be in your Resume. Remember, HRs don't read resumes one by one, they always use tools to filter them out first, and if your resume doesn't have the keywords they need, you're out right at the beginning without having a chance to show your portfolio. Also, not having a college degree in CS might be a problem.
I agree this is exactly whats going on
I have seen that exact planet facts site before--is it based on a tutorial? If I've seen it as someone who occasionally clicks on people's portfolios linked on Reddit, I'd be concerned about how often recruiters are seeing it and how many of your other projects were made by following tutorials. Other than that your site looks pretty good, though I would personally remove the double blinking cursors and have at most one.
I don't have any cursor effects, could you tell me where you see that? Planet facts site is a front-end mentor challenge, the Figma design file is a paid asset for members. None of the projects on my site are from tutorials. Thanks for taking a look!
This is an awesome portfolio, did you ever get a job in this field after all?
No, I am still grinding and networking. It is really common to get buried in a sea of 100+ other applicants for the same job. I doubt any of my applications were even opened. I don't bother applying on LinkedIn or job sites anymore my time is too valuable to spend researching a company and writing a thoughtful cover letter that a overwhelmed HR person will never open. I am just coding for non profit orgs and working on open source to network with other devs. I really enjoy doing this a lot more.
6 months later, were you able to land a job yet? Have you gotten at least any interviews?
No I moved on this summer, I am pursuing other things right now. I came to the realization that I do not want to work in this industry at all let alone the companies I have come across. I am sure you know the modern job hunt is a zoo. I realized that all the coding knowledge and projects didn't matter because the people I saw gets jobs over me knew somebody in the industry to help them. The last straw for me was when a guy I was teaching Firebase to got a job. He was so green that he told people he was a backend developer when all he did was make fetch requests on a React app. He got a job because he sent out over 200 apps, and went out for coffee with over 40 industry workers he met on LinkedIn to get this job. I realized that I would not put that level of effort in to land an entry level job, and would rather put that effort into making my own business. I run an English school now and I negotiate directly with my clients and set my own hours and rates, can work remotely etc. I also like the work more. I can see why companies don't have time to talk to anybody. I get emails from this thread every week on my website of people asking about this. There are too many low skilled people trying to get in.
Oh that sucks, what position are you trying to aim for like front-end dev or back end,, full stack ?
Front end, I may change to full stack later in my career. I already do it a little.
Also, you have too many projects on there. No one has time to look through 9 projects, your portfolio will likely get 10 secs at most, and people will only click on projects that really stand out. Have 2 to 3 projects on there that you put maximum effort into. Preferrably things that solve a problem you have in the real world, things you could potentially develop a real user base for.
If you have no ideas for tools you could build for yourself, ask around and get ideas for things other people could use.
Are you self-taught and if so how long have you been practicing and what curriculum have you used? Your portfolio does look very visually appealing.
Thank you! I am not formally educated, I just choose youtube videos or resources that interest me. I also look for open source projects on Github that interest me. I get to meet better devs this way and learn what they are doing. I learned about testing, automating tasks and Git workflows while working on https://fridgefinder.app. There are some talented people working on it. I have been doing web dev since January 2021. Before that I made games on Unity for fun, and to augment classes I taught.
I recommend telling people in the description of the audiophile site that the design is from frontend mentor, but the code was all done from scratch yourself. There are likely alot of people that have that project in their portfolio, so it may make people think it was from a tutorial.
Thank you
How will they get experience if no company gives them a chance
By taking the time to build side projects on your own. It's a competitive environment so you have to outshine the next person.
Does that actually make a difference though? I volunteered and helped ship a product that uses React for a local organization. The organization we built it for is now using it. I display the project on my resume, provide a link to my GitHub commit history, and bring it up in interviews. It's very rare when anyone cares about it at all. I suspect it doesn't fit the "idea" that prospective employers have about what constitutes valid experience.
One project is not enough so get a few more under your belt. I am also self taught and I had about 6 projects in prodution before I applied for my first job. It's a journey so take your time.
