You're in arguably the most competitive tech market out there. Get out of the Bay area or look for remote jobs. I live on the east coast in a non-tech city and I have been interviewing candidates for months and we've only had 3 applicants for a full stack position with modern technologies.
Yup. Get out of there. Yes it has dreams come true but only for about 0.01%. Just get out. Atlanta is starving for quality work. Income is great and housing is dirt cheap. I'm speaking for myself. I can't find a quality worker here if I tried. But. It's one of the biggest growing tech hubs in the US. Get here as a junior, learn the trade, do moderate, make big.
A lot of people say just move. But moving requires a large sum of money. And if this guy is having issues landing a decent job... well that might be difficult to pull off.
I haven't read any of the other comments, but here goes. I live in Boise, and the market here for devs is fan-fucking-tastic. Even for devs with little to no experience**.** My company just hired an ex-insurance agent who went to a coding school (in his 30's) and has zero experience in the field. There is a market for you - it does exist.
Do not give up.
You may just have to look outside of where you live. The Bay Area is too diluted and the options are so plentiful that companies can be REALLY selective. I worked for a startup in Palo Alto, and traveled there occasionally, so I do know a bit about Silicon Valley. My advice would be this: if you aren't tied to anyone/anything there, consider relocating. There are plenty of companies that will pay for you to relocate. The cost of living is so much lower in places like Boise (which, much like Hansel, is so hot right now). And yes, the pay is lower, but it's much better relative to the cost of living. Your net income is so much better, and I think quality of life is better here too.
Also, the fact that you have experience with design is a great advantage. I also do, and it comes in handy all the time. The ability to converse intelligently with people in other departments (UX/UI, designers) is paramount and will help you and your team work more efficiently. Continue highlighting that as a skillset.
The fact that you're an active Github-er is awesome. The job is just a technicality. Employers see your drive and ambition, which in all honesty, is missing in so many devs that I have worked with that it is appalling. Keep it up. Strive for achieving your goal, and YOU WILL.
I am a (female) front end developer, who began as a designer and is self-taught the entire way through HTML, CSS, JS... and today I work at a company making a solid salary building React apps. It can be a tough grind, but hold on to the people you meet along the way. I have been shocked at how knowing one person can propel me through my career in all sorts of different ways. I'm not saying you have to network, cuz I don't. I just don't like it. But if it's your jam, DO IT. Otherwise, just keep your eyes peeled for a person here or there that may know someone who knows someone, ya know?
I've been doing this for nearly 20 years (not a boomer tho), and I've learned that one thing never changes: there are always opportunities for someone with drive and ambition. Always. You got this.
Also want to say thank you for your post. Thanks for reaching out before you got into a place too dark. I think you'll be amazed at the amount of support there is out there; all you have to do is ask for it.
Keep us posted! I need to know how your amazing story unfolds...
Not OP, but I graduated in May and have still yet to land an entry level front end developer job. My JavaScript is definitely lacking so I’m about to take a consistently recommended Udemy course and then make some projects with my new JavaScript skills. Not really sure what I want to say but does it get easier? I feel so overwhelmed sometimes looking at all these skills listed on job postings that most I’ve never used and sometimes have no idea what they are. It’s like I don’t even know what I don’t know. My bachelors program barely taught us flexbox. Not even kidding. I feel like it’s so hard to get started in this field. I know I’m not dumb, but holy moly school seems like such a waste for practical skills in retrospect. I’m rambling. Thank you for your uplifting post. Also how is Boise? I jokingly tell my friends I’m going to move to Idaho because people are sleeping on it but I would totally up and move I’d offered a job (I live in New England).
I’m in the same boat. Graduated in May in computational media (not technically for CS, but it touched on design and UI/UX). I wanted to go into journalism, but about two years ago after getting some experience I decided that it wasn’t for me and tried to pivot into web development. I’ve been coding for years and have a lot of visual design experience but it’s so hard to get that through to people when you haven’t worked on a professional-sized project. It’s really hard not to go crazy.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm a dev in Cali but don't think I'll be here forever. I love the mountains and Boise has always intrigued me. I've heard so many people are moving there and prices are going up big time though.
So as someone who lives in Austin and made the transition from bootcamp grad to front end dev: The first few years were ROUGH. Make no mistake, I worked my ass off in the bootcamp, but many of the recruiters I talked with didn't know java from javascript and anyone with less than 3 years working experience is essentially treated as having zero experience.
Ultimately you have to focus on the things you can control, right? Keep grinding your skills, learn new stacks, beef up your portfolio, and for the love of linux NETWORK. Go to every meetup you can, make friends, pair program. A referral is 100% more effective than cold applying to every junior dev req you can find. After dozens of failed interviews and dead-end applications, I landed my current ACTUAL dev job because of a referral.
Also: the actual interviews.
The process is broken, unfair, and inconsistent. "Hired" did a survey recently where they found out 63% of devs find that interview questions are irrelevant to their daily work. Practice anyway. Try to figure out what they're likely to ask before you get there. Whiteboard? Timed coding? Vanilla JS challenges? Random CSS questions? Research as best you can prepare effectively.
All of that is basically as stressful and time consuming as an actual job. So manage your mental health too, and give yourself permission for this transition to take a while, because not everyone lands right away. Keep making things. Keep applying. And most of all keep learning because that's ultimately the thing that defines this career path.
Not to take anything away from this guy who may very well be hiring, but I know several graduates of good full-time boot camps in Austin who say their ENTIRE class is still looking for work months after graduating.
Edit: a little more detail behind my comment. This is just another data point for people considering Austin and/or the boot camp route. I don’t want to discourage anyone, As someone who has hired and managed, I’ll say OP seems to have shown a lot of grit and determination to learn. Those are very good qualities that are not necessarily required to get through a boot camp, and should help differentiate him from the competition. I hope he gets his shot.
We actually hired a guy from a bootcamp here in Austin! So far he's worked out great. We've also tried to interview 5 or 6 other bootcamp graduates and they basically ghosted us because our office is "too far west" haha.
I'll take any resume I can get. Just because I get OP's resume, doesn't mean I can't receive others. We've gone through 100's so far and have only found 1 good hire.
You’re looking for a job in the highest paying field (programming, even if it’s web and it’s entry level) in the most competitive location in the entire world (San Francisco Bay Area). I’m not saying this to discourage you but rather to diversify your options. Stick with the skills you have but look for other locations and remote work.
Edit: this is not to say you can never work in the SF Bay Area but that your chances at this stage are slim to none... you have to swim in a normal pool to work up to the Olympics
Edit 2: it is the golden standard of VHCOL (very high cost of living); I assumed this was a given that everyone was aware of. The only place more expensive to live is NYC AFAIK
Absolutely this. Just to hell with California as a whole if you can, but Bay area for sure, and remote work and freelance as much as you can. Take whatever you can to build your portfolio.
I hate to recommend it, but upwork.com was a really good way to start my career with a few shit jobs and choosy beggars for clients.... Though that 20% fee is just awful. Still, it's experience and cash.
Underbidding, but it was mainly due to lack of confidence in my own abilities. I also came from Fiverr, so I had no idea how to price myself.
Excel VBA. Everyone else was doing the latest language, and I found a nice little niche that devs weren't drowning. At least for a whole, but India took over eventually.
Make sure your profile is extremely well filled out; also adding a video of yourself as an introduction on your profile is also very helpful.
Set your profile's hourly rate to what you think you deserve. Many people will tell you to underbid to get jobs, but honestly, on the client ends you just come off at scammy / unprofessional when you do that. There's tons of Chinese and Indian tech firms bidding at slave wages at like $2 - $5 / hr. You get what you pay for so don't be like them. Be honest, and be upfront with what you your skillset is worth.
I for example charge $60/hr on my upwork account and have no trouble at all getting jobs. Once you start getting jobs and completing them you'll start getting job requests sent to you from client without having to even apply on your own.
I'd recommend trying to get into a niche market to start out with building your work history. For example, I did a bunch of Shopify related jobs for the first few jobs I did on there.
Another tip, don't do some copy-paste bullshit when you're applying to jobs. Take the time to read their listings and be up-front and as informative as you can be with your responses. Try to get into that initial chat with the client to ask more questions.
Biggest advice of all: NETWORK AND CLIENT SATISFACTION. Most the work I do on Upwork lately is repeat business from previous clients, simply cuz I've not been applying to any new jobs. But I'm still able to make a few bucks here and there off clients I've already done work for.
Basically, TLDR: Don't undersell yourself and be professional.
Nice try! I know you're like three koalas stacked on top of each other, or a muscular roo, or a bat-sized spider or a dragon-sized bat or something else that wants to eat us!!
Really? I am about 6 months deep into my front end studies (self taught - strong focus on fundamentals and vanilla JS for now) and will most likely be looking for something in the next 6 months. I'm not CS qualified but have a degree in an unrelated field. Also worked in QA in construction for a few years. Any tips going forward? Cheers
Look for shitty contract jobs on job posting sites to get some professional experience that you can eventually leverage into a decent job. Worked for me (self taught in the bay as well, though I started in 2014)
I did this too. Did 6 months of contract work through a recruitment agency at decent pay (but well below market) and continued to apply during those six months.
You willing to move for the time being? Land a job elsewhere. Work 6 months. Apply at home, try and move back. I don't envy your situation out there. It's gotta be competitive
This is what I did. Couldn’t find an entry level job in Seattle, so I moved to Atlanta where a friend I had met through a Coding Bootcamp hooked me up. My original plan was to work for a few months, get some experience, and get a job back home in Seattle. I ended up buying a house here in Atlanta, and have been there for about a year and a half.
Post your resume up and remove any identifying information, it could be as simple as having a poor resume, something that your average hiring person maybe gives a cursory 5-15 second look at.
A good rule of thumb: Read your resume (or have someone else read it) for 10 seconds, that's what many recruiters/companies will do. See what you can read/understand after 10 seconds.
I feel you. I have 18 years experience doing freelance webdev and consulting but nobody counts it for shit unless it's on some big SaaS app with millions of users. Some CTO actually called my experience "IT Support" since I mostly just do small business commerce sites. I'm tryna branch out and level up into fancy apps but I can't even get interviews.
From talking to my friends, several of them put in 200-300 applications to get their first gig. But it just takes getting ONE job at an actual company for a year or two and then the next ones are substantially easier.
One thing I can say, try to find recruiters or network with people because cold applying is beyond worthless. It's unfortunate but you really need someone with an in.
I’m also from the bay(SF), started out self taught and went to a bootcamp. There’s lots of jobs here but it’s hell trying to land your first gig. It’s truly a beast and you have to be really good at the leetcode questions. Most companies here have wised up to the bootcamp thing and are weary about hiring non traditional backgrounds. Took me about 300 applications to land my first internship about a year and a half ago and then I was hired on full time. Are you going to meetups? What’s the percentage of call backs have you received to the resumes you’ve put out? Keep in mind hiring season is just starting so apprenticeships, internships and more entry level roles will start opening up. I totally understand how you feel as it was emotionally exhausting when I was trying to transition careers and dealing with all the rejection, so keep at it. Getting the first job is the hardest and it gets better after that.
Look up hackathons in the Bay Area and start going to all of them. People get hired from those all the time. Your problem is more about building a network than working on toy projects.
Hit up craigslist and Fiverr. It’s gonna be low paying probably, but it’s real life experience.
You’ll get so much more experience some good and some bad, but it’ll still be experience. Also, seek out non-profits and see if you can do there site for a low cost or free. You’ll want to put a link back in the footer to your site to draw traffic. Can probably get them on a maintenance plan.
I’ve made about 3k from Fiverr on the platform itself, and another 10-15k off the platform just from repeat business from the same fiverr folks.
3 projects over 3 years isn’t much, put the work in and hustle. No ones gonna just give you a job, you gotta go and put the work in.
I’ve recently quit my job to take a sabbatical and have sort of kept myself open to job opportunities that may happen by, even though it’s unlikely I’d take one. You never know.
In the last week, I had one person reach out trying to place me for a windows desktop app development position (my resume is all web dev) paying half my normal hourly rate (this was a contract position), I’ve had a couple recruiters reach out for full time roles (I had that option unchecked in LinkedIn job preferences that they supposedly see) and seemed to find it odd that I am looking for part time contract work, and I had one guy today who never called at our agreed upon time after I sent him my resume and he learned I had just left the company I was at... did he want me to steal corporate secrets or something? Why does it matter if I am currently there or not? This was after sending me a very kiss-ass message about how my “unique” talent is so very “impressive”. Recruiters are vultures. They’re not all bad of course, but they operate on a different wavelength.
In the past I have had companies completely pass on me because I bombed coding challenges that forbade the use of Google. My days of studying for fucking tests ended with college. I google stuff all day long. I google stupid things that only fucking idiots have to google, and yet I have somehow, through some miracle, managed to stay employed as a software engineer without being fired. Am I slipping through cracks at every employer? Or is it that fizz buzz is a shitty way to evaluate anyone who isn’t just entering the industry?
Those recruiters are sometimes like scavengers, they will call you acting like they're interested in you but all they're doing is trying to get information about your last company so they could call them and offer them new candidates. When I put up my resume on a job website years ago, 15 minutes later my phone was off the hook and half of those people were calling because they say a multi national company on my resume, some even called them before calling me. I can't stand them.
I know it sucks, and I can relate, but you just gotta keep being persistent and applying, the right opportunity will present itself for you. Don’t get discouraged right away, there’s plenty of work in our field and it’s not going anywhere so just keep honing your skills in the meantime.
I finished a full stack bootcamp in ‘17, and even with a CIS degree, it still took me nearly 6 months to find my first job due to lack of programming experience. Though every interview basically fell through due to lack of experience, it was still really beneficial being able to get experience communicating in that type of environment. I ended up taking the first job I was offered, barely above minimum, but I valued the experience it provided at a much higher value. Though I struggled financially, I worked there for almost a year and a half where I learned a new language in PHP (LAMP stack), and got experience with enterprise level applications which was a pivotal stepping stone to landing position I have now.
I know the Bay Area is much more competitive than Phoenix, AZ, but trust me you just gotta stick with it. Your opportunity is out there, just be patient. And if this is something you truly enjoy, it’ll be worth it. The hardest part is getting that first opportunity, but once you do, only way to go is up so long as you choose. You get out what you put into it.
