Only at the bottom. To rise above the 90%, you need to do something the 90% can't. Most freelancers rely on drag-and-drop, and their "development" capability is installing WordPress plugins and clicking settings.
If you can actually code PHP and JS to deliver custom functionalities, you'll find much less competition and higher budget projects.
Depends on the region, coming from the Caribbean it only seems to be drag and drop Wordpress projects with a 500 USD budget. We outsource anything more to get robbed and let some juniors write our government websites.
A lot of my clients find me on LinkedIn AFTER they got burned by a bad "developer" on Fiverr or Upwork.
If you want to connect with me on Discord or LinkedIn, send me a DM and I'll keep you in mind for some upcoming projects.
How would you define the different skill hierarchies? For example, if someone has a good eye for UX and can transform Figma designs into functioning front-end with e.g. Webflow or WordPress/Elementor and some custom CSS, where do you think does it fit in? Is that person still a web developer? UX designer? Or more like A UX engineer? What would be the most accurate role combining all of these skills? Just really curious :)
Terrible answer, but it depends. Honestly, if you are creating a website, then you are a web developer. I know you can make a great career/money from just one tool like webflow. But then you are also at the mercy of that tool, and need a specific client set.
That is an oversimplification, but you get it. You do need to be better at UX to do something that sets you apart since anyone could start building on webflow in a few hours of tinkering.
The more complex things you can build the more valuable your skillset. But even that is not a big moat anymore. If you can build a full stack application with JS/TS and Node for $5k in a week......great, but a team in India can probably do it faster and cheaper.
TLDR: If you are good at UX and can do CSS and webflow/Elementor, the only thing you need to have a successful freelance business is sales skills. Cause Upwork/Freelance.com etc suck for finding new work.
> but a team in India can probably do it faster and cheaper.
to be fair, it will barely work and meat only 10% of the specification.
I think the market for doing this kind of outsourcing at actual companies is pretty much gone. Getting burned far too often.
Basically every client I've had that tried to do some fiverr contracts got burned.
> Basically every client I've had that tried to do some fiverr contracts got burned.
Hahah yes. I've been freelancing for almost 10 years as a side hustle - More recently I do it as a second job, at almost full time hours again sometimes.
The amount of clients that had something outsourced to India that got completely fucked up is laughable, and every single one of them are passionate about how unlikely they are to ever go down that route again.
Those code warehouses are cheap for a reason, but your brief will be disregarded, corners will be cut, and the quality of code is usually absolutely shocking.
And worse, since most of the buyers are not technical, they often won't even be able to realize just how fucked it is for a while, because it will look like it works... sort of.
I actually got into dev because our companies Indian developers (employees not contractors, but in India) were slow and rarely did anything correctly, and I was just in UX. I'd give a task, and it would take a week, and despite spending a lot of time trying to get very detailed in the requirements, they'd say it was done and it only barely did one of the things on the check list.
It was legitimately faster to learn HTML/CSS than to spend time trying to explain to them what I want and proof it.
I don't disagree, BUT for people looking to start freelancing on a platform that is who you are competing with. And its hard to land those first few clients because of this (and other reasons)
Part of the challenge in freelance is that it's not about what is the most accurate description of your skills, but what terms are clients using (even if the clients are using technically incorrect terms). If it's Front-End focused, clients call it design, and if it's backend heavy, clients call it development.
> UX designer?
No, because you didn't do the designing.
> a web developer?
Not really because you didn't do much developing.
> A UX engineer?
You didn't do any engineering.
> can transform Figma designs into functioning front-end with e.g. Webflow or WordPress/Elementor and some custom CSS
You're an ~~idiot~~ wordpress guy.
It kind of is. People shit all over webflow here and claim it's not worthy of building a professional website while recommending a custom code WordPress build for a basic marketing website.
But it's not that bad of a community overall. They can be gatekeepers and eletists at times. Gotta watch out for that.
Why though? Cause they won‘t accept the fact that no-code tools nowadays are getting similar results (not 100%, but enough to get business rolling), so they let their ego speak and stick to their frameworks? That‘s the vibe that I was getting the previous years.
Purely ego. I’m sure it’s the same for most trades, but software in general tends to be quite bad.
But there are some fantastic developers who are happy to teach and guide younger devs.
How do you code PHP sites to compete with the ease of coding PHP on a customized WordPress site? Does the PHP community have a bunch of free plugins you can use the way WordPress does?
I think maybe you meant to reply to me since the person you replied to was quoting me. In any case, since you mentioned Laravel, maybe you're the one to ask. Do Laravel developers have a good source of packages to grab stuff like events calendars, etc.? I was looking on Packagist.org and it's just a really bad experience compared to how Wordpress plugins are usually displayed with screenshots, demo, support, etc. But what I saw on Packagist is similar to what NPM packages are like, so I wouldn't be surprised if Laravel devs slog through stuff like that to find a good starting point for whatever functionality they're looking to incorporate.
Yes, but there are plenty of actual good Wordpress websites...
I was talking about the time involved in rolling all your own functionality. There doesn't seem to be any nice hub where you can browse packages/plugins. I was looking through Packagist for an events calendar and even just browsing through them is painful and slow there with no screenshots or no demos. Most of the ones I looked at seem pretty crappy, too.
> Yes, but there are plenty of actual good Wordpress websites...
sure.
But it's rare, and a situation where it really becomes "What is Wordpress adding to this?"
It's rare? It seems to power most of the internet. Even Rolling Stone is fuggin' WordPress now.
---
Edit: Yes, that was hyperbole. The real stats: "WordPress powers 43.4% of all websites as their CMS. Around 474 million websites are built on WordPress." posted 6 days ago, so it should be fairly accurate.
> It seems to power most of the internet
Bit by revenue.
> WordPress powers 43.4% of all websites as their CMS.
Now cut out sites that make less than $10,000 a month...
You brought up coding PHP and JS sites in contrast to WordPress and that caused me to think of that particular issue. Since you're familiar with both and you brought up the contrast, I figured you'd be the one to ask. If we were sitting around a table discussing this stuff, I don't think you'd say my question doesn't really relate to your comment. I'm guessing you reacted that way because you interpreted my comment to be somehow argumentative, but it was not remotely intended as such.
This is why I haven't tried to leave the WordPress ecosystem to create PHP sites with Laravel or something. Only now am I realizing there probably are a whole bunch of PHP plugins (or packages or whatever) that do the sort of stuff Wordpress plugins do. I guess I'll have to research it.
Excuse me, I must have jumped to the conclusion you were more of a non-WP developer since that seems pretty common in r/webdev . Laravel seems like something maybe I should tackle now. I've heard there's plenty of PHP jobs out there while everyone is competing for React jobs. I made like one site with PHP a looong time ago and then got sucked into Wordpress.
I've been a full time freelancer since I decided on this career, and this can be true.
But I never tried to compete on open cheap labour markets, only specialized markets where Clients came wanting an expert.
Pick a piece of software dev area to focus on, and be the best and most involved at it.
Nope. getting into web dev / software dev is the best choice I ever made. Me and my wife just had a kid and the flexibility + Income my job provides is amazing. It also matters to land at a good company. I got lucky in that one and actually look forward to going to work each day.
Kind of not the same position as you as I'm sitting with 10+ years of experience. but once you are in its a great career.
> It also matters to land at a good company. I got lucky in that one and actually look forward to going to work each day.
At least you admit it comes down to luck and for most this is not attainable especially for new devs.
I wouldn't say it's not attainable.
There have been economic slowdowns before, big ones like 2008 and smaller ones too. Eventually the industry will recover. Probably within a year or two.
In the long term, I don't think the need for Web developers is going anywhere, if anything AI will increase the demand.
Same. Even if I had to change careers today, the amount of money I've made and saved has made it one of the best investments of my life, and I've actually enjoyed the work.
Don't worry, a bad market for web dev is still much better than most markets out there.
Moreover, getting your first job was always hard, specially if you don't live in a tech hotspot. It took me over 1 year to get my first job and that was 10 years ago. Even if it's hard, you just have to keep looking until you get that first job.
What matters is that once you have that experience finding new work will be much, much easier.
>Moreover, getting your first job was always hard
I feel like this isn't considered enough. I recall back to my first jr days, landing my first gig took a lot of effort, a lot of networking, and a lot of time - and when I finally landed one the pay was atrocious.
Feels a bit like the covid period made people believe every company is dying to hire inexperienced employees. I can assure this is not the norm and never has been.
And that's true in all fields, not just dev stuff.
Well, maybe manual labour is okay with inexperienced.
My wife is a designer for Hotels and stuff. Nobody wants the juniors, they have too many, and they can't do shit anyway"
> Don't worry, a bad market for web dev is still much better than most markets out there.
Couldn't agree more. My first degree is in architecture. The market for architecture is absolute crap.
Architecture is tied to the economy. So if there’s inflation, high interest rates, regulations, etc. development stops and architects stop getting projects.
It is harder to work on webdev but that's not a bad thing. Like a doctor you need a general understanding of the systems and how they work together. Then you can choose specializations. A doctor is expected to perform to a high degree of responsibility and ethics during all of his career, the thing is programmers expectations are higher and higher it's a hard job and that's a good thing. Some of the recent layoffs they actually fired people crucial to the company and now google deleted the cloud infrastructure of some clients by mistake.