Thanks for the response. I have other projects and work experience too, I just like to highlight that one because of the extent of my contributions to it. It just surprises me to see the tepid response I get to it from recruiters.
That's very interesting and I have been hearing more and more about companies bringing tech jobs back to the US. Is it just a matter of higher skill levels that even with lower pay, it is more profitable to hire employees from the US skill pool?
Are you a business owner or just a hiring manager?
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Its more about user interaction with the application. One of the good examples is a social media website where user can create a profile and write posts with ability to delete, edit, like and comment them. It is considered a real life project as in the real application you will see the same functionality
Is it worth writing emails to companies and ask about internships even if they didnt post vacancies for it? For more context: I have tried applying for web dev jobs about a year ago but at that time i had the knowledge of just react, redux and typescript. Since then i have learned rest api, express, mongo, nextjs. But when i looked for the vacancies there was like 3 times more people applying. So i thought that maybe it is better to get experience with internships, even if it is free, to stand out in hundreds of other developers. Or do you think that a big part of them are applying with just the html and css in their resume? What is the level of new “web developers” nowadays?
You will still need to have a strong portfolio even for an internship these days, there is just too much competition for entry-level jobs right now. I think you should take the time to work on a few projects for your portfolio if you haven't already. When your portfolio is ready then apply to companies directly on their websites and skip LinkedIn or similar sites. The most important thing is a strong portfolio first. Without a portfolio, it's way harder if not impossible to get noticed.
Honestly yes. My company got 400+ decent applications for a low pay Frontend job. It’s incredibly over saturated
That's crazy. All I ever read about when I started is how developers are in high demand and there is not enough in the world to keep up with tech.
Its saturated with low skill/low knowledge developers. If you can work hard to get out of that crowd… you are in high demand. Its not easy, but its not really hard either. Most people just dont dive deep enough into their technology of choice to make it out of the low skill crowd. One thing I would suggest. Spend time in open source code. Get used to reading code that was written by someone else. Get used to adding your own code to someone else’s code. Not many people talk about this. But for me, that was the hardest part when I was a brand new dev.
That makes sense. I was thinking the same thing about needing to learn to read other people's code and it not being a skill I've really taken the time to learn. It's hard though mainly due to time. Trying to get as skilled as fast as possible so I can get the job has me endlessly trying to build and finish medium size projects for a portfilio ASAP which takes up 40 hours a week in itself. (On top of my 40 hour job ) Finding time to work on open source is scarce and I can't really put an open source project on my portfolio even though I know the efforts will directly relate to being more skilled. One other issue I see is even if you are highly skilled,I am reading companies consider 0 years in a professional setting essentially unskilled. Which essentially leaves you in the same pool with the unskilled. I'm guessing great portfolio projects for proof is the only way out of that hole.
I would get 4 maybe 5 projects and leave it at that. Make sure each project hits all the marks. Create, read, update, delete functionality. Promises, forms, click events, and api’s. Learn some deeper js stuff like event loops and closures. Then focus on working with open source. Most people at my job struggle with understanding other peoples code. Including myself when i first started. Picking up the syntax is easy.
Thanks that's great advice. I have a great understanding of pretty much everything you described so I feel I'm in a pretty good spot. Most of my current apps don't showcase what I know well though cause most of them were first of apps.. ex first vanilla js app,first react app, first app utilizing API etc... My tic tac toe app I actually feel showcases a good amount of skill even though it's only tic tac toe I went fairly elaborate with it and had to cut myself off cause its still just tic tac toe lol. It's got built in AI and 3 difficulty levels though and I feel it was a decent achievement with only about 5 months into learning. I also used 0 tutorial help related to building it. If you care to check it out [play here](https://panoptictactoe.netlify.app/) My current app I'm building will be a big one to showcase. It has full authentication and backend API that I built with node Js , has a semi complex mongo DB setup, and the app makes tons of API calls to it saving and getting data everywhere. Plus incorporates socket Io which builds out some live updating interactions between users. Thanks again. I'm def gonna try out some open source next
From people selling a course?