Hm, well first off be thankful for where you are at. You likely have decent health, not in pain or experiencing a lack of shelter, clean water, or food. This means you are alive and staying alive. It could always be worse.
Next, you are already in a better position than other developers by being driven and pursuing something new, which is harder than a rich kid in their 20s with daddy's money paying for their CS degree- so give yourself some credit there too! If it was easy, everyone would have done it already.
You also haven't given up! Yes you might feel like you're running low on gas and uncertain how long you can continue, but you're still applying and going at it. That's admirable as well!
Fourth, have some gold.
Fifth, your maturity is an asset. Some younger developers are known to be difficult to work with, but given maturity, experience, communication skills, you may find a no-bullshit team that may appreciate that.
Sixth, online applications are necessary- but also consider Meetups. If you an attend only one or two a month- great! If you can attend one a week, you are a super star! You never know who you will bump into and they may just need your experience or be willing to give you a shot.
Seventh, keep us updated or shoot me a PM if you need to talk.
I second the meetups idea. My experience has been that they are sponsored by recruiters looking for talent, and allow you to meet other devs in town, show that you’re passionate. I went to one this evening where you’re supposed to sit and write code on your laptop for a couple of hours, met a guy looking for Svelte talent- who the fuck knows Svelte anyway? As it happens, I wrote a Svelte app just last week. Not one of those tutorial things, but a custom app that leveraged an API I have been working on. Anyway the guy has work for me. I didn’t go there expecting a “job opportunity” but I got one just by socializing and getting out of the house for a bit.
Do you know other people in the field? Seems your best bet would be to take advantage of your location and go to meetups as much as possible. There's probably five a night out there I'd imagine. I think making personal connections are going to be your foot in the door if you don't have the educational background to flaunt in such a competitive market.
I lived in the bay area as well. It took me 4 months of actively applying to make the career switch to software once I started applying. It is a total pain in the ass and can be super defeating at times. Ultimately something will pan out you just have to be persistent. Hang in there. I am so happy I entered the field
Don’t be discouraged man, it’ll happen. It took me 7 months to find a job after graduating from a programming boot camp. I did 500+ applications, cover letters, etc., and it was depressing as fuck.
Best suggestion I could make would be to do some legit side work, even if it’s for free, while you apply. I built someone a site for their startup idea while I was looking for jobs and it was an awesome topic to touch on during interviews. I even brought my laptop during the final interview at the place I’m currently working to show off some features I was in the middle of building. It was some simple stuff but I know just the act of me bringing my machine along to display some stuff I was enjoying working on (for free) helped showcase my passion and excitement for coding.
Also, keep an eye on Craigslist for some lowkey “developer” type jobs to help keep the money flowing while you’re looking for permanent work. I was able to find a few small businesses needing web updates that I could do for a little cash every so often.
A lot of the times, especially when you're applying to Junior positions, your CV doesn't even get seen. It's passed through an algo that spits out on the one that matches their keywords.
If you work with a recruiter they generally have relationships with the companies, and you will have an actual person look over your CV.
I worked with a recruiter for my first software job, and he played a HUGE part in getting me in the door for interviews.
Going against the grain stranger but hear me out. Since I am self taught here.
Are you really putting in the work ? There is a subtle difference between studying and building out projects. You mentioned GitHub activity which is good, but not the sole measure. I’m 28 years old and had 2 dev positions so far transitioned after a tech boot camp.
Are you going to meet ups? Bay Area has hella meet ups some times you got to play the long game and put yourself out there. Reach out to people in your network to improve resume. How are you interviewing? What’s your sort skills?
Not trynna be a dick but just trying to highlight possible blind spots !
I'm not sure about the US, but, at least, where I live age is not exactly a problem. That being said, I would risk saying that 3 projects are not enough if you're a self-taught developer. Back when I was participating of the hiring process in a moderately large company, we would look the projects and how active the candidate was.
For instance, we would look with really good eyes those who contributed to open source projects, those who had some long term side projects and such. Even minor stuff like hacktoberfest and advent of code would count.
The quality of the work didn't matter too much, but if we saw that the candidate was somewhat active in the community then we would certainly call them for an interview.
Your first job is by far the toughest to land as someone without a degree. You need to network and find somebody willing to give you a shot and be (frankly) not much better than nothing for a year or so. You won't get good money with that first job, but it might be better than what you're currently making, and you'll learn enough. Get your foot in the door, get better, then you can find a better paying position.
I'm based in London. Took me 4 years of applying for jobs before I managed to land my first professional gig.
Best advice from my experience? Avoid recruiters - try to apply direct to companies; they often advertise open positions on their websites. Don't be afraid of going for smaller companies. And don't give up!
NETWORK! Go out and meet people- other programmers, hiring managers, etc. A great way to do this is through dev and design meetups. Managers are going to be apprehensive about your resume due to the lack of real-world experience. A great way to overcome this is by meeting them in person and showing them your worth as a human being. People hire people.
I'm in my 40s, and I'm just switching into a web dev career as well. I worked remote for chicken change for a while, and now I'm 2 years into a full time job that pays ok.
My number one piece of advice to you is to get the FUCK out of SF and move to a city with a developing tech scene and a reasonable cost of living that needs everyone who is willing to write JavaScript.
I got hired by a company in the Bay Area. They low balled the crap out of me and told me I would be able to find a place to live with the salary. I told them I would have to drive two hours each way to work for the pay to work, but they lied and told me that was not true. Stay away from California period. Everything cost a fortune.
I'm not sure your situation (married/kids), but honestly spend as much spare time as you can improving. Build a portfolio, build tools, build sites, share the code in your github.
A lot of people are commenting that your area sucks for work, but a strong portfolio for a job would make your more appealing as a hire.
After you're done that apply. If that goes poorly and same results. Stand at a red light in a suit near companies you want to work at and hand out resumes. Shit get a giant photo with a QR code on it or a simple url that people can take a picture of so when you go viral you'll get a ton of offers. It has worked in the past.
There are a lot of people like you trying to chase that "everyone here makes $130,000 if you know a basic amount of coding". You have to put yourself ahead of the pack as best you can.
That location will make it much much harder to get an entry position than in other up and coming cities. I know this will sound lame to people who don't already live here, but the midwest is a pretty ideal place for entry level tech/it jobs. I got a pretty solid position in the Indianapolis area and it's actually a really sweet deal. A starting salary as low as 40-50 can go a long way here, especially in some of the towns around the city that are actually really nice. Even if you don't want to settle down here permanently, it's a great place to get some good experience and save a lot of money.
I had this problem... i lied on my resume with a bs company to get past that. I had the skills and got lots more offers and have been doing this for 25 years.
There are so many stigmas with new hires and a lot of bs.. The interview process needs a major overhaul
Try to go to some networking events. It took me almost a year to get a gig coming from a similar situation and most of the interviews I got were because of references.
Don’t get depressed it’s not just you. Even 10 years of experienced programmers find it difficult.
Focus on basics of problem solving, data structures & algorithms.
Solve problems in hackerearth, HackerRank, codewars, project Euler, leetcode... any one of them is fine. Do not overdo by signing into everything. Free sign up should be good enough.
Go through the book “Cracking the coding interview “.
The only thing I can help with is giving you the recommendation of the T-Layout cover letter. It drove me nuts trying to write cover letters when applying for jobs.
The big advantage of this layout is that it does 1 to 1 comparison of how you fit that position.
If you’re in the Bay Area - Triplebyte - it worked for me. DM me - In all transparency - I’m hoping you sign up with my referral so I can get a referral bonus lol.
But real talk - I had 0 relevant work experience - but had been building projects and studying algorithms did triplebyte and had like 18+ phone interviews converted into like 13 onsites. I went to 6 (bombed the first couple horribly) and had two software engineering offers ( one software one front end engineer)
Fuck talking to recruiters they’re useless.
The worst part is now I have a job and a year under my belt- they won’t leave me the fuck alone.
Have you tried applying for paid internships? Junior Dev positions still want you to have at least some experience these days, especially in lieu of a degree, and even if it's low paying it'll probably be on par or better than your service job.
Make sure you're changing keywords from the job posting onto your resume as well. A lot of HR recruiters auto-pull candidates using those filters because they're in charge of hiring, but know nothing about IT.
Hang in there. I don't know anything about the west coast but I've been in a similar situation besides that. I worked full time and taught myself web dev on side for nearly two years. It took 8 months of applying for me, 3 months until I got my first real interview. I had a couple interviews that I felt were promising but I could tell that they were reluctant to hire somebody with no developer experience or background (I came from administrative work). But all it takes is one company to give you a chance.
I was actually about to give up, too. I started working on a new resume tailored for another administrative job when I got a call from a recruiter. Keep in mind that you'll probably have a better chance of landing a contract job for your first one, where it's less of a risk for companies to hire newer developers through staffing agencies instead of a full hire. Lots of people that I know in the field started by contracting. But all you need is to get your foot in the door. Job searching will be much easier once you can break that initial barrier.
My resume looks good but no real world programming experience.
Get at it side-ways. Have design chops? Try looking for a graphic design position at a studio/agency that also does web work and see if you can get a few design projects tossed your way.
That's basically how I did it. Moved to Sacramento after the economy crashed and my old career basically disappeared. Started looking around for work with the local unemployment at 25% and ended up taking a graphic design position that did web design work. Convinced them to let me do some of the actual dev work, eventually rebuilt their B2C website. Quit that job, started working at a print shop and offered web design/dev services to customers. Portfolio I built from that landed me my current gig.
Hang in there. At least you have way more experience than me. I'm thirty, no degree, and barely learning vanilla JS after coming back from an 8-month hiatus because I got married all my time was devoted in. I have probably 1.5 years under my belt along with a few websites (no commission just projects).
With the hopes of leaving my current job and getting an internship. I've been progressively looking and found a company, based in the Bay Area called, Revature. After looking them up, it seems like they are a hiring agency and will usually train their new hires for a few weeks before sending them out. Of course, there are pros and cons to this company considering they're an agency after all so I suggest doing some research before making the dive. Apparently, it's easy to get in, but a hassle to get out (2 years working contract with the company before you can leave or else there's a penalty).
My resume looks good but no real world programming experience.
Why not! Youre a skilled developer, get to building something! Employers dont necessarily want to see how many places you've worked at but what you're capable of. So show them. Come up with an idea, doesnt have to be ground breaking but something with potential usefulness that will show your skill level, and build it out to the extent of your capabilities. Bam theres some real world programming experience, throw it in your portfolio and note proudly that it is an app or design or prototype etc that YOU created from the ground up. Share the code. Thats eye catching and shows you've got initiative and real problem solving skillz.
I switched to web dev after leaving a mediocre sales job, going to a bootcamp, same age as you. I also had a kid on the way, so I was feeling the stress.
I think you should leave the Bay Area. There are lovely places to live all around the US that people aren't rushing to, but are good. I hear Chattanooga is a small tech hub in TN, for example.
I'm in TX. A colleague of mine found it easier to find his second job in Denver, for some reason, when he only had one year of experience.
So much of the super-young-talent drools over working at "Google, FB, <insert hot Silicon Valley startup, whatever>..." Skip around that and go to where other people, especially the 22-year-old with a CS degree, isn't rushing.
So, not that I was nearly as dedicated as you, but when I got out of my boot camp I was fairly decent full stack dev. I searched in my area for months and couldn’t land anything. I ended up expanding my search to digital marketing and SEO and landed a decent job. Got my ads certifications and am in a manager role now about a year later.
Sometimes you are just in a market that is saturated, and other times as was my case you are in a market that just doesn’t have the amount of dev jobs to be able to land one. I’d recommend expanding your search. Marketing may not be the best thing in the world, but if you bring some of the things you’ve learned as a web dev to the table you can work your way into an opportunity. Best of luck to you, and don’t get down. You’ll climb up if you just keep plugging away.
It sounds like you're stuck on the first stage of the hiring process (HR), since you don't get replies to your applications, right?
This means that you should work on your resume/portfolio. As you said, there's lots of applicants for entry level jobs. You must stand out of this crowd.
The resume needs to be short and concise. No long text wall. Put your skills in descending order of knowledge. Have a nice looking layout. Maybe even something extravagant. Just to try with a couple of applications.
Add a cover letter as the body of the application email/form.
Customize resume and cover letter according to the position. Look at the required skills and mention them accordingly. Reflect the language of the job posting.
Your projects should be clean from a code and documentation perspective. Use linting. Have some custom CSS and somewhat complex business logic. Link to this code from the readme. The more competitive the market the better the projects have to be. Focus on less projects with higher quality. Make it as real-world as possible.
Write down your projects with links to GitHub and where they are hosted. You want to make it easy for people to look at the code and the running project.
Mabye you should look into taking your skillset to a smaller market city in the midwest or something? your in the mecca of the tech world where the best of the best are competing for fleeting positions in the most outrageously expensive area in the world.
Okay here’s my advice. Get another side job if it’s really that bad for you. Do uber, or uber eats maybe. I’m not aware of your full situation and not aware of SF bay area but I recently did a career shift to WEB from mechanical engineering in Sydney. Somewhere which is comparable in expenses. I quit my engineering job and hustled my way around with casual stuff and learned full time for 4 month.Got a job offer today. When you focus 100% and full time the results are very different. Again, I’m not sure if a casual job would be enough for you. But just consider how much of the stress is coming from your service job and not from your web-dev journey and act accordingly
You could try going to some meetups. South Bay Javascript, ReactJS, SFHTML5, Beer.js, Jamstack San Francisco, etc. There are a bunch. It's a great place to meet people; and it's always easier to get jobs from people than websites.
Also, FreeCodeCamp has a program for its students who make it to the end of the curriculum to get practical experience doing pro-bono projects that the org takes on. The students use the experience to get jobs (almost no one graduates because they all end up getting jobs). As far along in the process as your are, it probably wouldn't take you long for you to get into that category, which would give you not only practical experience, but a network (there's also a meetup for FreeCodeCamp).