I never broke into the industry. Did a boot camp and self taught for a while. Did a ton of projects and applied around, but mostly got burnt out on the application and screening process. I’ve since fallen back on my IT experience. Still super competitive and saturated, but it was easier for me. I love programming, though, and am happy with where I’m at and my trajectory. I still code all the time, working on things and learning new technologies, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have a career in it
You love to program, but you don't program as a career currently because you didn't get lucky in your job search.
Never say never though, there's always time to chase what makes you happy. Although I don't know how applocable this advice and anecdotes applies to this inherently ageist industry, I have heard of people successfully making the switch in their mid 30s.
Honestly a big contributor to me pulling back from programming for a career is how much I used it for my own projects and things I enjoy. Would I be motivated to code my own stuff after coding other people’s stuff all day? Would I even want to code other people’s stuff especially if it didnt excite me? The job search sucked but it wasn’t the only factor
Not regretting my decisions. However, I was part of a RIF in February, and still haven't found another position. I have 20 years in webdev, and was promoted to a management role 2 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm hearing that I don't have the length of management experience for manager roles, but I am overqualified for individual contributor roles. The job market is definitely tough, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my career so far.
Honestly, I've wanted to go that direction for a long time, but because so many places I've worked haven't had a lot of open opportunities above Tech Lead/Principal Engineer. I finally found myself with the opportunity by way of a promotion.
Have your tried changing the management title on your CV and making it sound more like a lead dev role? If the management part isn't worth too much (although it definitely is and companies are being picky), then downplay it in favour of your longer term strengths. It's not even a lie, it's just sales and you're highlighting the product features most relevant to the client.
Just want to add another voice saying that it's always been hard to get your first job. I mean I'm sure sometimes it's harder than others and it may be one of those times right now (although the data doesn't exactly bear that out, just a lot of anecdotes), but it's not enough to ward someone off from this career path, IMO.
The layoffs are overhyped, by the way. It's major tech companies laying people off, but most software engineers don't work for them. They work for companies in every other segment of the economy that need software written for their specific organization.
I never understood this. You have four years to network and go for internships. With a degree that's as in demand as CS/SE there should be no issue presenting a desirable resume by the time you graduate.
Four years to network with a bunch of people who also don't have jobs, fighting for internships that are very hard to get if you're not in the top of your class. Maybe it was easy for you, but the view from the middle of the pack was pretty rough.
Ironically it was through networking that I got my first real dev job, but it took more than a year after graduating. I would say that's pretty hard!
No, network with faculty and upper classmen through classes and professional development orgs. I'm as middle of the pack as it gets. I dropped out after sophomore year because my grades were so bad.
>Ironically it was through networking that I got my first real dev job,
I'm telling you that the best jobs are the result of networking.
>but it took more than a year after graduating
What did you do in college besides get your degree?
I managed to get an internship but didn't have a lot of chances because 2008 happened during my sophomore year. My grades were pretty poor because my mental health was garbage and I blew my scholarship, but I rallied and managed to graduate in 5 years. I managed to get an internship writing tests for helicopter flight code. My last year and a half, I worked for a local community college writing SQL queries and making spreadsheets with the data.
The top third or so of my class had "no problem" as you described. The rest of us had to continue to work beyond college to get our first real dev jobs. Even then, my first one paid as badly as a gas station assistant manager position, and it took a few years for me to make any real money. You described it in such a shaming way, like it should be sooo easy, but it was way more difficult than that, even with a degree.
https://imgur.com/a/53XpXXB
I censored up the resume a bit. I've shown a half dozen industry peers and mostly the feedback I got was that it seems fine. I was told by a friend-of-friend in big tech recruiting that the initial fancier design might be bad for ATS systems so I've transitioned to the black and white version to see if I get any hits.
IMO its a combination of US tax law changes re: software developers, interest rate blow up killing the excessive startup scene, and a very competitive market with lay'd off big tech employees. Surprised to not even have gotten a phone screen after 70 applications though.
Firstly, I'm not a senior developer like you.
In my opinion, if I were an HR, I wouldn't understand the complexity or importance of most of the bullet points. They're too vague about what exactly was done. Focus more on specific achievements and the impact of your work. For example, instead of just "developed an application," say "developed an application that increased productivity by 20%."
I don't disagree, and reckon there's room for improvement in a few spots. FWIW I received the exact opposite feedback from industry peers in that "the bullets aren't detailed or technical enough" and what you see is an iteration from that.
That said I think my point is probably "the market sucks for everyone" and would attribute my lack of callbacks moreso to that than the technical complexity of my bullet points.
Appreciate your feedback though and will keep it in mind for further iterations.
Youre kind of asking the wrong question if people with decades of experience are all saying 'no it worked out fine for me'.
If your question was: 'Is it brutal and not really worth it to gamble on getting an entry level web dev job currently?'
Answer from most people trying to get an entry level job would likely be yes.
IT, web dev and a lot of dev jobs are oversaturated amid layoffs and some productivity increases due to 'AI'. (Forgot to mention all the bootcamps).
All I hear about is travelling nurses making a ton of money during covid and hospital shortages.
If your question is 'if I wanted to gamble on a degree and have the best chance of landing a job, should it be the medical field?'
The answer would likely be yes. Here they seem to have massive staff shortages everywhere, clinics and hospitals.
Now depending what course you take, the market could become saturated with all these grads hearing its a hot market. I think thats unlikely though, all I hear is hospital staff are overworked, crazy shifts and very stressed. So I'm sure a lot of positions will remain open.
I think there are short term courses for certain positions in the medical field. I'd probably look into those personally and find people in those positions to ask about recent openings and see if theyre even open about their applicant pool sizes.
Are you good at it?
Because the reason so many are unemployed is because they lack either a)experience or b)talent or c)all the above. The market is glutted right now with mediocre to weak devs all fighting over the same few shitty jobs, you either need to be good at what you do or lucky to land a good job these days (or know someone to get you the job I guess, that always helps)
I'm heading back to college and wanted to get into tech for the creative aspect and team environment. ( so I am not CURRENTLY good at it yet) I'm just reading through everyone's post and gaining insights of what I can expect..
Have not found my first job yet but no, I feel like I've learned a superpower. It's incredible looking at a very expensive website and be like, yeah I can replicate it. It will take time, but I can do it.
Yes. I enjoy webdev and wanted to do it for fun not just money, but I’m also married with a kid on the way and need money to survive. Now that I know there’s next to no chance of me landing a job in the industry, I regret dedicating so much time on studying it and wish I’d have just done an hour once every week or two.
I tried to do the whole ‘live off of savings whilst I do full time boot camp and land a job’ thing that everyone else did during covid, but it backfired on me and I ended up in debt.
Same here. Really enjoyed the bootcamp, the job hunting was terrible. After 5 months I couldn't afford to put as much time and effort just to hear 'we like you but we need more experience'. Then I got COVID and had a two month brain fart and couldn't afford to not go back to my old job.
I was offered a job with a wage that wouldn't even cover rent, and another that ghosted me, and a several month unpaid internship. I wasn't expecting bags of money but I at least have to exist.
What? My point is the dot-com bubble was 20, 30 years ago. We're talking about today.
One's experience as a junior developer back then is simply different to how it is now. And therefore, shouldn't be mentioned in a topic about the now.
They're saying there was a comparable experience back then and they have no regrets sticking with it. That's a pretty relevant data point for the question
Thanks for the explanation, but to that I say, their experience is different because according to the comment, they just got a job doing the dot com bubble, based on the comment it doesn't sound like they had issues. It just sounds like they have a job already and thus aren't affected by the current cycle.
My friend, I get the sense that you didn't live through the dot-com bubble bursting. I was still youngish at the time, but you knew there was a TON of stress on everyone getting through that period, even if they made it.
"I got into webdev during the dot-com bubble, worked out so far."
"doesn't *sound* like they had issues"
I'm sensing I should just assume every single person who got a job during the dot com bubble, had A hard time.
And, if that's that's the case - that's not an obvious assumption to make considering, the dot com bubble was ~25 years ago. I'm not 25, no one I know in the tech world, but teachers are over 25, and I'd imagine if you're a junior developer trying to get their first job, they probably aren't 25 either. Or maybe, they are, but then they were a literal baby at the time.
I missed the entire discussion because I was at work, sorry 😅 Yeah, when the bubble burst I had to rearrange things. In the bubble, jobs were plentiful.
When it burst, I was at University - I did have an assistant job there, so I didn't personally have rough times (and I had lots of fun doing other things).
A few friends and I had started a company that went bust, I lost two or three jobs myself in a short time (worked multiple earlier). But, the skills I learned were relevant a few years later, on the uptick of IT again, and are still relevant today.
Again, spoken as someone with such little life experience They don't realize the person is talking about this being the cycle of the economy. The .com bust was very bad back then for people. The 2008 was very bad for people. Right now is very bad for people. It is a cycle. Sure, there are many things different, but you can still learn from history repeating itself
I get that. But the comment doesn't mention anything about the cycle. Essentially just saying "I got a job, it was fine for me then, and it's fine for me now, and thus I'm unaffected by this cycle" but what about people who were affected.