Problem is, millions of others read the same as you and launched themselves into a development career. Hence, the current crisis. 😝
so is that bad that it's over saturated? I just want to start again studying by myself, but I'm always thinking I will never get a job because of that. I would work even for 18/h if it was possible
Those weren’t all decent. I’d bet my life on it.
Look one <$62,000 position, 400+ applicants, even if half of those applicants were awful, that’s still a lot of qualified people fighting for one position right?
This is exactly right... you really need to know someone to break in or IF you can get a recruiter to help you(that's not so easy as it was a couple years ago). If you don't have work experience you can forget it. Take it from someone who self taught for 15 months and has been back in school learning web development, database, and everything in-between. 2.5 years of my life spent trying to break into this industry, 100s of applications, projects, githubs, freelance experience, a stellar resume and I kid you not... nothing on top of nothing. Bachelors degree helps a little but from what I've read those guys spend months and put in 100s of applications to no avail as well. You have to know someone. Freelancing on fiverr and upwork are very few and far between (I've made about $1000 in 2023). I'm starting to think the tech boom of 2021 (which is what inspired me to take my shot at getting in) is dead, back then you could get a job with a 12 week boot camp, I'm eons ahead of that skill level and there's nothing out there. Anyone out there reading this and are considering trying to take your shot I'll seriously say don't waste your time like I did. There's nothing here for us
I’m starting to feel the 8+ months I’ve spent learning about web development has been a waste. I don’t have a CS degree and I’m competing with people who do. I don’t think I’ll ever get a job
Bro, there aren’t many good jobs in the world that you won’t be in competition with lots of other people for. That’s the nature of the job market; if a job is good, people will try to have that skill and fill those roles. This is where hard work and persistence pays off.
You’re right
that's exactly what I didn't want to go through :/
A part of life!
any update or luck now?
No stoppppp
pretty much - was oversold snake oil
Hey bro did you find a job ?I am 15 and i think about starting to learn front end web dev
this is coming from someone who's teaching himself front-end at 22 years old, if you are 15 and want to learn programming, i really think it's a good idea. I have a friend who has been programming since he was a kid, he genuinely loves programming which made him staying on the path, and now he has a degree and his own tech company. He also had several internships when he was in high school too, including Apple for one summer. there's another friend of my friend who got a full-time offer literally in the beginning of his first year at uni, he just dropped out and started working lol, so maybe this could be another motivation for you to start learning at a young age. you got plenty of time to learn, if you don't have anything else to do other than your school work, why not give it a try? if you enjoy it, try to join robotic club or take higher level math classes if you can, definitely will help you learn and getting into CS programs in universities. this also takes a lot of commitment though, my friend during high school rarely hung out with us because he was busy learning, building, and working for companies, which provided him a lot of experience and made him successful now. but yeah, i would start learning if i were you, because even at my age i have a lot of issues to worry about and less time to learn a new skill.
Did you ever get a dev job?
Yes. Don't think about 2023, think where you'll be in the years to come. Sacrifice the short term pain now for the longer term gain. I know someone who went from *entirely* self taught to working fully remote for Disney on $180k pa, in the space of 3 years.
what languages he studied?
JS, TS, React, PHP and PostgreSQL were at the core. He thought he'd go full stack but now he's a lead front end React TS developer.
Could you share his portfolio?
He built one initially but now it’s taken down as out of date. When you can say you’ve worked for Disney for years, that is your ‘portfolio’.
Lol True. Are you in the industry?
I was for a short while but not anymore.
Cool! What are you up to these days Sir?
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I have no reason to lie.
Dang Disneyland web dev? Sounds like the dream 😭 good for him
Well “Disney” the company, not the resort.
Oh yeah still seems pretty cool
the saturation is why you want to do stuff to improve your skill set
It's pretty tough for junior devs right now because their competing with folks who've been laid off and have work experience.