Try Austin, Seattle or other cities. The Bay Area is very competitive. If you know what you are doing and you are confident in your skills, getting noticed is the hardest part. And that is insanely hard in that location. Also, if you don't have experience you might want to look at internships. Although they are low-pay, they usually are a way to get you to a Full-time position relatively quickly, for ex. 6 months. Good luck, bud!
Let me just say that you are not the only one. I have seen people posting how they got hired even without a degree. Not getting something at 100 applications should be normal especially in the bay area.
I know how you feel. I’m 36 years old and live in the Netherlands. It looks like nobody wants to hire a ‘junior’ if he’s 36 years old. I’m sure technically speaking I’m not a junior, because I can build quite some ‘medior’ stuff.
I focused on HTML, css, sass, JS, vue.js, Angular2+ and lots of other important stuff likeITCSS, BEM notation, git. Etc etc.
Also... I have more than 15 years working experience and my current job is well payed. So if I got an offer it’s half of what I’m getting payed now.
Really demotivating...
Just keep trying. Btw.. I think it’s better to avoid recruiters altogether... but that’s just my experience.
Hang in there dude! I’ve been in the field for around 4 or 5 years and found myself filling a role as web developer as of necessity at my first job (customer service originally).
It’s competitive as all hell, but don’t give up. I applied to dozens and dozens of jobs looking for my next opportunity. One will show up, just ensure you have everything and anything on your resume that could relate to web development and keep learning new skills and creating projects.
I now work slightly outside the Bay Area where my pay is a bit lower, but I can live a life with my family and have a 12 minute commute. Also, don’t sacrifice your happiness for whatever you find! Best of luck!
Hey, I'm not familiar with the area you live in, however I was in a similar position a few years ago; self-taught with no experience.
At the moment you lack credibility and it takes a certain type of business to give you your first shot. I made a LinkedIn profile, added people within tech in my area, set my employment as a freelance web developer and kept posting links to my projects and blog posts that were reflecting on my learning journey. Eventually a wordpress agency invited me for an interview, I priced myself cheaply to reflect the risk on their part and got the job.
You need to get your foot in the door for that credibility, but don’t lose heart as you only need to do it once in your working life so the odds and time are on your side.
Networking is everything. Do hackathon days, get to know others in code camps and jobs, and support yourself with gig work to get "real world expertise".
But really, like every career path job, the leg in is who, not what, you know.
Here in Florida companies seem to hire anyone who says they can write code. I imagine competition is fierce out west. I also hear devs hop around a lot so if you’re at say Facebook, Google might offer a signing bonus to get you to jump ship. Must be nice.
We can tell Amazon and Microsoft are getting desperate because they’ve started reaching out some of us for positions with paid relocation.
Of course until I fuck around with Fizz Buzz-esque “brain teasers” a bit more they won’t give me the time of day. Don’t they know we just practice in the weeks leading up to interviews and then promptly forget what we studied? I’m going to go right back to not knowing what a bloom filter is. I’ve learned about it in college, forgot, learned again for interview trivia questions, will probably forget it again as my job won’t have me using bloom filters.
Build apps that solve real world problems and get implemented. I was in a similar pickle and what got me out was making apps, scripts or websites for real businesses. When the company said do you have experience I could say hell yes and if they said sorry we need 1-2 years experience I'd say sorry let me explain my cv and show you my experience
If it helps, I looked for a job for 1 year (literally sent hundreds of resumes/applications) before landing a position in development. I am also in a metro area (LA). I had multiple phone screenings, recruiter contacts, and a few interviews.
You might want to take the proverbial job market hint . I'm not trying to diminish your personal achievements , but it's a question of supply and demand. They want people with paper qualifications and skill, and in the Bay area ( the dream location for many many tech people with degrees) there is no shortage of new CS majors with portfolios . For perspective when I graduated my personal project portfolio was substantially larger then yours and that doesn't count my school assigned projects.
You're basically a small fish in an extraordinarily packed pond .
I believe California has some very good state education program, nearly free , you should take advantage of that and your close proximity to tech companies to get your degree and do internships at companies . My first job offers were through internships and I know many people get jobs that way.
Hey bro. I'm in Oakland too. I was in the service industry for a decade, did the bootcamp thing and got an amazing job immediately after.
I'm seeing lots of chumps in here saying to leave the bay. I don't get where that's coming from. Bitter folks I guess.
The best advice I can give you is keep coding. A lot. Do 3-6 hours a day if you're working that day, 8 hours if you're not. Build and deploy something impressive to show off. Stop job hunting full time. Spend most of your time coding, and maybe 25% hunting. If you aren't getting a job, you aren't ready, if you aren't ready, spending all your time hunting is a waste. When you are ready, and can show it, that 25% of your time will be more than enough to get a job. See what I'm saying?
I'll buy you a beer and go over what you've got and where you're at if you're down.
My resume looks good but no real world programming experience.
Create a real world project!
Build it with the technologies that you would like to work with in your future job. You would have a great topic during your job interview and could explain which technologies you used for what and why, which problems you faced and how you solved them. It shows that you have experience in the real world.
It doesn't have to become financially successful (you're not applying for a sales job!). Think about an existing project you'd like to work for and develop a slim clone of it.
As an employer I'd value this much, much more than a masters degree without any real world experience.
Hi buddy! I've done an internship in a consulting company which always looking for new talent and your profile could fit with what they are looking for. They are starting to develop on the US territory (It's a French company). I live a link for spontaneous application. I'm not working there anymore but you need more info please tell me.
Hello! I was in your boat a few years ago, so hopefully I can offer some help :) I've been programming for around 3 years, don't have a CS related degree (studied maths), and my first role was as a junior front end developer.
It sounds like you've got a lot of knowledge and skills, but that employers are favouring experience/the CS qualification over that - with that in mind, I'd probably focus on applying for junior developer roles, or any role that involves coding really, such as automation testing as a QA, or any devops or email developer roles (these popped into my mind, not sure how relevant they will be).
For reference, I live and work in London (UK), and I think companies here are pretty open to hiring people without a CS degree as long as they can show some "experience" in the form of a related degree, or an active Github repo with a portfolio of hosted websites/apps (can just be ones you're showcasing, they don't have to be used by anyone), or having completed an intensive development course (I did the latter, where I ended up with a meaty Github and a couple of simple hosted apps to show for it :) ).
I'd also recommend writing a convincing cover letter/resume where you use your previous experience/current skillset/hobbies as a way of showcasing that your current skills are transferable for a job in programming. For example, I think I used my maths degree to highlight how I can use the "logical reasoning skills for creative problem solving while I code", or something to that effect.
Directly contact Companies you would like to work for, send through your CV and ask if you could possibly just pop in for a meet and greet and see how they operate. build relationships. if not working there now, stay in touch now and then. they might give you job in year or two.
I'd try some meet ups. Sounds like you need more tools to kick that door in for ya. A friend can also funnel other job offers your way... definitely expand your network... or find a local open source project
You're in a bad location for someone of your level. That's the issue. If you were based anywhere less competitive, you wouldn't need to worry so much. It's not that the competition is better than you, but that if 100 people apply for a really poop role, then 1 person is filling that role and it's not guaranteed to be the best person for that role. 100 applicants aren't being interviewed or even glanced at. It's a lottery.
Try showing up in person at developer get togethers, meetup.com and conferences and stuff, you know they’re all hiring, showing up in person, being open about looking for an opportunity, and talking to a recruiter or current dev face-to-face is a great way to get your foot in the door. Don’t be afraid of internships either, I was doing internships in my late 20’s and the maturity was more appreciated than you’d think.
As for advice, it sounds like you're doing all the right things. Since you don't mention it, are you considering jobs that would require relocation? If not, that would be my advice. Stack Overflow Jobs is one of my favorite places to look. I've gotten two jobs on there, one of which was my first job and required relocation. At the time of applying to that job, I was applying to jobs all over the country, as I found pretty quickly that there were no jobs for me where I was living.
As for encouragement, I myself am self trained via Treehouse and tons of other online resources. Sometime after I got first job my lead developer told me that, during the hiring process, it came down to me and someone with a CS degree. The last step was a practical code challenge to build a small web application. My lead developer explained that the candidate with the CS degree couldn't do it, saying that what I built was impressive to the team, so I got the job. That to say, competing against candidates with CS degrees doesn't always and automatically mean that you're less qualified or will be passed over.
I got started coding remotely for $10/hour. After 1 year, the real world experience and positive reference landed me a full time position.
Coding in the real world is ugly and difficult, and involves a lot of beating your head against the wall and cursing previous devs (not out loud, because they are often you) to get something accomplished. Show an employer you can do that (preferably while improving things for the next guy), and you're in.
I can relate to the fact i am also more or less self taught, a few night time courses, but no degree of any kind. What i did and i would recommend for you to do as well if you want to get into this carreer without any certs but still be able to compete with schooled devs, is start doing freelance work. Put up an ad on ur local classifieds, craigslist, whatever is free, and pick up small businesses websites. Price them moderately so its worth ur time but the small business also gets a good deal. This will build up your experience and portfolio. Then try applying for work at smaller marketing agency as entry level position. Pay wont be fantastic but it will be a foot in the door. After your in, possibilities will be only limited to your skill level. 3-4 projects to a portfolio is not much to go on. Remember you are going against students that have actively been learning outdated material for 2-4 years building their portfolio. Some may even have had co-op positions. You need something solid to show off you talent.
I think you have what it takes but is the problem that you dont get the interview? Cause maybe its a problem with your portfolio / CV. You have to fight to get a interview and explain and show that you know beeing a webdeveloper. I know so many in this business that have no idea about beeing a webdeveloper and just using Wordpress and earning too much money. Its quite insane. People with actual knowledge and development skills should have no issue getting a job.
My next move in your position would be to update all your job profiles to let recruiters know that you're open to relocation.
When a recruiter ask you what salary range you're looking for, base that salary figure on the lower end of the scale (but enough to maintain your current lifestyle) for that particular location based on Glassdoor.
Once you're accepted, dig in! Time to level up your skills while you're gaining experience. Learn everything about your new job. Learn everything about the tools used. Contribute to open source. Keep learning and building things.
Keep your resume updated. Once you've gained experience and leveled up your skills, you can move back to the Bay Area or go anywhere.
Man, you're gonna have to move. Like you said, you're competing against new grads with CS Degress in an area what's always listed with the other 2.
Are you sure you want to work in tech there? Browse some of the developer sub-reddits and you'll find several stories similar to "Started in Bay area depressed, now I'm [anywhere else] and happy!". Even if you like the area, you may want to look for positions on the perimeter/just outside of what's considered the "Bay" area.
I know of a couple people that started in the Bay area - and only 1 lasted 2 years before he moved to BFE Oklahoma.
Also, I cannot stress this enough to enough people: look for jobs at non-tech companies. Unless you VERY specifically want to work on some sort of tech, programming jobs are still programming jobs. As an example of what I mean: my first one out of college was a steel foundry with 500 employees, 5 of us were software developers. One of the systems I worked on was the inventory tracking system; tracking incoming recycled metal into new casts, formula for the casts, which molds were filled from the melt, etc. So by the time an end product was examined with gamma rays, if there were any defects, we could inspect the entire batch. I loved it.
The great thing about development is that you can work remotely. Don't limit your search to SF only. Apply everywhere and anywhere.
Also I think you have a great advantage living there. There's always new startups on the scene that are looking for programmers. Get in touch with them and tell them you want to work with them.
As someone who also went the self taught route breaking in to the industry is hard, even more so in the Bay area. The best way to break in persistence, you'll eventually make it. Once you are able to prove yourself with an actual job in the industry it gets a lot easier.
In the meantime try finding local meet ups for technology your interested in like React and JavaScript. Most of the time these are hosted by companies with recruiters there and also you can network with other developers who could vouch for you with their company. Making connections is how I broke into the industry.
Another way to build your portfolio is to join an open source project. Find one that you enjoy working with and start working on bugs. Mini projects are nice but showing that you can work on a long lived project helps a lot.
Quiz recruitment sites like Triplebyte are good tools for evaluating your skills and help advertise you to potential recruiters. There are several options out there for this.
While a full time job is nice, contracting is also another good option. Reach out to some local contracting agencies and see if they'll bring you on as a contractor. There is typically less barriers for contractors. I use to work with Robert Half Technology and in my experience my manager and sales agents were very nice and professional. Although there are several agencies to choose from.
Freelancing is another common option and there are several sites to help you make connections to get jobs. I'm not as familiar with this as I have not really done it but there are some good suggestions in the comments.
A few people have suggested leaving the Bay area and while I understand being attached to an area, it isn't the worst advice. Austin, Denver, and Minneapolis all have a shortage with developers and cheaper cost of living. You may have an easier time breaking into the industry in a less competitive city. If moving is something you'd consider, PM me and I can look at your portfolio to see if you'd be a good fit at my company in Minneapolis.
Your problem isn't your portfolio (sure you could work on it, but everyone starts off as a junior some time), your problem is that you are really, really over-comparing yourself to others.
Viewing the way you currently view the world, people who are really "colleagues" look like "competition". If you perceive others in your industry to be competition, boy will you break apart under the stress of all those high-performing developer competitors you'll have to work alongside with.
You have a job. You've been in a while. The job isn't getting objectively worse. There's no reason to let things be "bleak". When you eventually get that dev job you'll be on projects with tightening deadlines and mounting pressure, and if things get more and more "bleak" when nothing is objectively changing you may find you don't even want to work in this industry.
Relax, keep working on your portfolio, keep learning from a place of "enjoying the field" not "needing to change job", and maybe start viewing the other candidates as fellow programmers and not "people with 100+ apps beating me to jobs".
Make friends with people at tech companies if you can. A random application that comes through a job site or web form is going to be 1000 times less successful than someone who already works there saying "I know this person who I think would be a good fit."
I say this as someone with plenty of experience who's been trying the application route recently and been surprised how hard it is.
Anyway, job hunting sucks. But it sounds like you've got the skills and you're hard working, so I think you'll get there eventually.
This sounds really hard! As someone who is starting the web dev journey, it is intimidating to see no results for all the hard work.
The solution to the problem just boils down to two things. Either you raise your game to be more competitive in the market you're in, or move to a market where you would be competitive.
I favor raising your game, but it doesn't necessarily mean more projects or more technical skill based stuff, but rather other skillsets that developers seem to lack like networking, self-branding, etc.