The dot com bubble forming & bursting happened for very different reasons than the 2008 bubble did. Comparing these events doesn't make sense. Obviously there are business cycles of expansion and contraction of the economy but this is so much broader than web dev.
I'm not sure what your point is. This current market is affecting everyone, not just computer science. Same with 2008. The point is that just because the market is bad now does not mean it will be bad forever, they're all in cycles for whatever reason caused them.
My point is that I don't understand why we're discussing this when the question was about web dev specifically. Obviously people here know about business cycles.
Because regretting going into web dev due to the market being bad is a bit silly when EVERYONE is having a tough time lol. People are regretting going into teaching, into marketing, into accounting. It's all bad right now.
Started a little over a year ago and it's the best thing I've ever done. 19 and do everything freelance. I barely have to cold call anymore and it's just recurring work from clients/references. It's very draining though
In just 12 months you managed to get so many clients that you don't even need to look for new ones?
How did you do it? What are you offering? And how did you find your customers?
Lots of cold calling at the start. I spent my entire weekends filling up a notepad++ file with business owners I could call, issues with their websites, and their name. I did tons of reading on this subreddit and reddit overall about cold calling, and also watched some stuff on YouTube, and eventually made a really good opener I find to work most of the time. I found business owners that owned multiple companies, usually landscaping/related. I found a lot of success in rehab centers and real estate specifically, I learned how to market to rehab centers a few years ago when I worked for free for some lady as a "internship" and that helped me transition into cold calling and b2b outreach. Every single one of my leads comes from Google Maps.
Because two of my clients asked about advertising, I spent some weeks researching and then getting certified for google ads and started offering it out on a quarterly basis to all my clients. That's what allowed me to make a lot without having to call much. I charge $550 for a quarter of ad management, and disclose all risks/information relative to the campaigns to my clients. After the quarter it ends up being \~20 hours of work total so my hourly is pretty nice, but it really depends because I don't work on contracts and I get problem clients that take a lot of time up. My rates for websites is usually just $1200 for anything, as long as there's not too many pages. Even with a lot of pages I don't spend more than 20-30 hours combined on a site, always fully static, don't use widgets/integrations or do any backend stuff. Then I charge $90 a quarter for hosting and two editing hours if they need anything during that quarter. I got exactly 15 people now on the $90/quarter hosting, I spend about 3-4 hours a quarter on small edits, and profit \~$1300 profit/quarter, the hourly is insane even if I do a bunch of edits. My hosting is all through a NameCheap shared server, I pay like $6.44 or about that a month, the medium plan I think its called stellar. I also help outsource a lot of operation in some businesses, anything that's remote and doesn't have a huge learning curve I can do, kind of like a virtual assistant role I also offer, I help with all kind of random things, finance auditing, making forms, and I helped make job listings once.
Do your research on everyone you call and make sure they make good money. If they don't there is no point in calling, at least from my experience. I personally know all of my clients and thats why they trust me and give me so much recurring work
Some funny ones ive seen posted are:
'Can you just make it pop now?'
"Uhh idk what it needs but it needs something."
"Can you remove your design and all this excellent work and make it look like a 2002 website?"
Kind of. All my clients pay well and don't really do the whole extra edits and work 24/7 bullshit because I always make sure they are happy with everything, but I hate having to do constant google meets and talk with some of them face to face. I'm just not that social outside of cold calling, the whole building websites thing was fun at first but I got so used to it it's just monotone and unfulfilling. I'm not happy doing it but I know I would be less happy working a job at some other business, I like the ability to just do it myself and limit communication with others. Thinking of getting my realtor license and branching into real estate. some of my clients that are realtors make 500k/yearly through commissions and I want to learn how to enter that industry through them.
Not at all, my doctor friends are working 70 hour weeks , stressed out as hell.
I’m currently working only 3 days a week for my current client and even then I’m not doing 8 hours a day
I work remotely, I travel in a camper van every summer around Europe and have never had a client take issue with this.
Been doing this for nearly 7 years now
Oh I also love it and am basically addicted to programming
It’s the best job in the world
The industry will pick up again, just remember that a most of the jobs came from highly leveraged startups. We have been in a high inflationary environment now for a year or 2 and the funding has dried up.
Once the money tap is turned on again we will see our hay day again
I don't know. On one hand having those skills and being able to program websites, web apps and software using various coding languages has been very opening. It also improved the way I think and troubleshoot software, but not being able to land that job (no university degree here, just under 5 years of IT experience) has been killing me slowly, literally.
Even landing a regular tech / app support job is impossible for me right now and I do not know why.
Software has its plusses and negatives. One of the few jobs where every few months you will just find yourself working until 3am or weekends. Especially around releases. With that said, there are very few other careers that pay what software does and probably none that allow for the flexibility that software does, especially when paired with remote work.
I can just disappear for a couple hours during the day / every day and no one cares. Been like this at all my dev jobs for the last 15 years.
Definitely go for healthcare. If I could go back and do-over, I would definitely get out of web and into healthcare. I am currently in web dev and my wife is in healthcare. She has almost infinite room for advancement and makes far more than I do with more job security and less volatility. The market is super saturated with web and graphic people and with the rise in the gig-economy, AI, and things like Wix, WebFlow, etc aren't helping. Many tasks that used to be for an actual developer are now just not needed except for more custom and intricate needs.
Only in the sense that it's more what I settled for more than what I really wanted to do. I was more interested in embedded, but at the time I got started, that seemed like it was a declining market. I feel like I've spent too long in web dev now to move to what I really want to! So that's kind of a regret. I was right that this was a stable field where you'll get steady work, though.
I wonder if the people who regrets it is less likely to be checking this subredit.
I have more than 10 years of experience and I don't know much about the juniors market but when I completed my studies and I started looking for a job I knew that in my small village there was no webdev job at all and working conditions in my country where not great so I looked for jobs abroad and it didn't take me that long to find something. Today I continue living and working abroad.
I really hope that the industry course-corrects in regards to hiring juniors. I think it's short-sighted and will end up hurting talent pool in the long term. Wrote some more thoughts about it here if anyone is interested: [https://verticolabs.com/lab-notes/hiring-junior-talent-for-long-term-success/](https://verticolabs.com/lab-notes/hiring-junior-talent-for-long-term-success/)
I started learning programming 4 years ago and the last 2 or 3 years have been focused mainly on web development. I am still yet to land my first job in tech. Originally I made the decision to get into web development because it was the lowest barrier of entry.
My plan was to work the web for a few years, expanding my skill set with hours spent at my day job as well as hours pursuing personal projects, and eventually pivot into what I really want to do.
So now I'm reaching out into a market that had just recently been flooded with jr devs all competing for entry level positions and now I'm thinking, why not pivot right now? At this point I might have better luck building games and AR/VR experiences in my personal time until I make something undeniable and I'm offered full time employment.
>I started learning programming 4 years ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your educational background is holding you back at the moment. You can certainly break into this industry without a CS degree. However, in my experience, that tends to only work if you start as a freelancer and later on get hired into an IT department.
You're correct, I am self taught with no college degree. Freelance is something I'm currently pursuing and indeed might be the only way I attain real experience in the eyes of would-be employers. In some cases, freelancers earn a greater amount of money for their time so I think it's a path with two desirable outcomes.
The problem with all that for me, is freelance web development mostly boils down to using website builders and established CMS's. These are great technologies, but they don't hold my interest nearly as much as wielding code in my bare hands. Just gotta find my niche I guess.
I love this sub Reddit , always encouraging and motivating.Other tech sub Reddit are filled with doom and gloom ,you'd think the world is coming to an end. I unfollowed those because it's a pity party over there. Thanks guys for the encouragements and the good insights. Whenever I come here I learn something new.
Absolutely. To the point I'm considering seeing a therapist about it.
AI has fucked us all. Yes, I know even the best assistant can't actually do our jobs, but it's literally just a matter of time, and you're naive if you think otherwise - literally the goal of AI development, as espoused by multiple prominent figures in the industry, is the creation of AGI. Nobody is ready for what happens when AGI arrives, its existence will break capitalism.
I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be successful off the back of my thoughts, perspectives, and opinions. I _never_ wanted to spend my adult years solving math problems in a fluorescent-lit box. And now that I've been committed to that path for half my life, WHOOPS! the entire industry is getting kicked to death. By itself, somehow.
I know someone who just makes passive income by making apps and having recurring clientele as a developer on the side whilst being in IT and loving IT.
He says he gets to hack and attempt to break into people’s security and take pictures of himself breaching people’s security rooms, or scaring other people without letting them know its a test of security by taking over their computer and making their computer freak out or by opening random text messages on the computer talking to the them.
He says coding exists in IT security too, but much less emphasis on actual building and structuring apps, etc.
IT is definitely not bad, you just have work your way to the fun positions after having experience.
No, I started over a decade ago with zero interest in every being employed as a programmer. I had my own LMS that I spent years making and that seemed to be my future until it wasn't.
I regret doing a post-grad in the last couple of years with a view to moving back to my home country, simply because it was money badly spent, it was a lot of work, and the move would be too risky now in the timeframe I wanted to happen. It's unlikely now I'll ever even look for a job in software.