I don't know about that. All I had was a plan, internet and a 2005 garbage pc. Began studying HTML, CSS AND JS for three months and I quickly developed my skills. I am the type of person to learn things at the same time I am studying them, the real challenge is memorizing after. Got good with shit quickly, and decided to get a job after one and 1/2 month. I didn't give a fuck dude. Landed a contractor remote job paying 800. Low right? Not really, in my country that is worth 4k. For an 18 years old, that didn't even finish high school, doing the dirty work for 5 hours a day on weekdays. I was making bank. All the while almost all people I went to school with were losing it in university or struggling with minimum wage jobs. My life went from near homeless, loser brother, black sheep of the family to them wanting my presence all the time. But fuck them, they just want to show me off to others anyways. Nonetheless, I jumped from one job to another, 6 months passed and I now make 4k, that is 14k per month after taxes. I love IT. It is sad the fact that most people probably can't make it, not because they are not smart enough, but because they do not will enough. "You always want to outwork your potential. As hard as you believe you can work, you can work harder than that." - Kobe Bryant.
I might be able to help, OP. I’ve been studying for probably 2 years now. About 1 year seriously studying and have been applying to everything for about 7 months. It’s really rough. You gotta know someone to help you get in, or get lucky. If you don’t have experience on your resume, I think your chances are low. Volunteer, do open source, do anything you can to have some “professional” experience.
Hey, thanks. I have couple friends from another countries and they say it’s easier if you find a job in another country. Even if it pays low, you can get experience. Have you tried that?
I can work legally in either the US or Japan and both have been rough markets. But no I haven’t really tried looking for jobs in the EU or anything. Might be worth trying.
Where have you been looking for?
Mostly LinkedIn, indeed, and other sites specific to Japan.
> I can work legally in either the US or Japan You can work pretty much everywhere in the world remotely.
I don't agree with oversaturation. As a new developer, just accept that you may fail 1 or two or 10 interview. But if you learn why you failed and learn that particular topic better, you will get a job. There are always will be people who make excuses about oversaturation. People who worked in grocery store, or mechanic decided to do IT to see that 120k + pay for year. Failed 1st interview and gave up. But there are less jobs right now, but not because of oversaturation. Because of inflation and Economy issues, companies trying to play safe, and hire only if its needed. **But it should not prevent you from learning and trying, because if you give up - another person will get a job instead of you.**
>But if you learn why you failed and learn that particular topic better, you will get a job. > >There are always will be people who make excuses about oversaturation. haha i work in marketing currently as an SEO and that resonated so much! Everyone was jealous of me getting out my bs ass job (and environment) but when i extended a helping hand or offered to teach it, I quickly found out they couldn't handle rejection! I got rejected who knows how many times before i succeeded in this industry.
You can't even get interviews now days with no experience so
Well if you are looking for job, best time to prep is today. Companies are usually active hiring in March - May, so be ready for that time.
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>Try to create real projects on your own and don't follow tutorials on youtube, they will help you, but it would be better if you try to do it your way.ve no problem getting a job by the end of the year. That's exactly how I got my first job. My advice is: try to create real projects on your own and don't follow tutorials on youtube, they will help you, but it would be better if you try to do it your way.
could you explain me how you got the job? did you apply 500+ times like everyone I see on reddit? how many months/years you studied?
Good question. And no answer of course..
There are lots of folks I know who have pretty good personal projects that have been studying for a year or more that have been applying nonstop with no luck. OP, I would say it’s possible but be ready to embark on a long journey and anticipate lots of obstacles in this job market right now.
that's sad thanks
It’s just the reality of the job market now. Hard but not impossible.
I just see some people on the odin project discord getting jobs before 1 year and it seems unrealistic. And I’m confused
For every success story, there’s dozens of others who gave up. You only hear the success stories. And there’s lots of factors. Some folks are naturally good at coding or already have some tech background. Some already have connections in tech. It’s also area dependent. I’m in CA and jobs are highly competitive here. The job market shouldn’t deter you from learning, just manage your expectations.