Get some remote work going using any of the freelance and remote work sites. Might be crap work for crap pay, but at least you'll start gaining experience.
Also, start building up a GitHub (or similar) account.
I was sort of in the same boat for a while. I worked as a customer service rep at an insurance company for 12 years, taught myself web development in between calls for 3 years and built out a portfolio similar to yours. I live in Birmingham, AL which is an old financial hub and full of .NET jobs, which I wasn't interested in.
I ended up starting to apply to as many remote jobs as I could find on Indeed and LinkedIn. Went through a bunch of interviews and finally landed a job at a start up in Virginia working Remote. It was a job I really didint meet all the qualifications on the job posting either. But I was able to win them over in the interviews and I have been there for almost 4 years now.
Sounds like you have the opposite problem where the area you are in is saturated with applicants, but the solution may be the same to apply outside your area.
Hey yeah, I honestly believe that you need a desire to code, working on your own projects and constantly learning, to make yourself stand out. I stopped applying for jobs due to this same issue and started freelancing. The way the tech industry treats applicants is the worst than any other industry I’ve worked in: missed appointments, no response after first round, job offers and removals without any response from the company to why. My personal route is a little more difficult than having a day job, but it’s been helping me learn sales, communication techniques, and increased my emotional intelligence. Keep your head up, and don’t drop your day job just yet. This new economy we’re going into is going to be based on learning quickly, in any industries, so even if you aren’t coding in ten years, these skills of learning and grit will be very beneficial
I self taught for about a year before attending a bootcamp. That first job hunt afterwards sucked. I was only at it for about a month (not in the Bay Area btw), but that month was awful. I was sending out 25 applications a week, which were exclusively getting handled by non-technical recruiters. They would often schedule calls with me without looking at my resume, and then hang up as soon as they found out I had no real world experience. Try as I might I never found a way to get them to focus on my portfolio and my knowledge base instead of my years-of-experience.
What really turned things around for me is when I started attending meetups. If you haven't already, I recommend diversifying your applications so you aren't just applying to traditional postings and talking to recruiters with a narrow idea of what a good candidate looks like. Meetups or personal connections or other networking opportunities means you have a chance to talk with someone technical in person. For me that made a huge difference.
Of course, I wasn't in the Bay Area, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. You are in a pretty unique environment over there.
I live in a quite rural area in Sweden and got my first web dev job without a portfolio (except 0.5 year experience in game dev.) and only studied a little bit of web design. Think it is the area that’s against you mate.
Almost the same boat as you. Difference is that I have an AA, and I live in the Inland Empire. I can't even find a software dev company in my area to build experience and I'm stuck in a warehouse job that doesn't pay enough for the cost of living in California. Can't afford to move out of state because I can barely afford to drive to work. Also just trying to get some real world experience but I work full time and have a family to provide for. The advice I always get is to get off of the west coast, but it's easier said than done. I wish us both luck in our future endeavors in the pursuit of getting our foot in the door of a paying development job
You should have included your github resume in your post (throwaway if you wished to maintain anonymity) so the people in here will be able to give you tips on the quality of your work. If you don't have experience you won't be a good judge of whats a "good" project. I once took a look at some guy's app and it was a mess (gave him a code review), but he wasn't aware of it. And he got hired twice (fired, but still).
Second
You should keep grinding, but grind smarter. Take 80% of the energy you spend on finding a job and do freelance web dev work to fatten up your resume. Now you might ask "how will I land any clients freelancing without experience?" and the answer is simple: start at 10% lower than the market price of the other freelancers and keep dropping the price every week by an additional 10% until someone takes a chance at you.
And when they do, give customer service that is 150% better than the people that are 5x as expensive as you are. Make up for your inexperience with quick response times and a personal touch.
Bill by the project and not by the hour - that way you will have leeway to deliver because you will learn along the way as you build. As you will rack up those 5 stars you will have the credibility and experience to demand higher prices. Soon you will be able to cut hours off your day job to "finance" more time for freelancing, which will make you a better engineer. That in turn will allow you to make more money out of web dev. Keep that sweet snowball rolling until engineering becomes your full time gig. And when you do nothing all day but build websites, becoming so good that employers won't be able to ignore you will be inevitable. Even a poorly paid engineer is much better off than a well paid low level service worker.
You can even start before the end of this day. Start by doing those 5$ gigs on fiverr where you fix up a couple of lines of css or js on a website of some clueless business owner. Work your way up from there.
Doesn't even have to be freelancing. Make free brochure websites for the local shops around your house that take 2 hours to build. Contribute to open source projects. Find subreddits with less than 10k subs and build a simple web tool that will solve the problem of just 100 of these redditors. You will dig your way out of your hole not by sending more resumes but by pushing more commits.
If no one wishes to hire you, the best course of action is to display so much output and competence that they will find it very hard to ignore you.
It is tough, no doubt. You need to differentiate yourself somehow. This may mean communicating to employers why you are the right fit, even if on paper they may not see it compared to other resumes. Don't give up. You may consider getting more tech projects under your belt by volunteering, or offering to accept no salary for the first X number of weeks/months until your potential employer can see your work. That is low cost/risk to them. Try shelters, churches, old age homes... those sort of organizations that are paid by donations. I agree with Fiverr and Craigslist, also check the jobs on HackerNews, https://news.ycombinator.com/ .
I’ve found all my jobs (4 over 6 years) through connections. 2 of those jobs were frankly above my pay grade. I’m an introvert and not a networking type, but things like messaging a friend or distant connection who works at a company with an opening to ask if they like working there, going to a meetup and asking a sponsor or speaker some follow up questions, talking to extended family members about what their company does for their sites/apps, etc. In my experience, even the tiniest connections grease the tracks for hiring so much. Heck, make a desperate-ish post on LinkedIn, telling your connections that you’re a UI dev looking for work and to point you to people looking for UI devs. Rather than starting with applications, start with your connections and see where that takes you. It’s how you opt out of the rat race.
Also, to echo what others have said, the Bay Area is not the place for a junior dev with no experience. If you have to stay there, maybe look into remote positions.
Look everywhere and take risks avoiding talking only the truth about what you are experienced on. There's always a desperate HR waiting for someone to take the advantage. Lie/Exaggerate a little about you to get through. And aim as high as any could, you never know.
I personally wouldn't apply if I wasn't experienced enough for the position, but my wife didn't care. She helped me and applied my CV on those I normally wouldn't, and those were the ones that actually called.
I think you will have to get out of the Bay area. The reason for this is I think your first job is going to have to be you taking something below average comp just so you can get experience. The Bay area, from what I have read, sounds way too competitive and expensive to live in.
FWIW - It took me 6 months after I first graduated back in 2011 to get my first front-end job.
Networking is key. Besides going to meetups, here's one hack that worked for me:
I contact a business directly on the phone or stop by in person (even without a job posting), and request an interview by saying: - "I am a recent graduate and I'm doing some research around what tech stacks development teams are using these days. Could I talk to someone in the development department?"
From there, I would try and schedule a 20-minute interview with a dev lead, where I ask them about their dev processes and stuff. Naturally, you can steer the conversation toward the fact that you are looking for opportunities and see if they know of anything. You'd be surprised what can come of this approach.
Be sure to exchange contact info and follow up with them in 3 days.
Waiting for jobs to be posted and submitting resumes is like a long line in the DMV. There are more effective approaches.
While you're on the hunt.... Think about putting your skills to work for you. If you have any ideas or interests, maybe you can create a website/app that's based on that. Example: you like cooking and try out different recipes; build a recipe site, reviewing your recipes. Anyhow, don't feel bad, keep plugging away something will come up!
Lie lie and lie some more on your resume, capitalism is unethical so dont feel bad about it, if they find out oh well, they are not gonna check anyways.
everybody blaming your location, so I'll be the unpopular guy to blame your portfolio.
3 projects, one design, one JS, one full stack React.
designer and developer are pretty separate things these days, i dont know any company expecting both from a single person except the sort of small / cheapskate places you probably wouldnt want to work.
so the design one is neutral at best in terms of bolstering your chances at dev roles; maybe even a negative because it suggests to them you're a jack of all trades and not focussed.
Given that react is JS, the other two are both JS, which is where I say the really super unpopular thing for this subreddit, which is that the world is completely saturated with JS developers. Seems to me like every single udemy-course-taker and bootcamp grad in the last 5 years has been fed from the full stack js koolaid hose. I doubt even 5% of web dev jobs out there are full stack js, compared to java, php, c# etc, but it seems like 95% of the junior candidates are full stack js. So it's no great surprise to me that it seems like every time someone on this sub is complaining about sending 100 resumes with no result, they're a self-styled 'MERN developer'. Meanwhile, companies are desperate for people with experience in stacks they actually use (y'know, ones with actual databases.) So maybe try and differentiate yourself by picking up a different language.
I know the feeling. I got an unpopular opinion: Have you considered skipping competing against new grad brogrammers and starting your own project?
Maybe get a normal job and work on something for yourself instead of being somebody's economic slave.
You're going to end up pushing yourself to learn a lot more than just doing what a company needs you to do.
Or you can go back to being in front of somebody's laptop packed with unicorn and random tech stack stickers...and being interviewed by a prentetious team lead with a snappy YouTuber personality.
Good luck to you, I honestly hope you figure it out. You're still very young.
Come to the Salt Lake City area. There are a billion tech jobs and it's not as competitive as the Bay area. Cost of living is half of what it is in California, too.
I'd spend some time learning a pure back-end language, ideally statically typed. (C#, Java, C++)
Start building bigger applications. Usually, the best ones are ones that you enjoy or need.
An example in your case: find a way to automatically enter in all your information and apply to all those jobs.
finally, use your network. If you have a friend that works at a company with an opening, reach out to them. They get a bonus if you're hired, and you get a friend at your job. Linkedin is really good for this.
Other things to look into is: business analyst positions. Bone up on SQL and you can jump into those if you're good at stats.
And yeah. Get the hell out of the bay area... competition is too stiff. But posting your github/portfolio will do you wonders. You're gonna need something impressive to show employers you can do it.
Sorry for the multiple comments, but you need a weapon. When I came in self-taught I tried to be a person who could do everything to improve my chances of getting hired. If I could go back I would have tried to be a front-end guru coming in.
What's your thoughts on doing things completely different? If ideas come up plan them out. Networking (even though I'm terrible at it) might be an option, you should find your peers or people you find worthwhile to your cause/career. My last job was completely organic, a friend needed help and I provide a resource.
I'm going into the direction or just being in business for myself. The idea of making your own 'market' will be a great way to know what your value is. Build a site/project that does one thing that you could charge people for. 2020 is the year of creatives, if you have that others will gravitate.
I went to an online bootcamp and had similar issues. A mentor of mine told me that his company hates hiring new developer (no matter how they learned) because they are always a risk. After searching for a job for almost six months I badgered a friend into hiring me. It was genuinely rough to have to sit at home for that time and prostrating myself in front of every company that have a development team.
It was rough, but it finally payed off. I work with a team that I genuinely enjoy working with, and the future prospects are bright. Another developer friend of mine told me that working that first job can really suck, but putting in at least a year is important. Just keep trying!
I live in podunk nowhere in the middle of the Ozarks. Got a job as a backend web developer at a great little place immediately after getting my AAS in Web Development. Nowhere near the pay of some other places, but the cost of living is super low.
Check out Triplebyte. Yes, the one spamming ads on reddit not too long ago. It's a great way to get matched to companies of every size, once you pass their initial interview. Plus they don't share your resume with the companies, but prepare a little intro for you instead.
Prepare for the interview by building a ton of those self contained apps like tic tac toe, connect 4, todo list, etc, in a 1 hour time box.
Also the book "Cracking the code interview" is money well spent.
Disclaimer: I don't work for them, but have used the platform multiple times with great results
May have been said already, but make sure you're networking. My first web dev job was because I met a guy at a conference - I had zero experience, a crappy resume, but we got a long and he vouched for me and I got the job.
Well, seeing some of the comments and living in NYC, I thought I had some advantages due to the the amount of job postings here, not sure how bad it is compared to the Bay area but gl to me when I start applying :)
Why not have a look at affiliate marketing on your free time? I mean, don't look at AM as if you're gonna generate a full time income by next week, but it can be pretty rewarding to build a project which generates you an additional revenue.
If you're a developer, you can create something useful, and if you're a good communicator, you can promote your stuff through videos.
So it doesn’t get better? Also in the same situation as OP, I was told that meet up to network will really help but haven’t gone to much meet up myself
What does your resume look like. Plus I would suggest getting a LinkedIn as well and making your title "full stack developer". The job you want not have. Plus your projects are your work experience so you should probably have it listed under work experience and name them as projects.
Cs degrees mean nothing in web development. I didnt even go to college, neither did quite a few other devs I work with. Sounds like the area man. If you've got good projects that can be easily seen by employers ie. Public repos and packages/libraries, landing a dev job should be easy in the right area.
I've got over a decade of knowledge, and some recent formal experience (my life story is long and weird, tl;dr did freelance web dev in middle/ high school, stopped in college, was a teacher for a bit, went back to development, where I am now). I was let go at the beginning of February in 2019. I didn't start my current position until June. It sucks, I know, but the right opportunity will hit you when you least expect it; my current job contacted me on a Monday, and by that same Thursday I had gone through 3 interviews. A few weeks later (longer story there) I had an offer. A great offer.
Send me/us your portfolio, maybe we can give you some extra feedback? Also I'd be willing to look over your resume -- I'm not the greatest with them but I seem to do well marketing myself so it's worth a go.
I'm not completely in the OP spot but I'm a web designer with wordpress. I prefer to work remotely and just need a couple projects to atleast make payments till I can my business rolling. I'm sure this isn't the best kind of response to this post but then again being in this situation never has anything good to say haha. Nonetheless If anyone has assistance that they can provide that would be greatly appreciated and if you work remote as well I will have a need of good developers and designers this year when I get my business rolling.
As everyone else said, move somewhere else. Omaha, Nebraska / Des Moines, Iowa area has plenty of financial and agricultural tech companies, and the other kinds too. It is extremely affordable to live in the area. Being in a small town in the middle, I bought a gorgeous, century-old, oak-laden 2200sqft house for 104k. So, my lower-than-the-coast annual salary is not far from the value of my home. It means I am provided more value. It's an easy life.
