Hey thanks for the reply!
I actually have a weird background because my father was a software engineer growing up and I did a tech class in middle school where I wrote HTML code for the school website. Only that was in the year 2002. After trying other stuff I got back into coding two years ago when a friend recommended me a course on Udemy. I’ve used that, FreeCodeCamp, and a few other online resources to learn the basics and code some projects from scratch for myself.
My problem now has been turning personal coding projects into a business. The area of California where I live (the Central Valley) is unfortunately not got the tech opportunities that the bay area would. I have tried selling myself for cheap to get experience through friends and it hasn’t worked. I contacted a Chef I know in the area about making him a website for his new catering service and got no response. I’ve looked at online listings for jobs on sites like glassdoor, ziprecruiter, and indeed, but none of them are entry level or in my area save one, and they turned me down. I checked remoteok and weworkremotely but everything is intimidating and seems out of my league. I decided I would start a profile on fiverr and upworthy but I only just completed that. I went to a meetup in my area and someone told me to learn Wordpress if I want to get hired. So my current big ticket items at this point are:
- How can I get someone to give me my first shot? What am I doing wrong when I try to find someone who will actually pay me?
- I’m worried about delivering code to a customer. I can make local projects but how do I deploy for someone else? Will my code be rejected if it isn’t 100% compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc. How much do these differences matter?
- How do I decide what libraries, frameworks, etc. to pursue? When I started I just wanted to make sure I understood and could use vanilla JavaScript but every job I see wants experience in something different: React, Angular, Meteorjs, Ember…the list is daunting.
- I have heard contributing to open source projects is a good idea but all of the sites like Up For Grabs, aggregations on Git Hub, etc. are full of huge complex projects that I can’t grasp and have no idea how to contribute to. Are these worth my time now or should I do this later?
Thanks again for any help you can provide.
Reply
Let me quickly address some of these questions, Rex.
Job boards aren’t really the best way to get work. It’s about forming relationships and solving problems. Most gigs don’t ever hit the job boards, and the people who get hired for them are the people who already have relationships. I can elaborate on how to get started with this in our session. It’s a long tail, so you’ll have to commit to it and be able to start building relationships well before it actually pays off. If you’re cool with that, you’ll do fine.
You should probably try deploying some of your existing projects so you can figure this process out. Deploying isn’t the fun part, so people often skip it when they’re learning, but you can’t actually deliver anything unless you do it. See if you can take each of the projects you’ve built and deploy them somewhere. Maybe even try deploying them to different places just to get a feel for what’s available.
If you’re looking for a front-end framework, you couldn’t go wrong with Angular, React, or Vue. Which one you want depends on your goals. If you want to get a job, maybe Angular has slightly more opportunity although React is probably more popular in the startup space. If you want to be independent, you can try them out and pick whichever you like the best. At the end of the day, once you learn one, it’s pretty easy to pick up the other. I’ve done work in the three major frameworks, Backbone, and some stuff that’s just in vanilla JS. This isn’t as big a decision as it might seem since you can adapt.
I wrote an article about contributing to open source projects that would help you.
Hope this helps. Thanks, Rex. Have a great weekend!
Reply on Map article
Thanks for the info! I have run into map before on freecodecamp, and although I completed the lessons on it I feel like I did not fully grasp it at the time, so thank you for this.
Today I finished the first draft of my contract in looking at your list of suggested things to do. In doing so I also came up with a quick question I had if you have time to answer it:
- As i prepare for an inevitable first gig, a lot of activities such as opening a bank account and getting insurance seem to somewhat assume that I have a business and it is already working (i.e you are already dealing with clients and making money). I suspect this will be a topic for our free consultation, but should I really set all of these things up without having any work knowing that I have very low capital right now?
Topics to cover
-I was approached by a friend about a project that seems too big and complicated for me at this point, what would be your advice on handling it?
-A few business owners have suggested a business name/brand as being important. your thoughts?
-I need to target a specific audience to sell to, and I have ideas but need help on how to decide on a theme/target.
-General tips on networking effectively
-Getting my first job!
-Doing business related tasks on a budget.
-How to practice skills effectively
-Some questions on deployment/showing checkpoints to clients while working
-How far must I go into cross-browser compatibility, and accessibility (use of tags like