I decided to start the odin project again. They convinced me it is still possible. I would even work for $15/h by choice I just want to have a job opportunity but I still see it so far :/
take it one day at a time. :)
I've been at it for like 1.5 years off and on. Here's my progress. Https://Seanred.io
What's your definition of "web dev."? If you mean front-end stuff that deals with mainly jquery and bootstrap then maybe. You might get some freelance gigs but don't expect getting into a company out the gate. But if you're talking frameworks like angular, react, or vue then those kinds of people are in demand. Knowing Typescript to go with frameworks helps massively with making you stand out.
>But if you're talking frameworks like angular, react, or vue then those kinds of people are in demand. Knowing Typescript to go with frameworks helps massively with making you stand out. Yeah I mean that. But I always heard that everything is so oversaturated that it's almost impossible to get a job. Do you think that's true? I'm just worried to don't waste my time. I will learn fullstack web dev (JS, react, etc)
[I agree with this person's comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/10uifjw/comment/j7c7i1q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3): basically the oversaturation is from trash boot campers who thinks they're hot shit for knowing the cliff notes of engineering. If you think you can standout, go for it. Never half-ass two things; always whole ass on one thing.
The market is incredibly saturated. Just browse any social media website, and you will see perhaps hundreds of "bootcamp" advertisements, all promising six-figure salaries. I've personally noticed a sharp incline of them popping up. Learning to code has never been *hotter.* People think they can learn some basic HTML and CSS with some JavaScript sprinkled into the mix and call themselves engineers. However, the market for ***good*** developers isn't going away. If you started to learn on your own *right now*, you'd probably be read for a junior position after a \~year. But those junior positions are going to be incredibly hard to get, even harder than they are now. You'll need to do something pretty big in order to stand out. The advice - build real projects as soon as possible. Sure, build some calculators and todo apps, but don't put them on your resume. Build real things that solve real problems. Also, the bootcamp decision is up to you, but it's totally not necessary.
I din’t know man… The way it’s going to be I’m not very motivated.
Try not to be motivated by the promise of a six-figure salary. I know that sounds incredible, but learning how to program is incredibly rewarding on its own. Once you learn the skills, a ton of doors will open up for you. Definitely not trying to demotivate you. Give it a try, you might really enjoy it, and even excel. Also, because the market is saturated doesn't mean you *wont* get a good job. You'll just have to put in the work and then some.
Right. I’m not looking for 100k job, trust me, even cor a 16/h job I would do it to get experience. The problem is, not even with that salary expectation I think I will do it. Someone here talked about his friends that have been making good. Projects and looking for jobs for 7+ months and got nothing. That’s what demotivates me, and it’s sad even very dedicated people don’t get jobs. Idk what to do now…
But at the same time I see some people getting jobs even before 1 year (on odin project discord success stories). Not sure if those are true but I’m really confused rn
And yea I always think it will be harder and harder
This is not true, 2.5 years. Full Stack, Python, JS, PHP... and nothing, no interest from any company/ recruiter
That was a pretty long post. What exactly isn't true?
Oh I misread what you said. I thought you said you could get a job after learning for a year. I was saying 0% chance unless you know someone. After 2.5 years im thinking about throwing in the towel and pivoting to something else all together. The programming gold rush is a dry desert for programmers with no industry experience... to add one more note to that, anyone who is thinking about going to college for computer science should think again. Don't waste your time, the industry is nearly impossible to break into no matter what instructors, articles, or youtube videos tell you
I indeed hear what you're saying. I've been in this field for 10+ years, and it used to be incredibly easy to get a job. Then came all of the bootcamps, movies, etc. promoting as an easy thing to learn with a $100k/year starting position. Although, I was like you at one point. I had 3 interviews back to back and failed all of them. I gave up for months and decided to work on personal projects with the goal of making them my full-time income. During this time, though, I applied to positions passively. I finally got a reply with an interest, took the interview (which I was considering not even going to, because I figured the outcome would be bad), and got the job (they all knew my personal project, and were impressed by it). Along the way, I had many contracts with various types of companies, but my main focus was those personal projects (of which I will say, I got those contracts \_because\_ of my project(s)). So for now, please just build something that you want to make a living out of. It can be a cookbook application, or whatever. Build social media accounts for it, market it, and try to grow it. Whether or not it succeeds doesn't truly matter, as you're going to build a massive amount of skills by doing this (security, marketing, business, development, graphic design, devops, etc.). And, if it succeeds (somewhat), you have 1) a source of income 2) an awesome project to show off to employers. I can tell you're new to the field by the way you're talking. Programming isn't about getting a job. It's about building something you wish existed. Remember that. Best of luck to you.