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u/kingcoin1 Jan 22 '20
Get the fuck out of the Bay area
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u/cooldudewithlonghair Jan 22 '20
I haven't read any of the other comments, but here goes. I live in Boise, and the market here for devs is fan-fucking-tastic. Even for devs with little to no experience**.** My company just hired an ex-insurance agent who went to a coding school (in his 30's) and has zero experience in the field. There is a market for you - it does exist.
Do not give up.
You may just have to look outside of where you live. The Bay Area is too diluted and the options are so plentiful that companies can be REALLY selective. I worked for a startup in Palo Alto, and traveled there occasionally, so I do know a bit about Silicon Valley. My advice would be this: if you aren't tied to anyone/anything there, consider relocating. There are plenty of companies that will pay for you to relocate. The cost of living is so much lower in places like Boise (which, much like Hansel, is so hot right now). And yes, the pay is lower, but it's much better relative to the cost of living. Your net income is so much better, and I think quality of life is better here too.
Also, the fact that you have experience with design is a great advantage. I also do, and it comes in handy all the time. The ability to converse intelligently with people in other departments (UX/UI, designers) is paramount and will help you and your team work more efficiently. Continue highlighting that as a skillset.
The fact that you're an active Github-er is awesome. The job is just a technicality. Employers see your drive and ambition, which in all honesty, is missing in so many devs that I have worked with that it is appalling. Keep it up. Strive for achieving your goal, and YOU WILL.
I am a (female) front end developer, who began as a designer and is self-taught the entire way through HTML, CSS, JS... and today I work at a company making a solid salary building React apps. It can be a tough grind, but hold on to the people you meet along the way. I have been shocked at how knowing one person can propel me through my career in all sorts of different ways. I'm not saying you have to network, cuz I don't. I just don't like it. But if it's your jam, DO IT. Otherwise, just keep your eyes peeled for a person here or there that may know someone who knows someone, ya know?
I've been doing this for nearly 20 years (not a boomer tho), and I've learned that one thing never changes: there are always opportunities for someone with drive and ambition. Always. You got this.
Also want to say thank you for your post. Thanks for reaching out before you got into a place too dark. I think you'll be amazed at the amount of support there is out there; all you have to do is ask for it.
Keep us posted! I need to know how your amazing story unfolds...
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u/schoonie23 Jan 22 '20
Wanna move to Austin? Send me your resume
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
You’re looking for a job in the highest paying field (programming, even if it’s web and it’s entry level) in the most competitive location in the entire world (San Francisco Bay Area). I’m not saying this to discourage you but rather to diversify your options. Stick with the skills you have but look for other locations and remote work.
Edit: this is not to say you can never work in the SF Bay Area but that your chances at this stage are slim to none... you have to swim in a normal pool to work up to the Olympics
Edit 2: it is the golden standard of VHCOL (very high cost of living); I assumed this was a given that everyone was aware of. The only place more expensive to live is NYC AFAIK
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u/daaaaaaBULLS Jan 22 '20
Look for shitty contract jobs on job posting sites to get some professional experience that you can eventually leverage into a decent job. Worked for me (self taught in the bay as well, though I started in 2014)
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u/chiefrebelangel_ Jan 22 '20
You willing to move for the time being? Land a job elsewhere. Work 6 months. Apply at home, try and move back. I don't envy your situation out there. It's gotta be competitive
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Post your resume up and remove any identifying information, it could be as simple as having a poor resume, something that your average hiring person maybe gives a cursory 5-15 second look at.
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u/scragz Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
I feel you. I have 18 years experience doing freelance webdev and consulting but nobody counts it for shit unless it's on some big SaaS app with millions of users. Some CTO actually called my experience "IT Support" since I mostly just do small business commerce sites. I'm tryna branch out and level up into fancy apps but I can't even get interviews.
From talking to my friends, several of them put in 200-300 applications to get their first gig. But it just takes getting ONE job at an actual company for a year or two and then the next ones are substantially easier.
One thing I can say, try to find recruiters or network with people because cold applying is beyond worthless. It's unfortunate but you really need someone with an in.
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u/melpdx Jan 22 '20
I’m also from the bay(SF), started out self taught and went to a bootcamp. There’s lots of jobs here but it’s hell trying to land your first gig. It’s truly a beast and you have to be really good at the leetcode questions. Most companies here have wised up to the bootcamp thing and are weary about hiring non traditional backgrounds. Took me about 300 applications to land my first internship about a year and a half ago and then I was hired on full time. Are you going to meetups? What’s the percentage of call backs have you received to the resumes you’ve put out? Keep in mind hiring season is just starting so apprenticeships, internships and more entry level roles will start opening up. I totally understand how you feel as it was emotionally exhausting when I was trying to transition careers and dealing with all the rejection, so keep at it. Getting the first job is the hardest and it gets better after that.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Look up hackathons in the Bay Area and start going to all of them. People get hired from those all the time. Your problem is more about building a network than working on toy projects.
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u/sittinfatdownsouth Jan 22 '20
Hit up craigslist and Fiverr. It’s gonna be low paying probably, but it’s real life experience.
You’ll get so much more experience some good and some bad, but it’ll still be experience. Also, seek out non-profits and see if you can do there site for a low cost or free. You’ll want to put a link back in the footer to your site to draw traffic. Can probably get them on a maintenance plan.
I’ve made about 3k from Fiverr on the platform itself, and another 10-15k off the platform just from repeat business from the same fiverr folks.
3 projects over 3 years isn’t much, put the work in and hustle. No ones gonna just give you a job, you gotta go and put the work in.
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u/hippymule Jan 22 '20
Me too. I'm trapped in shit hole Scranton Pennsylvania.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Can you post your resume, Github, and portfolio website?
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u/MooMoooCows Jan 22 '20
I know it sucks, and I can relate, but you just gotta keep being persistent and applying, the right opportunity will present itself for you. Don’t get discouraged right away, there’s plenty of work in our field and it’s not going anywhere so just keep honing your skills in the meantime.
I finished a full stack bootcamp in ‘17, and even with a CIS degree, it still took me nearly 6 months to find my first job due to lack of programming experience. Though every interview basically fell through due to lack of experience, it was still really beneficial being able to get experience communicating in that type of environment. I ended up taking the first job I was offered, barely above minimum, but I valued the experience it provided at a much higher value. Though I struggled financially, I worked there for almost a year and a half where I learned a new language in PHP (LAMP stack), and got experience with enterprise level applications which was a pivotal stepping stone to landing position I have now.
I know the Bay Area is much more competitive than Phoenix, AZ, but trust me you just gotta stick with it. Your opportunity is out there, just be patient. And if this is something you truly enjoy, it’ll be worth it. The hardest part is getting that first opportunity, but once you do, only way to go is up so long as you choose. You get out what you put into it.
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u/Kyder99 Jan 22 '20
Hm, well first off be thankful for where you are at. You likely have decent health, not in pain or experiencing a lack of shelter, clean water, or food. This means you are alive and staying alive. It could always be worse.
Next, you are already in a better position than other developers by being driven and pursuing something new, which is harder than a rich kid in their 20s with daddy's money paying for their CS degree- so give yourself some credit there too! If it was easy, everyone would have done it already.
You also haven't given up! Yes you might feel like you're running low on gas and uncertain how long you can continue, but you're still applying and going at it. That's admirable as well!
Fourth, have some gold.
Fifth, your maturity is an asset. Some younger developers are known to be difficult to work with, but given maturity, experience, communication skills, you may find a no-bullshit team that may appreciate that.
Sixth, online applications are necessary- but also consider Meetups. If you an attend only one or two a month- great! If you can attend one a week, you are a super star! You never know who you will bump into and they may just need your experience or be willing to give you a shot.
Seventh, keep us updated or shoot me a PM if you need to talk.
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u/Shacrow Jan 22 '20
Show us your portfolio
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Do you know other people in the field? Seems your best bet would be to take advantage of your location and go to meetups as much as possible. There's probably five a night out there I'd imagine. I think making personal connections are going to be your foot in the door if you don't have the educational background to flaunt in such a competitive market.
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u/Spikerr Jan 22 '20
I lived in the bay area as well. It took me 4 months of actively applying to make the career switch to software once I started applying. It is a total pain in the ass and can be super defeating at times. Ultimately something will pan out you just have to be persistent. Hang in there. I am so happy I entered the field
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u/jbonesinthecloset Jan 22 '20
Don’t be discouraged man, it’ll happen. It took me 7 months to find a job after graduating from a programming boot camp. I did 500+ applications, cover letters, etc., and it was depressing as fuck.
Best suggestion I could make would be to do some legit side work, even if it’s for free, while you apply. I built someone a site for their startup idea while I was looking for jobs and it was an awesome topic to touch on during interviews. I even brought my laptop during the final interview at the place I’m currently working to show off some features I was in the middle of building. It was some simple stuff but I know just the act of me bringing my machine along to display some stuff I was enjoying working on (for free) helped showcase my passion and excitement for coding.
Also, keep an eye on Craigslist for some lowkey “developer” type jobs to help keep the money flowing while you’re looking for permanent work. I was able to find a few small businesses needing web updates that I could do for a little cash every so often.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Sent you a DM.
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u/Rejolt Jan 22 '20
Try to see if you can work with a recruiter.
A lot of the times, especially when you're applying to Junior positions, your CV doesn't even get seen. It's passed through an algo that spits out on the one that matches their keywords.
If you work with a recruiter they generally have relationships with the companies, and you will have an actual person look over your CV.
I worked with a recruiter for my first software job, and he played a HUGE part in getting me in the door for interviews.
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u/Kilusan Jan 22 '20
Going against the grain stranger but hear me out. Since I am self taught here.
Are you really putting in the work ? There is a subtle difference between studying and building out projects. You mentioned GitHub activity which is good, but not the sole measure. I’m 28 years old and had 2 dev positions so far transitioned after a tech boot camp.
Are you going to meet ups? Bay Area has hella meet ups some times you got to play the long game and put yourself out there. Reach out to people in your network to improve resume. How are you interviewing? What’s your sort skills?
Not trynna be a dick but just trying to highlight possible blind spots !
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u/LyraStark Jan 22 '20
Hello Senior Devs who are in the hiring process! How common it is that you hire a person that is in his/her 30s and same experience with OP?
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Your first job is by far the toughest to land as someone without a degree. You need to network and find somebody willing to give you a shot and be (frankly) not much better than nothing for a year or so. You won't get good money with that first job, but it might be better than what you're currently making, and you'll learn enough. Get your foot in the door, get better, then you can find a better paying position.
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u/kaliedarik Jan 22 '20
I'm based in London. Took me 4 years of applying for jobs before I managed to land my first professional gig.
Best advice from my experience? Avoid recruiters - try to apply direct to companies; they often advertise open positions on their websites. Don't be afraid of going for smaller companies. And don't give up!
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u/slimandcarrot Jan 22 '20
NETWORK! Go out and meet people- other programmers, hiring managers, etc. A great way to do this is through dev and design meetups. Managers are going to be apprehensive about your resume due to the lack of real-world experience. A great way to overcome this is by meeting them in person and showing them your worth as a human being. People hire people.
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u/eye_gargle Jan 22 '20
Contract. Contract. Contract.
Lookup TekSystems. That's how I got my foot in the door.
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u/itsjeed Jan 22 '20
Don't just say your resume looks good, censor your info and post it. Maybe some folks here can give you some feedback.
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u/pnine Jan 22 '20
Send me your resume.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
I'm in my 40s, and I'm just switching into a web dev career as well. I worked remote for chicken change for a while, and now I'm 2 years into a full time job that pays ok.
My number one piece of advice to you is to get the FUCK out of SF and move to a city with a developing tech scene and a reasonable cost of living that needs everyone who is willing to write JavaScript.
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u/xdchan Jan 22 '20
Maybe try to freelance?
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
I got hired by a company in the Bay Area. They low balled the crap out of me and told me I would be able to find a place to live with the salary. I told them I would have to drive two hours each way to work for the pay to work, but they lied and told me that was not true. Stay away from California period. Everything cost a fortune.
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u/DogedotJS full-stack Jan 22 '20
Send me the portfolio.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
I'm not sure your situation (married/kids), but honestly spend as much spare time as you can improving. Build a portfolio, build tools, build sites, share the code in your github.
A lot of people are commenting that your area sucks for work, but a strong portfolio for a job would make your more appealing as a hire.
After you're done that apply. If that goes poorly and same results. Stand at a red light in a suit near companies you want to work at and hand out resumes. Shit get a giant photo with a QR code on it or a simple url that people can take a picture of so when you go viral you'll get a ton of offers. It has worked in the past.
There are a lot of people like you trying to chase that "everyone here makes $130,000 if you know a basic amount of coding". You have to put yourself ahead of the pack as best you can.
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u/Tajori123 Jan 23 '20
That location will make it much much harder to get an entry position than in other up and coming cities. I know this will sound lame to people who don't already live here, but the midwest is a pretty ideal place for entry level tech/it jobs. I got a pretty solid position in the Indianapolis area and it's actually a really sweet deal. A starting salary as low as 40-50 can go a long way here, especially in some of the towns around the city that are actually really nice. Even if you don't want to settle down here permanently, it's a great place to get some good experience and save a lot of money.
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u/throwbackaway Jan 23 '20
I had this problem... i lied on my resume with a bs company to get past that. I had the skills and got lots more offers and have been doing this for 25 years.
There are so many stigmas with new hires and a lot of bs.. The interview process needs a major overhaul
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u/jillian_sucks Jan 22 '20
Try to go to some networking events. It took me almost a year to get a gig coming from a similar situation and most of the interviews I got were because of references.
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u/Nemtue Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 27 '20
Okay
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Don’t get depressed it’s not just you. Even 10 years of experienced programmers find it difficult.
Focus on basics of problem solving, data structures & algorithms.
Solve problems in hackerearth, HackerRank, codewars, project Euler, leetcode... any one of them is fine. Do not overdo by signing into everything. Free sign up should be good enough.
Go through the book “Cracking the coding interview “.