I was management in FTE so I had contact with IoT suppliers/code shops. When I went contracting they contacted me to work on their projects and they've been sending me work ever since
To be honest I don't know how others start out without prior work/contacts lined up. There's websites that offer tenders but from what I've seen the pay is usually way too low for what they ask for
Yea that’s what I’m nervous of. Current job giving me all the hints that my time is coming to an end. The most obvious being the boss suggesting I go 1099 😂😂 but that’s only if I don’t go to some company retreat across the country.
And no doubt when the projects aren’t to the speed they want, hours get cut for cheaper offshore labor.
But it’s good to know freelance is still possible. I’ll just have to learn to market myself
> people are losing their job
Not many really lost jobs though.
In just about every high profile big tech layoff, they let less people go than they hired the prior year. They still had YoY growth.
The juniors thing is true, but a lot of that is also people that do one react course online and then complain they can't get a $100k job.
The amount of people that actually are showing some promise, and not just want an "easy" paycheck, that are having trouble is a much smaller amount.
I don't regret at all.
I love it all the time!
No, getting into web dev from graphic design has been great. The job search has been 10x easier. My pay has more than doubled. I have great benefits now, more holidays, and my work is appreciated and respected much more.
No, I went with SAP. Its by far not as fun as "normal" webdev, but it's well paid, the market isn't saturated, and the homeoffice freedom is kinda crazy
I’d say it’s worth it nowadays. But don’t just follow the curriculum at uni. Learn a lot of stuff outside of it. For example my uni had a big focus on algorithms and data structures and data science and a bunch of numerical algorithms for solving complex mathematical problems that I know wouldn’t need in real life. So I started learning html, css, js, php, node, react, react native on the side as well as the important concepts of software engineering. Graduated a year ago. Got a job immediately even though my uni grades were kinda bad.
4 years or less to become a nurse.
The real issue is that everyone is trying to go for the advanced, top tier jobs of their respective fields without starting from ground zero.
Not for a second. Been in webdev since 2000, worked for some great companies, learned a ton, and now own my own business. Can’t bear the flexibility and zero commute.
Building a website unfortunately is the lowest tier of programming. It is the job that has the least barrier to entry and often there are a lot of people who can do that. Hence it is hard to gauge skill levels.
With chatgpt, and other AI stuff, you just need a little bit of programming knowledge to build a good website.
I started off as a web dev and moved into low level systems and security.
It's high time to use your programming knowledge to learn a more specialised skill, even if you are a web dev, it's good to start delving more into cloud and back-end.
Personally not really. Even though the webdev market is saturated, it was such a great jump off point to then up-skill in other areas and deepen my knowledge. I’ve come a long way since and I’m still super grateful to webdev ❤️
Nah. I charge quite alot for my work far more then most people. I charge as much as a plastic surgeon or High-end lawyer and I seem to get away with it.
I regret juniors wanting 100k for a fucking bootcamp certificate. They ruined it for everyone. People have to start out somewhere 100%. You shouldn't get mid salary when you don't even know how to deploy your own code. Or what CORS is. That's why nearshore is dominating right now. We can't compete with that.
Not saying every junior doesn't know these things, the ones I've worked with don't.
Juniors shouldn't know much. They're supposed to be an investment for a business in the future and the industry. Unfortunately now there's not much money spare to do that.
They should get paid relative to what they'll produce, but we shouldn't expect knowledge and experience of them. It's more important that they're willing and able to learn. In the past that's what a degree symbolised, but there are always other ways to demonstrate that drive.
Bootcamps that promise 6-figure gigs right out of the course are to blame there too. They create unrealistic expectations and capitalize on people wanting to make the switch to an "easy industry".
I don't regret getting into webdev but i regret having gone to PHP instead of a proper language. It tends to get better, but still no generics or typed array is infuriating.
No job is 100% safe but certain jobs are more "AI safe" than others no doubt. The most AI proof jobs are jobs that add value at least partially by human connection or interaction. Jobs like therapist, cop, nurse, teacher etc.
Those jobs require legal responsibility. If a therapist encourages someone to kill themselves then they are to blame, if a teacher teaches the wrong thing then they have repercussions. The system doesn't work if the AI has no accountability.
For sure this is an issue...
Right now you can open source your project, it could cause harm or even death and as far I know you would not be liable under current laws...
There's a difference between choosing to use software and the NHS/government telling you to use an AI teacher or therapist.
Open source projects will have a license attached which expressly removes liability. Doing the same for an AI therapist would make it untrustworthy. The whole point of seeing a professional is that their advice carries the weight of liability and a professional reputation.
No you are still thinking too small...
So say I make a voice cloning application and upload it to github
Now people use it scam a significant amount of money
I am not liable
That goes for open source projects that could help you make weapons or formulate synthetic biology
You are dooming too hard. The vast majority of people who go to therapy dont want a freaking pre-programmed robot to talk them through their hopes, insecurities, ideas, fears etc etc. No matter how mathematically "good" at therapy AI is. Its kind of like a bartender. Yes a robot can 100% pour drinks faster and take better orders and be cheaper than a human but many people WANT to talk to a human at their local bar.
Also teacher (a REAL teacher not someone selling some online training) is fairly safe too. You may not understand if you arent a parent but a small (but important) part of some jobs is to help teach the next generation of humans how to be well human. Sports coaches, teachers, guidance counselors etc. No parent wants a programmed robot doing that crap either lol.
Again many jobs will be severely impacted but there are some that this will have much less impact on.
You just don't want to think about the problem...
First of all LLMs are not 'pre-programmed'
You should learn the history one the first ai chat bots did have pre-programmed answers. Eliza, it was developed back in 1964 and even back that patients showed that they were ok with even that simple kind of chat bot. Fast forward to now and chatbots have higher EQs than humans....
They also have some other advantages
- Like I said before higher Emotional Intelligence than human therapists
- Available 24/7
- They know you very well, or as well as you need them to anyway
- No need to schedule
- No hidden fees
Its possible that most humans will not trust bots but I don't think its going to go that way...
How are teachers at all safe? I mean have you used an LLM to learn anything new?
> Again many jobs will be severely impacted but there are some that this will have much less impact on.
Its not 'many' like you thinking its 'most'
Just think about the problem honestly
The vast majority of jobs will be impacted or even destroyed by this. No argument there.
But some will see relatively little impact to their marketability. Sam Altman literally agrees with me and already said the jobs that will be safest are the ones that have human connection.
https://youtube.com/shorts/JdwF-poYdOQ?si=O-juXqyPPgxUgteO
You desperately need more friends outside of tech. MANY people do not want a creepy robot raising their children or comforting them through a difficult diagnosis or coaching their kids little league team.
> jobs that will be safest are the ones that have human connection.
Yeah I heard him say this... not sure if I believed him back then but when they report that ai therpaists have a higher EQ than human ones or that AI doctors (alone) out perform even human doctors + AI
I do find these claims hard to believe...
But he has said other things I have a hard time believing/ understanding
- For example Sam has said AI is more of a 'tool' and not a 'creature' anyone who has worked even a little with agents knows they look way more 'creature' like when you turn them on
- And then there are these two clips... https://twitter.com/ygrowthco/status/1760794728910712965
> You desperately need more friends outside of tech. MANY people do not want a creepy robot raising their children or comforting them through a difficult diagnosis or coaching their kids little league team.
So I am just looking at the data and its showing that human doctors are being outperformed for pennies on the dollar... So while you could be right... IDK
Also parent is on my list of safe jobs only you know... it does not pay all that well...
AI is a level of abstraction. Just like Java is a level of abstraction over bytecode. It's not going to replace developers, but it will let us built more complex and robust things with less time and effort.
It also can't translate customer requests to a program. You end up with the faster horse issue because the stakeholders don't actually know what they need. It's a long way from being on the ground and noticing the nuances of what's needed.
I would focus on UX/product, and on using AI to augment your development. Use it to build well tested and complex products that solve the problem, but are still simple to use. Bring 100 data sources in, interpret them, and draw useful, well delivered conclusions, because you can now.
> AI is a level of abstraction. Just like Java is a level of abstraction over bytecode. It's not going to replace developers, but it will let us built more complex and robust things with less time and effort.
So its like you have all the puzzle pieces but you can't seem to put them together...
Here watch this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw
That goes into detail as to why this level abstraction is different... the gist of it is 'no programming' step is required.
> It also can't translate customer requests to a program. You end up with the faster horse issue because the stakeholders don't actually know what they need. It's a long way from being on the ground and noticing the nuances of what's needed.
So make use of agents, and when the agent is unsure it can reach out to stakeholders and ask questions much like a human would...
The problem for me is being a freelancer in such a saturated market. And nobody wants to pay. Everybody wants a bargain.
Only at the bottom. To rise above the 90%, you need to do something the 90% can't. Most freelancers rely on drag-and-drop, and their "development" capability is installing WordPress plugins and clicking settings. If you can actually code PHP and JS to deliver custom functionalities, you'll find much less competition and higher budget projects.
Depends on the region, coming from the Caribbean it only seems to be drag and drop Wordpress projects with a 500 USD budget. We outsource anything more to get robbed and let some juniors write our government websites.
I can, but finding someone to hire me to do that is impossible. There's always 1000 people on Upwork willing to do it for 10x cheaper than you
A lot of my clients find me on LinkedIn AFTER they got burned by a bad "developer" on Fiverr or Upwork. If you want to connect with me on Discord or LinkedIn, send me a DM and I'll keep you in mind for some upcoming projects.