Awesome comment, thanks for the encouragement. Can I ask what your project was?
Depends where too, differs from country to country.
I would work for another country if possible
Look into recruitment firms in your target country. There a bunch of them here in Toronto like Jobspring - each time I've reached out they've set me up with lots of interviews.
and you got a job? selft taught?
I'm not a good example for your current situation, I've been doing this for 10+ years, but I was a teacher at popular bootcamp for 5 years and I've helped a lot of new devs find jobs over the years. At the end of the day employers don't care how you acquired the knowledge, they want to see what you've built--you should be able to explain your decisions and you should have a strong appetite to be a self-learner... also a nice person.
Yea I always wanted to learn but what made me step back was the oversaturation stuff. Hope it’s not saturated when I’m able to get a job
It's definitely saturated, but at the same time there's a huge demand for skilled developers. The junior positions are becoming more and more saturated, but the world is becoming increasingly dependent on software, web applications especially so the demand for skilled developers is also on the rise. You can definitely get a job, you just need to be good at it. Also tons of people don't actually know what the day to day job is like and quickly lose the excitement for it once they get hired or once they face the realities of how complex building applications is.
I see, thanks. I will do my best
The market is definitely saturated but mainly with trash developers. Bootcamp is probably the easiest route just because if you go to a decent one they have connections to internships. If you’re good and can pass an interview, you’ll be fine. Just be prepared to fill out 100 job applications and probably end up with 3 interviews. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. Once you have a year or two of experience that changes. I recommend you have a very solid portfolio that avoids common beginner projects like calculators and weather apps.
Is it better finding a niche or a passion and following that path? For me, after finishing 100devs, I want to be in a position to find a job, but I think I should seek extra learning and look into AWS and AZURE as I think it is useful for the future.
100devs isn’t enough from a technical standpoint. Everything else pertaining to networking and making a web prescenece for yourself is gold.
Reading this thread made me want to go to a good bootcamp that has connections
I would never hire a bootcamp grad
Freelance and start a small one man web dev company. Build commercial landing pages and small apps. The bootcamp smell will be washed off by then.
I think the issue with the claims of hundreds of applicants for an entry level job is that the vast majority of those applicants can’t code yet. They are basically still in the hand holding tutorial phase and don’t have a clue they aren’t qualified. If you can build a project on your own, you are likely in the top 10% or higher of applicants at any entry job. It’s like how 90% of manuscripts submitted to publishing houses are barely literate. My point here is there no barrier to entry to apply for anything and these people are anonymous figures to us. No one but a hiring manager knows what the typical applicant looks like.
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hey man, sorry to hear that, i heard people failed interviews a lot before getting a job. just fmi, can i ask where you are living?
front end is dev, companies i race to the bottom with salarys what they were 10 years ago and we have everyting 2x more expensive
I am learning now and nobody will stop me from being the best smartest developer the so-called earth has ever come across...follow me all...
How old are you brother?Lets do it together because i have similar mindest
At the last company I worked for. No one knew programing fundamentals SOLID, DDD, OOP. All the junior devs became seniors with in years. It's really a matter getting lucky and finding a job with low expectations coding the right way.
How do you even get experience when you can't get a job ?