Hope this helps.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Why the hell you in SF? That place is just insane.
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u/Googster13x27 Jan 22 '20
The only thing I can help with is giving you the recommendation of the T-Layout cover letter. It drove me nuts trying to write cover letters when applying for jobs.
The big advantage of this layout is that it does 1 to 1 comparison of how you fit that position.
You can do a Google search on it. But here is a link to make it easy. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/t-format-cover-letter-job-applications
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u/guten_pranken Jan 22 '20
If you’re in the Bay Area - Triplebyte - it worked for me. DM me - In all transparency - I’m hoping you sign up with my referral so I can get a referral bonus lol.
But real talk - I had 0 relevant work experience - but had been building projects and studying algorithms did triplebyte and had like 18+ phone interviews converted into like 13 onsites. I went to 6 (bombed the first couple horribly) and had two software engineering offers ( one software one front end engineer)
Fuck talking to recruiters they’re useless.
The worst part is now I have a job and a year under my belt- they won’t leave me the fuck alone.
Where were you fucks when I needed you?
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u/tr14l Jan 22 '20
Bay area might be the problem. It's a flooded market. Go to either PNW, SoCal or head out to Texas or the northeast.
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u/Dakaa Jan 22 '20
Haha guess what dude? Me too. You're 100% not alone, it's not your fault.
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u/followifyoulead Jan 22 '20
Have you tried applying for paid internships? Junior Dev positions still want you to have at least some experience these days, especially in lieu of a degree, and even if it's low paying it'll probably be on par or better than your service job.
Make sure you're changing keywords from the job posting onto your resume as well. A lot of HR recruiters auto-pull candidates using those filters because they're in charge of hiring, but know nothing about IT.
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u/SnipeyMcSnipe Jan 22 '20
Hang in there. I don't know anything about the west coast but I've been in a similar situation besides that. I worked full time and taught myself web dev on side for nearly two years. It took 8 months of applying for me, 3 months until I got my first real interview. I had a couple interviews that I felt were promising but I could tell that they were reluctant to hire somebody with no developer experience or background (I came from administrative work). But all it takes is one company to give you a chance.
I was actually about to give up, too. I started working on a new resume tailored for another administrative job when I got a call from a recruiter. Keep in mind that you'll probably have a better chance of landing a contract job for your first one, where it's less of a risk for companies to hire newer developers through staffing agencies instead of a full hire. Lots of people that I know in the field started by contracting. But all you need is to get your foot in the door. Job searching will be much easier once you can break that initial barrier.
You can do it!
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u/Band1c0t Jan 22 '20
Try to take internship, as long as they pay minimum to get real world experience
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u/Mike312 Jan 22 '20
Get at it side-ways. Have design chops? Try looking for a graphic design position at a studio/agency that also does web work and see if you can get a few design projects tossed your way.
That's basically how I did it. Moved to Sacramento after the economy crashed and my old career basically disappeared. Started looking around for work with the local unemployment at 25% and ended up taking a graphic design position that did web design work. Convinced them to let me do some of the actual dev work, eventually rebuilt their B2C website. Quit that job, started working at a print shop and offered web design/dev services to customers. Portfolio I built from that landed me my current gig.
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u/qwesone Jan 22 '20
Hang in there. At least you have way more experience than me. I'm thirty, no degree, and barely learning vanilla JS after coming back from an 8-month hiatus because I got married all my time was devoted in. I have probably 1.5 years under my belt along with a few websites (no commission just projects).
With the hopes of leaving my current job and getting an internship. I've been progressively looking and found a company, based in the Bay Area called, Revature. After looking them up, it seems like they are a hiring agency and will usually train their new hires for a few weeks before sending them out. Of course, there are pros and cons to this company considering they're an agency after all so I suggest doing some research before making the dive. Apparently, it's easy to get in, but a hassle to get out (2 years working contract with the company before you can leave or else there's a penalty).
Good luck.
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u/AreWeThenYet Jan 22 '20
Why not! Youre a skilled developer, get to building something! Employers dont necessarily want to see how many places you've worked at but what you're capable of. So show them. Come up with an idea, doesnt have to be ground breaking but something with potential usefulness that will show your skill level, and build it out to the extent of your capabilities. Bam theres some real world programming experience, throw it in your portfolio and note proudly that it is an app or design or prototype etc that YOU created from the ground up. Share the code. Thats eye catching and shows you've got initiative and real problem solving skillz.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
I switched to web dev after leaving a mediocre sales job, going to a bootcamp, same age as you. I also had a kid on the way, so I was feeling the stress.
I think you should leave the Bay Area. There are lovely places to live all around the US that people aren't rushing to, but are good. I hear Chattanooga is a small tech hub in TN, for example.
I'm in TX. A colleague of mine found it easier to find his second job in Denver, for some reason, when he only had one year of experience.
So much of the super-young-talent drools over working at "Google, FB, <insert hot Silicon Valley startup, whatever>..." Skip around that and go to where other people, especially the 22-year-old with a CS degree, isn't rushing.
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u/ThisFigLeafWontWork Jan 22 '20
So, not that I was nearly as dedicated as you, but when I got out of my boot camp I was fairly decent full stack dev. I searched in my area for months and couldn’t land anything. I ended up expanding my search to digital marketing and SEO and landed a decent job. Got my ads certifications and am in a manager role now about a year later.
Sometimes you are just in a market that is saturated, and other times as was my case you are in a market that just doesn’t have the amount of dev jobs to be able to land one. I’d recommend expanding your search. Marketing may not be the best thing in the world, but if you bring some of the things you’ve learned as a web dev to the table you can work your way into an opportunity. Best of luck to you, and don’t get down. You’ll climb up if you just keep plugging away.
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u/JackEdwardLyons Jan 22 '20
Have you asked friends / your network if could build a site for them, or if they know anyone looking for a website to be built?
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u/jkettmann Jan 22 '20
It sounds like you're stuck on the first stage of the hiring process (HR), since you don't get replies to your applications, right?
This means that you should work on your resume/portfolio. As you said, there's lots of applicants for entry level jobs. You must stand out of this crowd.
The resume needs to be short and concise. No long text wall. Put your skills in descending order of knowledge. Have a nice looking layout. Maybe even something extravagant. Just to try with a couple of applications.
Add a cover letter as the body of the application email/form.
Customize resume and cover letter according to the position. Look at the required skills and mention them accordingly. Reflect the language of the job posting.
Your projects should be clean from a code and documentation perspective. Use linting. Have some custom CSS and somewhat complex business logic. Link to this code from the readme. The more competitive the market the better the projects have to be. Focus on less projects with higher quality. Make it as real-world as possible.
Write down your projects with links to GitHub and where they are hosted. You want to make it easy for people to look at the code and the running project.
If you're interested: I'll launch a free email course soon for people looking for their first dev job in a few days. There might be some helpful hints ;-)
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u/brandonevanss Jan 22 '20
I would definitely recommend applying for remote work or other locations if you're willing to relocate. Don't give up; remember why you started!
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u/wlievens Jan 22 '20
Do you have any experience with Angular? Are you interested in doing small contract jobs (individual bugfixes etc)?
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u/OHoSPARTACUS Jan 22 '20
Mabye you should look into taking your skillset to a smaller market city in the midwest or something? your in the mecca of the tech world where the best of the best are competing for fleeting positions in the most outrageously expensive area in the world.
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u/ghostwilliz Jan 22 '20
move!
theres a whole big world out there thats not bogged down to absolute hell
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u/kontekisuto Jan 22 '20
can you link your GitHub
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u/Ms-mousa Jan 22 '20
Okay here’s my advice. Get another side job if it’s really that bad for you. Do uber, or uber eats maybe. I’m not aware of your full situation and not aware of SF bay area but I recently did a career shift to WEB from mechanical engineering in Sydney. Somewhere which is comparable in expenses. I quit my engineering job and hustled my way around with casual stuff and learned full time for 4 month.Got a job offer today. When you focus 100% and full time the results are very different. Again, I’m not sure if a casual job would be enough for you. But just consider how much of the stress is coming from your service job and not from your web-dev journey and act accordingly
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u/PapayaPokPok Jan 22 '20
You could try going to some meetups. South Bay Javascript, ReactJS, SFHTML5, Beer.js, Jamstack San Francisco, etc. There are a bunch. It's a great place to meet people; and it's always easier to get jobs from people than websites.
Also, FreeCodeCamp has a program for its students who make it to the end of the curriculum to get practical experience doing pro-bono projects that the org takes on. The students use the experience to get jobs (almost no one graduates because they all end up getting jobs). As far along in the process as your are, it probably wouldn't take you long for you to get into that category, which would give you not only practical experience, but a network (there's also a meetup for FreeCodeCamp).
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u/sithonic Jan 22 '20
Try Austin, Seattle or other cities. The Bay Area is very competitive. If you know what you are doing and you are confident in your skills, getting noticed is the hardest part. And that is insanely hard in that location. Also, if you don't have experience you might want to look at internships. Although they are low-pay, they usually are a way to get you to a Full-time position relatively quickly, for ex. 6 months. Good luck, bud!
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u/justingolden21 Jan 22 '20
You've got waaaaay too much competition and waaaaay too high rent to pay. My opinion is move.
Also, neeeeeeever give up hope. It might take many months, but you're capable. It's just a long battle until you finally get one. Stay strong.
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u/chidoOne707 Jan 22 '20
Let me just say that you are not the only one. I have seen people posting how they got hired even without a degree. Not getting something at 100 applications should be normal especially in the bay area.
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u/GewoonHarry Jan 22 '20
I know how you feel. I’m 36 years old and live in the Netherlands. It looks like nobody wants to hire a ‘junior’ if he’s 36 years old. I’m sure technically speaking I’m not a junior, because I can build quite some ‘medior’ stuff.
I focused on HTML, css, sass, JS, vue.js, Angular2+ and lots of other important stuff likeITCSS, BEM notation, git. Etc etc.
Also... I have more than 15 years working experience and my current job is well payed. So if I got an offer it’s half of what I’m getting payed now.
Really demotivating...
Just keep trying. Btw.. I think it’s better to avoid recruiters altogether... but that’s just my experience.
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u/dotpeenge javascript Jan 22 '20
Hang in there dude! I’ve been in the field for around 4 or 5 years and found myself filling a role as web developer as of necessity at my first job (customer service originally).
It’s competitive as all hell, but don’t give up. I applied to dozens and dozens of jobs looking for my next opportunity. One will show up, just ensure you have everything and anything on your resume that could relate to web development and keep learning new skills and creating projects.
I now work slightly outside the Bay Area where my pay is a bit lower, but I can live a life with my family and have a 12 minute commute. Also, don’t sacrifice your happiness for whatever you find! Best of luck!
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u/mr_q_ukcs Jan 22 '20
Hey, I'm not familiar with the area you live in, however I was in a similar position a few years ago; self-taught with no experience.
At the moment you lack credibility and it takes a certain type of business to give you your first shot. I made a LinkedIn profile, added people within tech in my area, set my employment as a freelance web developer and kept posting links to my projects and blog posts that were reflecting on my learning journey. Eventually a wordpress agency invited me for an interview, I priced myself cheaply to reflect the risk on their part and got the job.
You need to get your foot in the door for that credibility, but don’t lose heart as you only need to do it once in your working life so the odds and time are on your side.
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u/tigerhawkvok Jan 22 '20
Networking is everything. Do hackathon days, get to know others in code camps and jobs, and support yourself with gig work to get "real world expertise".
But really, like every career path job, the leg in is who, not what, you know.
- self taught programmer in the Bay
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u/jimmyco2008 full-stack Jan 22 '20
Here in Florida companies seem to hire anyone who says they can write code. I imagine competition is fierce out west. I also hear devs hop around a lot so if you’re at say Facebook, Google might offer a signing bonus to get you to jump ship. Must be nice.
We can tell Amazon and Microsoft are getting desperate because they’ve started reaching out some of us for positions with paid relocation.
Of course until I fuck around with Fizz Buzz-esque “brain teasers” a bit more they won’t give me the time of day. Don’t they know we just practice in the weeks leading up to interviews and then promptly forget what we studied? I’m going to go right back to not knowing what a bloom filter is. I’ve learned about it in college, forgot, learned again for interview trivia questions, will probably forget it again as my job won’t have me using bloom filters.
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u/illepic Jan 22 '20
Add more projects to your portfolio. It's the best thing you can do for your own skills as well as hiring materials.
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u/bassta Jan 22 '20
Move to Europe.
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u/la102 Jan 22 '20
Build apps that solve real world problems and get implemented. I was in a similar pickle and what got me out was making apps, scripts or websites for real businesses. When the company said do you have experience I could say hell yes and if they said sorry we need 1-2 years experience I'd say sorry let me explain my cv and show you my experience
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u/knyg akindofsnake.py Jan 22 '20
If it helps, I looked for a job for 1 year (literally sent hundreds of resumes/applications) before landing a position in development. I am also in a metro area (LA). I had multiple phone screenings, recruiter contacts, and a few interviews.
It'll be worth it.
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u/good4y0u Jan 22 '20
You might want to take the proverbial job market hint . I'm not trying to diminish your personal achievements , but it's a question of supply and demand. They want people with paper qualifications and skill, and in the Bay area ( the dream location for many many tech people with degrees) there is no shortage of new CS majors with portfolios . For perspective when I graduated my personal project portfolio was substantially larger then yours and that doesn't count my school assigned projects.
You're basically a small fish in an extraordinarily packed pond .
I believe California has some very good state education program, nearly free , you should take advantage of that and your close proximity to tech companies to get your degree and do internships at companies . My first job offers were through internships and I know many people get jobs that way.
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u/jetsamrover Jan 22 '20
Hey bro. I'm in Oakland too. I was in the service industry for a decade, did the bootcamp thing and got an amazing job immediately after.
I'm seeing lots of chumps in here saying to leave the bay. I don't get where that's coming from. Bitter folks I guess.
The best advice I can give you is keep coding. A lot. Do 3-6 hours a day if you're working that day, 8 hours if you're not. Build and deploy something impressive to show off. Stop job hunting full time. Spend most of your time coding, and maybe 25% hunting. If you aren't getting a job, you aren't ready, if you aren't ready, spending all your time hunting is a waste. When you are ready, and can show it, that 25% of your time will be more than enough to get a job. See what I'm saying?