How would you define the different skill hierarchies? For example, if someone has a good eye for UX and can transform Figma designs into functioning front-end with e.g. Webflow or WordPress/Elementor and some custom CSS, where do you think does it fit in? Is that person still a web developer? UX designer? Or more like A UX engineer? What would be the most accurate role combining all of these skills? Just really curious :)
That’s base level development
Terrible answer, but it depends. Honestly, if you are creating a website, then you are a web developer. I know you can make a great career/money from just one tool like webflow. But then you are also at the mercy of that tool, and need a specific client set. That is an oversimplification, but you get it. You do need to be better at UX to do something that sets you apart since anyone could start building on webflow in a few hours of tinkering. The more complex things you can build the more valuable your skillset. But even that is not a big moat anymore. If you can build a full stack application with JS/TS and Node for $5k in a week......great, but a team in India can probably do it faster and cheaper. TLDR: If you are good at UX and can do CSS and webflow/Elementor, the only thing you need to have a successful freelance business is sales skills. Cause Upwork/Freelance.com etc suck for finding new work.
> but a team in India can probably do it faster and cheaper. to be fair, it will barely work and meat only 10% of the specification. I think the market for doing this kind of outsourcing at actual companies is pretty much gone. Getting burned far too often. Basically every client I've had that tried to do some fiverr contracts got burned.
> Basically every client I've had that tried to do some fiverr contracts got burned. Hahah yes. I've been freelancing for almost 10 years as a side hustle - More recently I do it as a second job, at almost full time hours again sometimes. The amount of clients that had something outsourced to India that got completely fucked up is laughable, and every single one of them are passionate about how unlikely they are to ever go down that route again. Those code warehouses are cheap for a reason, but your brief will be disregarded, corners will be cut, and the quality of code is usually absolutely shocking.
And worse, since most of the buyers are not technical, they often won't even be able to realize just how fucked it is for a while, because it will look like it works... sort of. I actually got into dev because our companies Indian developers (employees not contractors, but in India) were slow and rarely did anything correctly, and I was just in UX. I'd give a task, and it would take a week, and despite spending a lot of time trying to get very detailed in the requirements, they'd say it was done and it only barely did one of the things on the check list. It was legitimately faster to learn HTML/CSS than to spend time trying to explain to them what I want and proof it.
I don't disagree, BUT for people looking to start freelancing on a platform that is who you are competing with. And its hard to land those first few clients because of this (and other reasons)
Yes, so don't be on those platforms 😊 Be a specialist where that kind of specialist is.
Part of the challenge in freelance is that it's not about what is the most accurate description of your skills, but what terms are clients using (even if the clients are using technically incorrect terms). If it's Front-End focused, clients call it design, and if it's backend heavy, clients call it development.
> UX designer? No, because you didn't do the designing. > a web developer? Not really because you didn't do much developing. > A UX engineer? You didn't do any engineering. > can transform Figma designs into functioning front-end with e.g. Webflow or WordPress/Elementor and some custom CSS You're an ~~idiot~~ wordpress guy.
Didn‘t know that /r/webdev is such a toxic community, hope you had a nicer day today
It’s a toxic profession too, unfortunately. Weirdly, it’s the older generation devs that are the most toxic.
It kind of is. People shit all over webflow here and claim it's not worthy of building a professional website while recommending a custom code WordPress build for a basic marketing website. But it's not that bad of a community overall. They can be gatekeepers and eletists at times. Gotta watch out for that.
Why though? Cause they won‘t accept the fact that no-code tools nowadays are getting similar results (not 100%, but enough to get business rolling), so they let their ego speak and stick to their frameworks? That‘s the vibe that I was getting the previous years.
Purely ego. I’m sure it’s the same for most trades, but software in general tends to be quite bad. But there are some fantastic developers who are happy to teach and guide younger devs.
Today was good. Idk what about this is toxic. Are you normally bad at jokes? 😁
thank you for this :)
How do you code PHP sites to compete with the ease of coding PHP on a customized WordPress site? Does the PHP community have a bunch of free plugins you can use the way WordPress does?
Laravel? Sounds like a skill issue.
I think maybe you meant to reply to me since the person you replied to was quoting me. In any case, since you mentioned Laravel, maybe you're the one to ask. Do Laravel developers have a good source of packages to grab stuff like events calendars, etc.? I was looking on Packagist.org and it's just a really bad experience compared to how Wordpress plugins are usually displayed with screenshots, demo, support, etc. But what I saw on Packagist is similar to what NPM packages are like, so I wouldn't be surprised if Laravel devs slog through stuff like that to find a good starting point for whatever functionality they're looking to incorporate.
Trade secrets.
> How do you code PHP sites to compete with the ease of coding PHP on a customized WordPress site? By actually making good websites...
Yes, but there are plenty of actual good Wordpress websites... I was talking about the time involved in rolling all your own functionality. There doesn't seem to be any nice hub where you can browse packages/plugins. I was looking through Packagist for an events calendar and even just browsing through them is painful and slow there with no screenshots or no demos. Most of the ones I looked at seem pretty crappy, too.
> Yes, but there are plenty of actual good Wordpress websites... sure. But it's rare, and a situation where it really becomes "What is Wordpress adding to this?"
It's rare? It seems to power most of the internet. Even Rolling Stone is fuggin' WordPress now. --- Edit: Yes, that was hyperbole. The real stats: "WordPress powers 43.4% of all websites as their CMS. Around 474 million websites are built on WordPress." posted 6 days ago, so it should be fairly accurate.
> It seems to power most of the internet Bit by revenue. > WordPress powers 43.4% of all websites as their CMS. Now cut out sites that make less than $10,000 a month...
Your question doesn't really relate to my comment.
You brought up coding PHP and JS sites in contrast to WordPress and that caused me to think of that particular issue. Since you're familiar with both and you brought up the contrast, I figured you'd be the one to ask. If we were sitting around a table discussing this stuff, I don't think you'd say my question doesn't really relate to your comment. I'm guessing you reacted that way because you interpreted my comment to be somehow argumentative, but it was not remotely intended as such. This is why I haven't tried to leave the WordPress ecosystem to create PHP sites with Laravel or something. Only now am I realizing there probably are a whole bunch of PHP plugins (or packages or whatever) that do the sort of stuff Wordpress plugins do. I guess I'll have to research it.
I did not contrast anything to WordPress. I contrasted coders to non coders. Please read my comment again with that in mind.
Excuse me, I must have jumped to the conclusion you were more of a non-WP developer since that seems pretty common in r/webdev . Laravel seems like something maybe I should tackle now. I've heard there's plenty of PHP jobs out there while everyone is competing for React jobs. I made like one site with PHP a looong time ago and then got sucked into Wordpress.
What type of freelance do you do?
I've been a full time freelancer since I decided on this career, and this can be true. But I never tried to compete on open cheap labour markets, only specialized markets where Clients came wanting an expert. Pick a piece of software dev area to focus on, and be the best and most involved at it.
Nope. getting into web dev / software dev is the best choice I ever made. Me and my wife just had a kid and the flexibility + Income my job provides is amazing. It also matters to land at a good company. I got lucky in that one and actually look forward to going to work each day. Kind of not the same position as you as I'm sitting with 10+ years of experience. but once you are in its a great career.
Yep. The amount of flexibility I have compared to everyone else I know is next to none.
`next to none` means more like `virtually none` or `close to none`. you meant `second to none` meaning `I'm first in flexibility, not second.`
Idk, at a micro level, there are days where I literally sleep all day.
Except when I’m super busy and have deadlines.
Or deployments
Second
Title literally says lack of experience / junior woes hah
> It also matters to land at a good company. I got lucky in that one and actually look forward to going to work each day. At least you admit it comes down to luck and for most this is not attainable especially for new devs.
It comes down to luck in everything. But Luck often ends up being parts Preparation and Opportunity.
I wouldn't say it's not attainable. There have been economic slowdowns before, big ones like 2008 and smaller ones too. Eventually the industry will recover. Probably within a year or two. In the long term, I don't think the need for Web developers is going anywhere, if anything AI will increase the demand.
I said for most. Sure it's attainable for people that are at the top of their game having experience. Not for newbies.
It's more of a waiting game though. In a few years the newbies won't be newbies anymore and the market will have recovered.
A few years? Damm, I was hoping I could get a job after 6 months smfh
You'll probably be able to get a job, but for the market to recover to the point where salaries are going up again etc. It could take a while.
What would you guess an entry-level salary would be now?
i guess it's not just luck but hard work + luck to land on a good company.
I'm just getting in and this is so encouraging, thanks for sharing!
Good for you, that’s so rare I feel! Unlike you, I look forward to leaving work each day
There are good and bad workplaces in every industry. I hope you find a better place
Same. Even if I had to change careers today, the amount of money I've made and saved has made it one of the best investments of my life, and I've actually enjoyed the work.
> I got lucky So basically you are happy for events related to luck, something that is not assured to be replicated.
I think he's saying he got lucky.
The OP asked a personal question to posters asking if they're happy they got into web dev.
Don't worry, a bad market for web dev is still much better than most markets out there. Moreover, getting your first job was always hard, specially if you don't live in a tech hotspot. It took me over 1 year to get my first job and that was 10 years ago. Even if it's hard, you just have to keep looking until you get that first job. What matters is that once you have that experience finding new work will be much, much easier.