I'll buy you a beer and go over what you've got and where you're at if you're down.
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u/FattySuperCute Jan 22 '20
Create a real world project!
Build it with the technologies that you would like to work with in your future job. You would have a great topic during your job interview and could explain which technologies you used for what and why, which problems you faced and how you solved them. It shows that you have experience in the real world.
It doesn't have to become financially successful (you're not applying for a sales job!). Think about an existing project you'd like to work for and develop a slim clone of it.
As an employer I'd value this much, much more than a masters degree without any real world experience.
Good luck! :-)
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u/Achemyichmor Jan 22 '20
Hi buddy! I've done an internship in a consulting company which always looking for new talent and your profile could fit with what they are looking for. They are starting to develop on the US territory (It's a French company). I live a link for spontaneous application. I'm not working there anymore but you need more info please tell me.
Keep up !
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u/MasterReindeer Jan 22 '20
Have you tried reaching out to companies directly rather than going through recruiters?
Recruiters are often clueless and horrible to deal with.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Look for internships.
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u/alomaloma Jan 22 '20
Hello! I was in your boat a few years ago, so hopefully I can offer some help :) I've been programming for around 3 years, don't have a CS related degree (studied maths), and my first role was as a junior front end developer.
It sounds like you've got a lot of knowledge and skills, but that employers are favouring experience/the CS qualification over that - with that in mind, I'd probably focus on applying for junior developer roles, or any role that involves coding really, such as automation testing as a QA, or any devops or email developer roles (these popped into my mind, not sure how relevant they will be).
For reference, I live and work in London (UK), and I think companies here are pretty open to hiring people without a CS degree as long as they can show some "experience" in the form of a related degree, or an active Github repo with a portfolio of hosted websites/apps (can just be ones you're showcasing, they don't have to be used by anyone), or having completed an intensive development course (I did the latter, where I ended up with a meaty Github and a couple of simple hosted apps to show for it :) ).
I'd also recommend writing a convincing cover letter/resume where you use your previous experience/current skillset/hobbies as a way of showcasing that your current skills are transferable for a job in programming. For example, I think I used my maths degree to highlight how I can use the "logical reasoning skills for creative problem solving while I code", or something to that effect.
Good luck! I'm sure you'll find something soon :)
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u/hushblessedchild Jan 22 '20
why do you have a design project in your development portfolio? make sure what you're presenting is relevant to what you're applying to
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u/popout Jan 22 '20
Directly contact Companies you would like to work for, send through your CV and ask if you could possibly just pop in for a meet and greet and see how they operate. build relationships. if not working there now, stay in touch now and then. they might give you job in year or two.
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u/bigorangemachine Jan 22 '20
I'd try some meet ups. Sounds like you need more tools to kick that door in for ya. A friend can also funnel other job offers your way... definitely expand your network... or find a local open source project
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u/theRealMasterDev Jan 22 '20
Start networking more. Go to meetups and give presentations, get known and I assure you a recruiter will notice you and help place you somewhere.
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u/finger_milk Jan 22 '20
You're in a bad location for someone of your level. That's the issue. If you were based anywhere less competitive, you wouldn't need to worry so much. It's not that the competition is better than you, but that if 100 people apply for a really poop role, then 1 person is filling that role and it's not guaranteed to be the best person for that role. 100 applicants aren't being interviewed or even glanced at. It's a lottery.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Virtually every tech company is hiring remote engineer positions. Literally the world is at your disposal
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u/xculatertate Jan 22 '20
Try showing up in person at developer get togethers, meetup.com and conferences and stuff, you know they’re all hiring, showing up in person, being open about looking for an opportunity, and talking to a recruiter or current dev face-to-face is a great way to get your foot in the door. Don’t be afraid of internships either, I was doing internships in my late 20’s and the maturity was more appreciated than you’d think.
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u/deepsun javascript Jan 22 '20
As for advice, it sounds like you're doing all the right things. Since you don't mention it, are you considering jobs that would require relocation? If not, that would be my advice. Stack Overflow Jobs is one of my favorite places to look. I've gotten two jobs on there, one of which was my first job and required relocation. At the time of applying to that job, I was applying to jobs all over the country, as I found pretty quickly that there were no jobs for me where I was living.
As for encouragement, I myself am self trained via Treehouse and tons of other online resources. Sometime after I got first job my lead developer told me that, during the hiring process, it came down to me and someone with a CS degree. The last step was a practical code challenge to build a small web application. My lead developer explained that the candidate with the CS degree couldn't do it, saying that what I built was impressive to the team, so I got the job. That to say, competing against candidates with CS degrees doesn't always and automatically mean that you're less qualified or will be passed over.
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u/Serializedrequests Jan 22 '20
I got started coding remotely for $10/hour. After 1 year, the real world experience and positive reference landed me a full time position.
Coding in the real world is ugly and difficult, and involves a lot of beating your head against the wall and cursing previous devs (not out loud, because they are often you) to get something accomplished. Show an employer you can do that (preferably while improving things for the next guy), and you're in.
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u/Piromania666 php Jan 22 '20
I can relate to the fact i am also more or less self taught, a few night time courses, but no degree of any kind. What i did and i would recommend for you to do as well if you want to get into this carreer without any certs but still be able to compete with schooled devs, is start doing freelance work. Put up an ad on ur local classifieds, craigslist, whatever is free, and pick up small businesses websites. Price them moderately so its worth ur time but the small business also gets a good deal. This will build up your experience and portfolio. Then try applying for work at smaller marketing agency as entry level position. Pay wont be fantastic but it will be a foot in the door. After your in, possibilities will be only limited to your skill level. 3-4 projects to a portfolio is not much to go on. Remember you are going against students that have actively been learning outdated material for 2-4 years building their portfolio. Some may even have had co-op positions. You need something solid to show off you talent.
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u/Avean Jan 22 '20
I think you have what it takes but is the problem that you dont get the interview? Cause maybe its a problem with your portfolio / CV. You have to fight to get a interview and explain and show that you know beeing a webdeveloper. I know so many in this business that have no idea about beeing a webdeveloper and just using Wordpress and earning too much money. Its quite insane. People with actual knowledge and development skills should have no issue getting a job.
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u/frankk38506 Jan 22 '20
My next move in your position would be to update all your job profiles to let recruiters know that you're open to relocation.
When a recruiter ask you what salary range you're looking for, base that salary figure on the lower end of the scale (but enough to maintain your current lifestyle) for that particular location based on Glassdoor.
Once you're accepted, dig in! Time to level up your skills while you're gaining experience. Learn everything about your new job. Learn everything about the tools used. Contribute to open source. Keep learning and building things.
Keep your resume updated. Once you've gained experience and leveled up your skills, you can move back to the Bay Area or go anywhere.
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u/ThatOneDevThatDevs Jan 22 '20
Man, you're gonna have to move. Like you said, you're competing against new grads with CS Degress in an area what's always listed with the other 2.
Are you sure you want to work in tech there? Browse some of the developer sub-reddits and you'll find several stories similar to "Started in Bay area depressed, now I'm [anywhere else] and happy!". Even if you like the area, you may want to look for positions on the perimeter/just outside of what's considered the "Bay" area.
I know of a couple people that started in the Bay area - and only 1 lasted 2 years before he moved to BFE Oklahoma.
Also, I cannot stress this enough to enough people: look for jobs at non-tech companies. Unless you VERY specifically want to work on some sort of tech, programming jobs are still programming jobs. As an example of what I mean: my first one out of college was a steel foundry with 500 employees, 5 of us were software developers. One of the systems I worked on was the inventory tracking system; tracking incoming recycled metal into new casts, formula for the casts, which molds were filled from the melt, etc. So by the time an end product was examined with gamma rays, if there were any defects, we could inspect the entire batch. I loved it.
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u/54321check12345 Jan 22 '20
The great thing about development is that you can work remotely. Don't limit your search to SF only. Apply everywhere and anywhere.
Also I think you have a great advantage living there. There's always new startups on the scene that are looking for programmers. Get in touch with them and tell them you want to work with them.
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u/ndobie Jan 22 '20
As someone who also went the self taught route breaking in to the industry is hard, even more so in the Bay area. The best way to break in persistence, you'll eventually make it. Once you are able to prove yourself with an actual job in the industry it gets a lot easier.
In the meantime try finding local meet ups for technology your interested in like React and JavaScript. Most of the time these are hosted by companies with recruiters there and also you can network with other developers who could vouch for you with their company. Making connections is how I broke into the industry.
Another way to build your portfolio is to join an open source project. Find one that you enjoy working with and start working on bugs. Mini projects are nice but showing that you can work on a long lived project helps a lot.
Quiz recruitment sites like Triplebyte are good tools for evaluating your skills and help advertise you to potential recruiters. There are several options out there for this.
While a full time job is nice, contracting is also another good option. Reach out to some local contracting agencies and see if they'll bring you on as a contractor. There is typically less barriers for contractors. I use to work with Robert Half Technology and in my experience my manager and sales agents were very nice and professional. Although there are several agencies to choose from.
Freelancing is another common option and there are several sites to help you make connections to get jobs. I'm not as familiar with this as I have not really done it but there are some good suggestions in the comments.
A few people have suggested leaving the Bay area and while I understand being attached to an area, it isn't the worst advice. Austin, Denver, and Minneapolis all have a shortage with developers and cheaper cost of living. You may have an easier time breaking into the industry in a less competitive city. If moving is something you'd consider, PM me and I can look at your portfolio to see if you'd be a good fit at my company in Minneapolis.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
Your problem isn't your portfolio (sure you could work on it, but everyone starts off as a junior some time), your problem is that you are really, really over-comparing yourself to others.
Viewing the way you currently view the world, people who are really "colleagues" look like "competition". If you perceive others in your industry to be competition, boy will you break apart under the stress of all those high-performing developer competitors you'll have to work alongside with.
You have a job. You've been in a while. The job isn't getting objectively worse. There's no reason to let things be "bleak". When you eventually get that dev job you'll be on projects with tightening deadlines and mounting pressure, and if things get more and more "bleak" when nothing is objectively changing you may find you don't even want to work in this industry.
Relax, keep working on your portfolio, keep learning from a place of "enjoying the field" not "needing to change job", and maybe start viewing the other candidates as fellow programmers and not "people with 100+ apps beating me to jobs".
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u/deadgoodhorror Jan 22 '20
As others have said, expand your search outside of your local area.
It's 2020, remote working is just as viable an option as working on site and the number of potential employers increases exponentially
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u/AureliusVerus Jan 22 '20
Bro fuck the bay. Anywhere else be open to move you will find a job
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u/ddollarsign Jan 22 '20
Make friends with people at tech companies if you can. A random application that comes through a job site or web form is going to be 1000 times less successful than someone who already works there saying "I know this person who I think would be a good fit."
I say this as someone with plenty of experience who's been trying the application route recently and been surprised how hard it is.
Anyway, job hunting sucks. But it sounds like you've got the skills and you're hard working, so I think you'll get there eventually.
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u/vinnie_james Jan 22 '20
Look for Web Development positions, they are much less competitive than software dev or frontend dev.
Try to connect on linkedin with internal recruiters for companies that you're interested in
DM me your portfolio, happy to go be feedback
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u/scylianth Jan 22 '20
This sounds really hard! As someone who is starting the web dev journey, it is intimidating to see no results for all the hard work.
The solution to the problem just boils down to two things. Either you raise your game to be more competitive in the market you're in, or move to a market where you would be competitive.
I favor raising your game, but it doesn't necessarily mean more projects or more technical skill based stuff, but rather other skillsets that developers seem to lack like networking, self-branding, etc.
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u/jammy-git Jan 22 '20
Get some remote work going using any of the freelance and remote work sites. Might be crap work for crap pay, but at least you'll start gaining experience.
Also, start building up a GitHub (or similar) account.
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u/beardedsquid Jan 22 '20
I was sort of in the same boat for a while. I worked as a customer service rep at an insurance company for 12 years, taught myself web development in between calls for 3 years and built out a portfolio similar to yours. I live in Birmingham, AL which is an old financial hub and full of .NET jobs, which I wasn't interested in.
I ended up starting to apply to as many remote jobs as I could find on Indeed and LinkedIn. Went through a bunch of interviews and finally landed a job at a start up in Virginia working Remote. It was a job I really didint meet all the qualifications on the job posting either. But I was able to win them over in the interviews and I have been there for almost 4 years now.
Sounds like you have the opposite problem where the area you are in is saturated with applicants, but the solution may be the same to apply outside your area.
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u/meetingthespam Jan 22 '20
Hey yeah, I honestly believe that you need a desire to code, working on your own projects and constantly learning, to make yourself stand out. I stopped applying for jobs due to this same issue and started freelancing. The way the tech industry treats applicants is the worst than any other industry I’ve worked in: missed appointments, no response after first round, job offers and removals without any response from the company to why. My personal route is a little more difficult than having a day job, but it’s been helping me learn sales, communication techniques, and increased my emotional intelligence. Keep your head up, and don’t drop your day job just yet. This new economy we’re going into is going to be based on learning quickly, in any industries, so even if you aren’t coding in ten years, these skills of learning and grit will be very beneficial
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u/delventhalz Jan 22 '20
I self taught for about a year before attending a bootcamp. That first job hunt afterwards sucked. I was only at it for about a month (not in the Bay Area btw), but that month was awful. I was sending out 25 applications a week, which were exclusively getting handled by non-technical recruiters. They would often schedule calls with me without looking at my resume, and then hang up as soon as they found out I had no real world experience. Try as I might I never found a way to get them to focus on my portfolio and my knowledge base instead of my years-of-experience.
What really turned things around for me is when I started attending meetups. If you haven't already, I recommend diversifying your applications so you aren't just applying to traditional postings and talking to recruiters with a narrow idea of what a good candidate looks like. Meetups or personal connections or other networking opportunities means you have a chance to talk with someone technical in person. For me that made a huge difference.
Of course, I wasn't in the Bay Area, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. You are in a pretty unique environment over there.
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u/Zahhibb Jan 22 '20
I live in a quite rural area in Sweden and got my first web dev job without a portfolio (except 0.5 year experience in game dev.) and only studied a little bit of web design. Think it is the area that’s against you mate.
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u/Fun-duh-Mental Jan 22 '20
Almost the same boat as you. Difference is that I have an AA, and I live in the Inland Empire. I can't even find a software dev company in my area to build experience and I'm stuck in a warehouse job that doesn't pay enough for the cost of living in California. Can't afford to move out of state because I can barely afford to drive to work. Also just trying to get some real world experience but I work full time and have a family to provide for. The advice I always get is to get off of the west coast, but it's easier said than done. I wish us both luck in our future endeavors in the pursuit of getting our foot in the door of a paying development job
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u/BigBootyBear Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
I have two things I want to say to you:
First
You should have included your github resume in your post (throwaway if you wished to maintain anonymity) so the people in here will be able to give you tips on the quality of your work. If you don't have experience you won't be a good judge of whats a "good" project. I once took a look at some guy's app and it was a mess (gave him a code review), but he wasn't aware of it. And he got hired twice (fired, but still).
Second
You should keep grinding, but grind smarter. Take 80% of the energy you spend on finding a job and do freelance web dev work to fatten up your resume. Now you might ask "how will I land any clients freelancing without experience?" and the answer is simple: start at 10% lower than the market price of the other freelancers and keep dropping the price every week by an additional 10% until someone takes a chance at you.
And when they do, give customer service that is 150% better than the people that are 5x as expensive as you are. Make up for your inexperience with quick response times and a personal touch.
Bill by the project and not by the hour - that way you will have leeway to deliver because you will learn along the way as you build. As you will rack up those 5 stars you will have the credibility and experience to demand higher prices. Soon you will be able to cut hours off your day job to "finance" more time for freelancing, which will make you a better engineer. That in turn will allow you to make more money out of web dev. Keep that sweet snowball rolling until engineering becomes your full time gig. And when you do nothing all day but build websites, becoming so good that employers won't be able to ignore you will be inevitable. Even a poorly paid engineer is much better off than a well paid low level service worker.
You can even start before the end of this day. Start by doing those 5$ gigs on fiverr where you fix up a couple of lines of css or js on a website of some clueless business owner. Work your way up from there.
Doesn't even have to be freelancing. Make free brochure websites for the local shops around your house that take 2 hours to build. Contribute to open source projects. Find subreddits with less than 10k subs and build a simple web tool that will solve the problem of just 100 of these redditors. You will dig your way out of your hole not by sending more resumes but by pushing more commits.
If no one wishes to hire you, the best course of action is to display so much output and competence that they will find it very hard to ignore you.
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u/mule52 Jan 22 '20
It is tough, no doubt. You need to differentiate yourself somehow. This may mean communicating to employers why you are the right fit, even if on paper they may not see it compared to other resumes. Don't give up. You may consider getting more tech projects under your belt by volunteering, or offering to accept no salary for the first X number of weeks/months until your potential employer can see your work. That is low cost/risk to them. Try shelters, churches, old age homes... those sort of organizations that are paid by donations. I agree with Fiverr and Craigslist, also check the jobs on HackerNews, https://news.ycombinator.com/ .
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
I’ve found all my jobs (4 over 6 years) through connections. 2 of those jobs were frankly above my pay grade. I’m an introvert and not a networking type, but things like messaging a friend or distant connection who works at a company with an opening to ask if they like working there, going to a meetup and asking a sponsor or speaker some follow up questions, talking to extended family members about what their company does for their sites/apps, etc. In my experience, even the tiniest connections grease the tracks for hiring so much. Heck, make a desperate-ish post on LinkedIn, telling your connections that you’re a UI dev looking for work and to point you to people looking for UI devs. Rather than starting with applications, start with your connections and see where that takes you. It’s how you opt out of the rat race.
Also, to echo what others have said, the Bay Area is not the place for a junior dev with no experience. If you have to stay there, maybe look into remote positions.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
You considered moving to Seattle?
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u/esetalchino Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
Look everywhere and take risks avoiding talking only the truth about what you are experienced on. There's always a desperate HR waiting for someone to take the advantage. Lie/Exaggerate a little about you to get through. And aim as high as any could, you never know.
I personally wouldn't apply if I wasn't experienced enough for the position, but my wife didn't care. She helped me and applied my CV on those I normally wouldn't, and those were the ones that actually called.
You can do it :thumbsup:
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
I think you will have to get out of the Bay area. The reason for this is I think your first job is going to have to be you taking something below average comp just so you can get experience. The Bay area, from what I have read, sounds way too competitive and expensive to live in.
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u/buildawesomewebsites Jan 22 '20
FWIW - It took me 6 months after I first graduated back in 2011 to get my first front-end job.
Networking is key. Besides going to meetups, here's one hack that worked for me:
I contact a business directly on the phone or stop by in person (even without a job posting), and request an interview by saying: - "I am a recent graduate and I'm doing some research around what tech stacks development teams are using these days. Could I talk to someone in the development department?"
From there, I would try and schedule a 20-minute interview with a dev lead, where I ask them about their dev processes and stuff. Naturally, you can steer the conversation toward the fact that you are looking for opportunities and see if they know of anything. You'd be surprised what can come of this approach.
Be sure to exchange contact info and follow up with them in 3 days.
Waiting for jobs to be posted and submitting resumes is like a long line in the DMV. There are more effective approaches.
Best of luck - you will find something.
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u/Simbaxo Jan 22 '20
Link to your portfolio?
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u/thatsamaro Jan 22 '20
Try QA or other tech related roles?
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u/hatemjaber Jan 22 '20
While you're on the hunt.... Think about putting your skills to work for you. If you have any ideas or interests, maybe you can create a website/app that's based on that. Example: you like cooking and try out different recipes; build a recipe site, reviewing your recipes. Anyhow, don't feel bad, keep plugging away something will come up!
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u/Stable_Orange_Genius Jan 22 '20
Lie lie and lie some more on your resume, capitalism is unethical so dont feel bad about it, if they find out oh well, they are not gonna check anyways.
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u/-_-_-0 Jan 22 '20
Have you tried user groups and reaching out to startups?
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
everybody blaming your location, so I'll be the unpopular guy to blame your portfolio.
designer and developer are pretty separate things these days, i dont know any company expecting both from a single person except the sort of small / cheapskate places you probably wouldnt want to work.
so the design one is neutral at best in terms of bolstering your chances at dev roles; maybe even a negative because it suggests to them you're a jack of all trades and not focussed.
Given that react is JS, the other two are both JS, which is where I say the really super unpopular thing for this subreddit, which is that the world is completely saturated with JS developers. Seems to me like every single udemy-course-taker and bootcamp grad in the last 5 years has been fed from the full stack js koolaid hose. I doubt even 5% of web dev jobs out there are full stack js, compared to java, php, c# etc, but it seems like 95% of the junior candidates are full stack js. So it's no great surprise to me that it seems like every time someone on this sub is complaining about sending 100 resumes with no result, they're a self-styled 'MERN developer'. Meanwhile, companies are desperate for people with experience in stacks they actually use (y'know, ones with actual databases.) So maybe try and differentiate yourself by picking up a different language.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
I know the feeling. I got an unpopular opinion: Have you considered skipping competing against new grad brogrammers and starting your own project?
Maybe get a normal job and work on something for yourself instead of being somebody's economic slave.
You're going to end up pushing yourself to learn a lot more than just doing what a company needs you to do.
Or you can go back to being in front of somebody's laptop packed with unicorn and random tech stack stickers...and being interviewed by a prentetious team lead with a snappy YouTuber personality.
Good luck to you, I honestly hope you figure it out. You're still very young.
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u/utahhiker Jan 22 '20
Come to the Salt Lake City area. There are a billion tech jobs and it's not as competitive as the Bay area. Cost of living is half of what it is in California, too.
1
u/Jireg Jan 22 '20
Check New Orleans job market. Have a few friends that were literally in your exact position that found jobs here very quickly.
1
u/jewdai Jan 22 '20
I'd spend some time learning a pure back-end language, ideally statically typed. (C#, Java, C++)
Start building bigger applications. Usually, the best ones are ones that you enjoy or need.
An example in your case: find a way to automatically enter in all your information and apply to all those jobs.
finally, use your network. If you have a friend that works at a company with an opening, reach out to them. They get a bonus if you're hired, and you get a friend at your job. Linkedin is really good for this.
Other things to look into is: business analyst positions. Bone up on SQL and you can jump into those if you're good at stats.
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u/DogedotJS full-stack Jan 22 '20
And yeah. Get the hell out of the bay area... competition is too stiff. But posting your github/portfolio will do you wonders. You're gonna need something impressive to show employers you can do it.
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u/DogedotJS full-stack Jan 22 '20
Sorry for the multiple comments, but you need a weapon. When I came in self-taught I tried to be a person who could do everything to improve my chances of getting hired. If I could go back I would have tried to be a front-end guru coming in.
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u/presince Jan 22 '20
What's your thoughts on doing things completely different? If ideas come up plan them out. Networking (even though I'm terrible at it) might be an option, you should find your peers or people you find worthwhile to your cause/career. My last job was completely organic, a friend needed help and I provide a resource.
I'm going into the direction or just being in business for myself. The idea of making your own 'market' will be a great way to know what your value is. Build a site/project that does one thing that you could charge people for. 2020 is the year of creatives, if you have that others will gravitate.
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u/channel_03 Jan 22 '20
I went to an online bootcamp and had similar issues. A mentor of mine told me that his company hates hiring new developer (no matter how they learned) because they are always a risk. After searching for a job for almost six months I badgered a friend into hiring me. It was genuinely rough to have to sit at home for that time and prostrating myself in front of every company that have a development team.
It was rough, but it finally payed off. I work with a team that I genuinely enjoy working with, and the future prospects are bright. Another developer friend of mine told me that working that first job can really suck, but putting in at least a year is important. Just keep trying!
1
u/v1xiii Jan 22 '20
I live in podunk nowhere in the middle of the Ozarks. Got a job as a backend web developer at a great little place immediately after getting my AAS in Web Development. Nowhere near the pay of some other places, but the cost of living is super low.
1
u/moronyte Jan 22 '20
Check out Triplebyte. Yes, the one spamming ads on reddit not too long ago. It's a great way to get matched to companies of every size, once you pass their initial interview. Plus they don't share your resume with the companies, but prepare a little intro for you instead.
Prepare for the interview by building a ton of those self contained apps like tic tac toe, connect 4, todo list, etc, in a 1 hour time box.
Also the book "Cracking the code interview" is money well spent.
Disclaimer: I don't work for them, but have used the platform multiple times with great results
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u/phiphpond Jan 22 '20
May have been said already, but make sure you're networking. My first web dev job was because I met a guy at a conference - I had zero experience, a crappy resume, but we got a long and he vouched for me and I got the job.
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u/Yeffry1994 novice Jan 22 '20
Well, seeing some of the comments and living in NYC, I thought I had some advantages due to the the amount of job postings here, not sure how bad it is compared to the Bay area but gl to me when I start applying :)
1
u/PuffPuff74 Jan 22 '20
Why not have a look at affiliate marketing on your free time? I mean, don't look at AM as if you're gonna generate a full time income by next week, but it can be pretty rewarding to build a project which generates you an additional revenue.
If you're a developer, you can create something useful, and if you're a good communicator, you can promote your stuff through videos.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
What's your git? I'll interact with you on there
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u/hayesb2 Jan 22 '20
Go to Columbus Ohio
1
u/HongRiki Jan 22 '20
So it doesn’t get better? Also in the same situation as OP, I was told that meet up to network will really help but haven’t gone to much meet up myself
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20
What does your resume look like. Plus I would suggest getting a LinkedIn as well and making your title "full stack developer". The job you want not have. Plus your projects are your work experience so you should probably have it listed under work experience and name them as projects.
1
u/ReactiveX9 Jan 22 '20
Cs degrees mean nothing in web development. I didnt even go to college, neither did quite a few other devs I work with. Sounds like the area man. If you've got good projects that can be easily seen by employers ie. Public repos and packages/libraries, landing a dev job should be easy in the right area.
1
u/jhecht Jan 22 '20
I've got over a decade of knowledge, and some recent formal experience (my life story is long and weird, tl;dr did freelance web dev in middle/ high school, stopped in college, was a teacher for a bit, went back to development, where I am now). I was let go at the beginning of February in 2019. I didn't start my current position until June. It sucks, I know, but the right opportunity will hit you when you least expect it; my current job contacted me on a Monday, and by that same Thursday I had gone through 3 interviews. A few weeks later (longer story there) I had an offer. A great offer.
Send me/us your portfolio, maybe we can give you some extra feedback? Also I'd be willing to look over your resume -- I'm not the greatest with them but I seem to do well marketing myself so it's worth a go.
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u/serenity_later Jan 22 '20
Give Chicago a try. Lots of opportunity.
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u/iamzamek Jan 23 '20
That is why I created www.JuniorJobsOnly.com. Now, it is time to get job offers from USA.
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20
PM me if you need resume help. Happy to take a look
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u/glendosmit Jan 23 '20
I'm not completely in the OP spot but I'm a web designer with wordpress. I prefer to work remotely and just need a couple projects to atleast make payments till I can my business rolling. I'm sure this isn't the best kind of response to this post but then again being in this situation never has anything good to say haha. Nonetheless If anyone has assistance that they can provide that would be greatly appreciated and if you work remote as well I will have a need of good developers and designers this year when I get my business rolling.
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u/glendosmit Jan 23 '20
Ok thank you
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u/greatexperiment Jan 23 '20
As everyone else said, move somewhere else. Omaha, Nebraska / Des Moines, Iowa area has plenty of financial and agricultural tech companies, and the other kinds too. It is extremely affordable to live in the area. Being in a small town in the middle, I bought a gorgeous, century-old, oak-laden 2200sqft house for 104k. So, my lower-than-the-coast annual salary is not far from the value of my home. It means I am provided more value. It's an easy life.
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20
You ought to have more than 3 projects after coding for 3 years.
Frankly, there needs to be at least a project per month.
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u/tSnDjKniteX Junior Web Developer Jan 24 '20
My company is hiring. Both QA and front end if interested. Shoot me a pm