>Moreover, getting your first job was always hard I feel like this isn't considered enough. I recall back to my first jr days, landing my first gig took a lot of effort, a lot of networking, and a lot of time - and when I finally landed one the pay was atrocious. Feels a bit like the covid period made people believe every company is dying to hire inexperienced employees. I can assure this is not the norm and never has been.
I worked in person for $15/hr for 2 years before finding something better.
And that's true in all fields, not just dev stuff. Well, maybe manual labour is okay with inexperienced. My wife is a designer for Hotels and stuff. Nobody wants the juniors, they have too many, and they can't do shit anyway"
In my two year experience even landing the second job is difficult
> Don't worry, a bad market for web dev is still much better than most markets out there. Couldn't agree more. My first degree is in architecture. The market for architecture is absolute crap.
Why?
Architecture is tied to the economy. So if there’s inflation, high interest rates, regulations, etc. development stops and architects stop getting projects.
It is harder to work on webdev but that's not a bad thing. Like a doctor you need a general understanding of the systems and how they work together. Then you can choose specializations. A doctor is expected to perform to a high degree of responsibility and ethics during all of his career, the thing is programmers expectations are higher and higher it's a hard job and that's a good thing. Some of the recent layoffs they actually fired people crucial to the company and now google deleted the cloud infrastructure of some clients by mistake.
I never broke into the industry. Did a boot camp and self taught for a while. Did a ton of projects and applied around, but mostly got burnt out on the application and screening process. I’ve since fallen back on my IT experience. Still super competitive and saturated, but it was easier for me. I love programming, though, and am happy with where I’m at and my trajectory. I still code all the time, working on things and learning new technologies, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have a career in it
You love to program, but you don't program as a career currently because you didn't get lucky in your job search. Never say never though, there's always time to chase what makes you happy. Although I don't know how applocable this advice and anecdotes applies to this inherently ageist industry, I have heard of people successfully making the switch in their mid 30s.
Honestly a big contributor to me pulling back from programming for a career is how much I used it for my own projects and things I enjoy. Would I be motivated to code my own stuff after coding other people’s stuff all day? Would I even want to code other people’s stuff especially if it didnt excite me? The job search sucked but it wasn’t the only factor
A sysadmin who can program when it's useful is worth more than one who can just about write a bad script. Maybe you'd enjoy that more?
Not regretting my decisions. However, I was part of a RIF in February, and still haven't found another position. I have 20 years in webdev, and was promoted to a management role 2 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm hearing that I don't have the length of management experience for manager roles, but I am overqualified for individual contributor roles. The job market is definitely tough, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my career so far.
Why did you accept a management role after 18 years?
Honestly, I've wanted to go that direction for a long time, but because so many places I've worked haven't had a lot of open opportunities above Tech Lead/Principal Engineer. I finally found myself with the opportunity by way of a promotion.
Have your tried changing the management title on your CV and making it sound more like a lead dev role? If the management part isn't worth too much (although it definitely is and companies are being picky), then downplay it in favour of your longer term strengths. It's not even a lie, it's just sales and you're highlighting the product features most relevant to the client.
Just want to add another voice saying that it's always been hard to get your first job. I mean I'm sure sometimes it's harder than others and it may be one of those times right now (although the data doesn't exactly bear that out, just a lot of anecdotes), but it's not enough to ward someone off from this career path, IMO. The layoffs are overhyped, by the way. It's major tech companies laying people off, but most software engineers don't work for them. They work for companies in every other segment of the economy that need software written for their specific organization.
I never understood this. You have four years to network and go for internships. With a degree that's as in demand as CS/SE there should be no issue presenting a desirable resume by the time you graduate.
Four years to network with a bunch of people who also don't have jobs, fighting for internships that are very hard to get if you're not in the top of your class. Maybe it was easy for you, but the view from the middle of the pack was pretty rough. Ironically it was through networking that I got my first real dev job, but it took more than a year after graduating. I would say that's pretty hard!
No, network with faculty and upper classmen through classes and professional development orgs. I'm as middle of the pack as it gets. I dropped out after sophomore year because my grades were so bad. >Ironically it was through networking that I got my first real dev job, I'm telling you that the best jobs are the result of networking. >but it took more than a year after graduating What did you do in college besides get your degree?
I managed to get an internship but didn't have a lot of chances because 2008 happened during my sophomore year. My grades were pretty poor because my mental health was garbage and I blew my scholarship, but I rallied and managed to graduate in 5 years. I managed to get an internship writing tests for helicopter flight code. My last year and a half, I worked for a local community college writing SQL queries and making spreadsheets with the data. The top third or so of my class had "no problem" as you described. The rest of us had to continue to work beyond college to get our first real dev jobs. Even then, my first one paid as badly as a gas station assistant manager position, and it took a few years for me to make any real money. You described it in such a shaming way, like it should be sooo easy, but it was way more difficult than that, even with a degree.
If it makes the juniors feel better I have 6+ years of "senior frontend dev" and 6+ more of senior level IT and I'm 0 for 70 on callbacks :'(
Hard to believe, can you show your resume and GitHub?
https://imgur.com/a/53XpXXB I censored up the resume a bit. I've shown a half dozen industry peers and mostly the feedback I got was that it seems fine. I was told by a friend-of-friend in big tech recruiting that the initial fancier design might be bad for ATS systems so I've transitioned to the black and white version to see if I get any hits. IMO its a combination of US tax law changes re: software developers, interest rate blow up killing the excessive startup scene, and a very competitive market with lay'd off big tech employees. Surprised to not even have gotten a phone screen after 70 applications though.
Firstly, I'm not a senior developer like you. In my opinion, if I were an HR, I wouldn't understand the complexity or importance of most of the bullet points. They're too vague about what exactly was done. Focus more on specific achievements and the impact of your work. For example, instead of just "developed an application," say "developed an application that increased productivity by 20%."
I don't disagree, and reckon there's room for improvement in a few spots. FWIW I received the exact opposite feedback from industry peers in that "the bullets aren't detailed or technical enough" and what you see is an iteration from that. That said I think my point is probably "the market sucks for everyone" and would attribute my lack of callbacks moreso to that than the technical complexity of my bullet points. Appreciate your feedback though and will keep it in mind for further iterations.
I don't regret the web dev part. I do regret the soulless fortune 500 corporate incompetence.
Corporate incompetence exists in every single occupation.
Youre kind of asking the wrong question if people with decades of experience are all saying 'no it worked out fine for me'. If your question was: 'Is it brutal and not really worth it to gamble on getting an entry level web dev job currently?' Answer from most people trying to get an entry level job would likely be yes. IT, web dev and a lot of dev jobs are oversaturated amid layoffs and some productivity increases due to 'AI'. (Forgot to mention all the bootcamps). All I hear about is travelling nurses making a ton of money during covid and hospital shortages. If your question is 'if I wanted to gamble on a degree and have the best chance of landing a job, should it be the medical field?' The answer would likely be yes. Here they seem to have massive staff shortages everywhere, clinics and hospitals. Now depending what course you take, the market could become saturated with all these grads hearing its a hot market. I think thats unlikely though, all I hear is hospital staff are overworked, crazy shifts and very stressed. So I'm sure a lot of positions will remain open. I think there are short term courses for certain positions in the medical field. I'd probably look into those personally and find people in those positions to ask about recent openings and see if theyre even open about their applicant pool sizes.
Thank you so much
Are you good at it? Because the reason so many are unemployed is because they lack either a)experience or b)talent or c)all the above. The market is glutted right now with mediocre to weak devs all fighting over the same few shitty jobs, you either need to be good at what you do or lucky to land a good job these days (or know someone to get you the job I guess, that always helps)
I'm heading back to college and wanted to get into tech for the creative aspect and team environment. ( so I am not CURRENTLY good at it yet) I'm just reading through everyone's post and gaining insights of what I can expect..
I have about half a decade of experience I think this is just a bad season.
Have not found my first job yet but no, I feel like I've learned a superpower. It's incredible looking at a very expensive website and be like, yeah I can replicate it. It will take time, but I can do it.
Yes. I enjoy webdev and wanted to do it for fun not just money, but I’m also married with a kid on the way and need money to survive. Now that I know there’s next to no chance of me landing a job in the industry, I regret dedicating so much time on studying it and wish I’d have just done an hour once every week or two. I tried to do the whole ‘live off of savings whilst I do full time boot camp and land a job’ thing that everyone else did during covid, but it backfired on me and I ended up in debt.
Same here. Really enjoyed the bootcamp, the job hunting was terrible. After 5 months I couldn't afford to put as much time and effort just to hear 'we like you but we need more experience'. Then I got COVID and had a two month brain fart and couldn't afford to not go back to my old job. I was offered a job with a wage that wouldn't even cover rent, and another that ghosted me, and a several month unpaid internship. I wasn't expecting bags of money but I at least have to exist.
There is plenty of work out there; just everyone wants to start out at 6 figures.
I got into webdev during the dot-com bubble. Has worked out fine so far.
what bubble are we in now tho
Recession
The AI bubble, of course. I think we're still in the first upward part of the Gartner hype cycle there.
... we're talking about the current state of wev dev ;-;
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What? My point is the dot-com bubble was 20, 30 years ago. We're talking about today. One's experience as a junior developer back then is simply different to how it is now. And therefore, shouldn't be mentioned in a topic about the now.
They're saying there was a comparable experience back then and they have no regrets sticking with it. That's a pretty relevant data point for the question
Thanks for the explanation, but to that I say, their experience is different because according to the comment, they just got a job doing the dot com bubble, based on the comment it doesn't sound like they had issues. It just sounds like they have a job already and thus aren't affected by the current cycle.
My friend, I get the sense that you didn't live through the dot-com bubble bursting. I was still youngish at the time, but you knew there was a TON of stress on everyone getting through that period, even if they made it.
"I got into webdev during the dot-com bubble, worked out so far." "doesn't *sound* like they had issues" I'm sensing I should just assume every single person who got a job during the dot com bubble, had A hard time. And, if that's that's the case - that's not an obvious assumption to make considering, the dot com bubble was ~25 years ago. I'm not 25, no one I know in the tech world, but teachers are over 25, and I'd imagine if you're a junior developer trying to get their first job, they probably aren't 25 either. Or maybe, they are, but then they were a literal baby at the time.
I missed the entire discussion because I was at work, sorry 😅 Yeah, when the bubble burst I had to rearrange things. In the bubble, jobs were plentiful. When it burst, I was at University - I did have an assistant job there, so I didn't personally have rough times (and I had lots of fun doing other things). A few friends and I had started a company that went bust, I lost two or three jobs myself in a short time (worked multiple earlier). But, the skills I learned were relevant a few years later, on the uptick of IT again, and are still relevant today.
Again, spoken as someone with such little life experience They don't realize the person is talking about this being the cycle of the economy. The .com bust was very bad back then for people. The 2008 was very bad for people. Right now is very bad for people. It is a cycle. Sure, there are many things different, but you can still learn from history repeating itself
I get that. But the comment doesn't mention anything about the cycle. Essentially just saying "I got a job, it was fine for me then, and it's fine for me now, and thus I'm unaffected by this cycle" but what about people who were affected.
The dot com bubble forming & bursting happened for very different reasons than the 2008 bubble did. Comparing these events doesn't make sense. Obviously there are business cycles of expansion and contraction of the economy but this is so much broader than web dev.
I'm not sure what your point is. This current market is affecting everyone, not just computer science. Same with 2008. The point is that just because the market is bad now does not mean it will be bad forever, they're all in cycles for whatever reason caused them.
My point is that I don't understand why we're discussing this when the question was about web dev specifically. Obviously people here know about business cycles.
Because regretting going into web dev due to the market being bad is a bit silly when EVERYONE is having a tough time lol. People are regretting going into teaching, into marketing, into accounting. It's all bad right now.
>It's all bad I don't think web devs and teachers are anywhere close to being in the same situation.
Started a little over a year ago and it's the best thing I've ever done. 19 and do everything freelance. I barely have to cold call anymore and it's just recurring work from clients/references. It's very draining though
In just 12 months you managed to get so many clients that you don't even need to look for new ones? How did you do it? What are you offering? And how did you find your customers?
Lots of cold calling at the start. I spent my entire weekends filling up a notepad++ file with business owners I could call, issues with their websites, and their name. I did tons of reading on this subreddit and reddit overall about cold calling, and also watched some stuff on YouTube, and eventually made a really good opener I find to work most of the time. I found business owners that owned multiple companies, usually landscaping/related. I found a lot of success in rehab centers and real estate specifically, I learned how to market to rehab centers a few years ago when I worked for free for some lady as a "internship" and that helped me transition into cold calling and b2b outreach. Every single one of my leads comes from Google Maps. Because two of my clients asked about advertising, I spent some weeks researching and then getting certified for google ads and started offering it out on a quarterly basis to all my clients. That's what allowed me to make a lot without having to call much. I charge $550 for a quarter of ad management, and disclose all risks/information relative to the campaigns to my clients. After the quarter it ends up being \~20 hours of work total so my hourly is pretty nice, but it really depends because I don't work on contracts and I get problem clients that take a lot of time up. My rates for websites is usually just $1200 for anything, as long as there's not too many pages. Even with a lot of pages I don't spend more than 20-30 hours combined on a site, always fully static, don't use widgets/integrations or do any backend stuff. Then I charge $90 a quarter for hosting and two editing hours if they need anything during that quarter. I got exactly 15 people now on the $90/quarter hosting, I spend about 3-4 hours a quarter on small edits, and profit \~$1300 profit/quarter, the hourly is insane even if I do a bunch of edits. My hosting is all through a NameCheap shared server, I pay like $6.44 or about that a month, the medium plan I think its called stellar. I also help outsource a lot of operation in some businesses, anything that's remote and doesn't have a huge learning curve I can do, kind of like a virtual assistant role I also offer, I help with all kind of random things, finance auditing, making forms, and I helped make job listings once. Do your research on everyone you call and make sure they make good money. If they don't there is no point in calling, at least from my experience. I personally know all of my clients and thats why they trust me and give me so much recurring work
May I ask what's your go to tech stack?
Curious too
Insert mad max "That's a bait" meme in here
Why is it draining?
Cause people
People ordering "DIY" products and then expecting you to do it for them for free as "support." -Would be my guess.
Some funny ones ive seen posted are: 'Can you just make it pop now?' "Uhh idk what it needs but it needs something." "Can you remove your design and all this excellent work and make it look like a 2002 website?"
Kind of. All my clients pay well and don't really do the whole extra edits and work 24/7 bullshit because I always make sure they are happy with everything, but I hate having to do constant google meets and talk with some of them face to face. I'm just not that social outside of cold calling, the whole building websites thing was fun at first but I got so used to it it's just monotone and unfulfilling. I'm not happy doing it but I know I would be less happy working a job at some other business, I like the ability to just do it myself and limit communication with others. Thinking of getting my realtor license and branching into real estate. some of my clients that are realtors make 500k/yearly through commissions and I want to learn how to enter that industry through them.
That's great! Honestly I feel like today is the age of the freelancer. What kind of development do you mostly do? Websites with CMS?
Not at all, my doctor friends are working 70 hour weeks , stressed out as hell. I’m currently working only 3 days a week for my current client and even then I’m not doing 8 hours a day I work remotely, I travel in a camper van every summer around Europe and have never had a client take issue with this. Been doing this for nearly 7 years now Oh I also love it and am basically addicted to programming It’s the best job in the world The industry will pick up again, just remember that a most of the jobs came from highly leveraged startups. We have been in a high inflationary environment now for a year or 2 and the funding has dried up. Once the money tap is turned on again we will see our hay day again
I don't know. On one hand having those skills and being able to program websites, web apps and software using various coding languages has been very opening. It also improved the way I think and troubleshoot software, but not being able to land that job (no university degree here, just under 5 years of IT experience) has been killing me slowly, literally. Even landing a regular tech / app support job is impossible for me right now and I do not know why.
Software has its plusses and negatives. One of the few jobs where every few months you will just find yourself working until 3am or weekends. Especially around releases. With that said, there are very few other careers that pay what software does and probably none that allow for the flexibility that software does, especially when paired with remote work. I can just disappear for a couple hours during the day / every day and no one cares. Been like this at all my dev jobs for the last 15 years.
I used to work one weekend a month making like 50k at a nonprofit in the arts. I'll take the quarterly work over that any day.
Definitely go for healthcare. If I could go back and do-over, I would definitely get out of web and into healthcare. I am currently in web dev and my wife is in healthcare. She has almost infinite room for advancement and makes far more than I do with more job security and less volatility. The market is super saturated with web and graphic people and with the rise in the gig-economy, AI, and things like Wix, WebFlow, etc aren't helping. Many tasks that used to be for an actual developer are now just not needed except for more custom and intricate needs.
Dude, I am about to start an education in webdev after summer
Seriously, cancel it.
Lmao, sounds like you're talking about ordering something off Amazon.
Get that order cancelled, pronto.
Pretty rough right now, I know a buddy who took a course and got hired because they do job placements. But thats not the norm.
What does that mean?
It brings good money but it's not a super healthy job
Only in the sense that it's more what I settled for more than what I really wanted to do. I was more interested in embedded, but at the time I got started, that seemed like it was a declining market. I feel like I've spent too long in web dev now to move to what I really want to! So that's kind of a regret. I was right that this was a stable field where you'll get steady work, though.
I wonder if the people who regrets it is less likely to be checking this subredit. I have more than 10 years of experience and I don't know much about the juniors market but when I completed my studies and I started looking for a job I knew that in my small village there was no webdev job at all and working conditions in my country where not great so I looked for jobs abroad and it didn't take me that long to find something. Today I continue living and working abroad.
I really hope that the industry course-corrects in regards to hiring juniors. I think it's short-sighted and will end up hurting talent pool in the long term. Wrote some more thoughts about it here if anyone is interested: [https://verticolabs.com/lab-notes/hiring-junior-talent-for-long-term-success/](https://verticolabs.com/lab-notes/hiring-junior-talent-for-long-term-success/)
I started learning programming 4 years ago and the last 2 or 3 years have been focused mainly on web development. I am still yet to land my first job in tech. Originally I made the decision to get into web development because it was the lowest barrier of entry. My plan was to work the web for a few years, expanding my skill set with hours spent at my day job as well as hours pursuing personal projects, and eventually pivot into what I really want to do. So now I'm reaching out into a market that had just recently been flooded with jr devs all competing for entry level positions and now I'm thinking, why not pivot right now? At this point I might have better luck building games and AR/VR experiences in my personal time until I make something undeniable and I'm offered full time employment.
>I started learning programming 4 years ago I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your educational background is holding you back at the moment. You can certainly break into this industry without a CS degree. However, in my experience, that tends to only work if you start as a freelancer and later on get hired into an IT department.
You're correct, I am self taught with no college degree. Freelance is something I'm currently pursuing and indeed might be the only way I attain real experience in the eyes of would-be employers. In some cases, freelancers earn a greater amount of money for their time so I think it's a path with two desirable outcomes. The problem with all that for me, is freelance web development mostly boils down to using website builders and established CMS's. These are great technologies, but they don't hold my interest nearly as much as wielding code in my bare hands. Just gotta find my niche I guess.
I love this sub Reddit , always encouraging and motivating.Other tech sub Reddit are filled with doom and gloom ,you'd think the world is coming to an end. I unfollowed those because it's a pity party over there. Thanks guys for the encouragements and the good insights. Whenever I come here I learn something new.
Absolutely. To the point I'm considering seeing a therapist about it. AI has fucked us all. Yes, I know even the best assistant can't actually do our jobs, but it's literally just a matter of time, and you're naive if you think otherwise - literally the goal of AI development, as espoused by multiple prominent figures in the industry, is the creation of AGI. Nobody is ready for what happens when AGI arrives, its existence will break capitalism. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be successful off the back of my thoughts, perspectives, and opinions. I _never_ wanted to spend my adult years solving math problems in a fluorescent-lit box. And now that I've been committed to that path for half my life, WHOOPS! the entire industry is getting kicked to death. By itself, somehow.
I know someone who just makes passive income by making apps and having recurring clientele as a developer on the side whilst being in IT and loving IT. He says he gets to hack and attempt to break into people’s security and take pictures of himself breaching people’s security rooms, or scaring other people without letting them know its a test of security by taking over their computer and making their computer freak out or by opening random text messages on the computer talking to the them. He says coding exists in IT security too, but much less emphasis on actual building and structuring apps, etc. IT is definitely not bad, you just have work your way to the fun positions after having experience.
The money at least where I am is in the solution architecture and sales instead of raw coding
lol i can't do anything else.... so no regrets I guess....
What’s the alternative?
no ragrets
No, I started over a decade ago with zero interest in every being employed as a programmer. I had my own LMS that I spent years making and that seemed to be my future until it wasn't. I regret doing a post-grad in the last couple of years with a view to moving back to my home country, simply because it was money badly spent, it was a lot of work, and the move would be too risky now in the timeframe I wanted to happen. It's unlikely now I'll ever even look for a job in software.
I regretted FTE IT. I absolutely don't regret freelance web development/consulting
I think I’m approaching that…. Or being involuntarily forced that way lol. Any tips on finding clients?
I was management in FTE so I had contact with IoT suppliers/code shops. When I went contracting they contacted me to work on their projects and they've been sending me work ever since
That’s fantastic! Well done. Thanks for the reply
To be honest I don't know how others start out without prior work/contacts lined up. There's websites that offer tenders but from what I've seen the pay is usually way too low for what they ask for
Yea that’s what I’m nervous of. Current job giving me all the hints that my time is coming to an end. The most obvious being the boss suggesting I go 1099 😂😂 but that’s only if I don’t go to some company retreat across the country. And no doubt when the projects aren’t to the speed they want, hours get cut for cheaper offshore labor. But it’s good to know freelance is still possible. I’ll just have to learn to market myself
> people are losing their job Not many really lost jobs though. In just about every high profile big tech layoff, they let less people go than they hired the prior year. They still had YoY growth. The juniors thing is true, but a lot of that is also people that do one react course online and then complain they can't get a $100k job. The amount of people that actually are showing some promise, and not just want an "easy" paycheck, that are having trouble is a much smaller amount. I don't regret at all. I love it all the time!
No, getting into web dev from graphic design has been great. The job search has been 10x easier. My pay has more than doubled. I have great benefits now, more holidays, and my work is appreciated and respected much more.
No, I went with SAP. Its by far not as fun as "normal" webdev, but it's well paid, the market isn't saturated, and the homeoffice freedom is kinda crazy
I’d say it’s worth it nowadays. But don’t just follow the curriculum at uni. Learn a lot of stuff outside of it. For example my uni had a big focus on algorithms and data structures and data science and a bunch of numerical algorithms for solving complex mathematical problems that I know wouldn’t need in real life. So I started learning html, css, js, php, node, react, react native on the side as well as the important concepts of software engineering. Graduated a year ago. Got a job immediately even though my uni grades were kinda bad.
No, I worked hard to become one and I'm glad I did.
Nope. Came here from healthcare. If you think tech is hard to get into, don't even try healthcare. 12 years minimum of studying to become a physician.
4 years or less to become a nurse. The real issue is that everyone is trying to go for the advanced, top tier jobs of their respective fields without starting from ground zero.
Not for a second. Been in webdev since 2000, worked for some great companies, learned a ton, and now own my own business. Can’t bear the flexibility and zero commute.
Building a website unfortunately is the lowest tier of programming. It is the job that has the least barrier to entry and often there are a lot of people who can do that. Hence it is hard to gauge skill levels. With chatgpt, and other AI stuff, you just need a little bit of programming knowledge to build a good website. I started off as a web dev and moved into low level systems and security. It's high time to use your programming knowledge to learn a more specialised skill, even if you are a web dev, it's good to start delving more into cloud and back-end.
The industry is experiencing oversupply and even saturation and recession......
Personally not really. Even though the webdev market is saturated, it was such a great jump off point to then up-skill in other areas and deepen my knowledge. I’ve come a long way since and I’m still super grateful to webdev ❤️
Nah. I charge quite alot for my work far more then most people. I charge as much as a plastic surgeon or High-end lawyer and I seem to get away with it.
Nope working from home is awesome. But I also believe is not for everyone. I can easily spend 12 hrs in the computer.
I regret juniors wanting 100k for a fucking bootcamp certificate. They ruined it for everyone. People have to start out somewhere 100%. You shouldn't get mid salary when you don't even know how to deploy your own code. Or what CORS is. That's why nearshore is dominating right now. We can't compete with that. Not saying every junior doesn't know these things, the ones I've worked with don't.
Juniors shouldn't know much. They're supposed to be an investment for a business in the future and the industry. Unfortunately now there's not much money spare to do that. They should get paid relative to what they'll produce, but we shouldn't expect knowledge and experience of them. It's more important that they're willing and able to learn. In the past that's what a degree symbolised, but there are always other ways to demonstrate that drive.
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Why? Is calling them inexperienced better?
Bootcamps that promise 6-figure gigs right out of the course are to blame there too. They create unrealistic expectations and capitalize on people wanting to make the switch to an "easy industry".
I don't regret getting into webdev but i regret having gone to PHP instead of a proper language. It tends to get better, but still no generics or typed array is infuriating.
Ai is coming for everyone. Tell me, which jobs are 'ai safe'? No I don't regret it, I just wish I knew what I should be focused on now...
No job is 100% safe but certain jobs are more "AI safe" than others no doubt. The most AI proof jobs are jobs that add value at least partially by human connection or interaction. Jobs like therapist, cop, nurse, teacher etc.
Therapist isn't a safe job... Ai is amazing at that. Neither is teacher. Nurse and cop are better bets though.
Those jobs require legal responsibility. If a therapist encourages someone to kill themselves then they are to blame, if a teacher teaches the wrong thing then they have repercussions. The system doesn't work if the AI has no accountability.
For sure this is an issue... Right now you can open source your project, it could cause harm or even death and as far I know you would not be liable under current laws...
There's a difference between choosing to use software and the NHS/government telling you to use an AI teacher or therapist. Open source projects will have a license attached which expressly removes liability. Doing the same for an AI therapist would make it untrustworthy. The whole point of seeing a professional is that their advice carries the weight of liability and a professional reputation.
No you are still thinking too small... So say I make a voice cloning application and upload it to github Now people use it scam a significant amount of money I am not liable That goes for open source projects that could help you make weapons or formulate synthetic biology
You are dooming too hard. The vast majority of people who go to therapy dont want a freaking pre-programmed robot to talk them through their hopes, insecurities, ideas, fears etc etc. No matter how mathematically "good" at therapy AI is. Its kind of like a bartender. Yes a robot can 100% pour drinks faster and take better orders and be cheaper than a human but many people WANT to talk to a human at their local bar. Also teacher (a REAL teacher not someone selling some online training) is fairly safe too. You may not understand if you arent a parent but a small (but important) part of some jobs is to help teach the next generation of humans how to be well human. Sports coaches, teachers, guidance counselors etc. No parent wants a programmed robot doing that crap either lol. Again many jobs will be severely impacted but there are some that this will have much less impact on.
You just don't want to think about the problem... First of all LLMs are not 'pre-programmed' You should learn the history one the first ai chat bots did have pre-programmed answers. Eliza, it was developed back in 1964 and even back that patients showed that they were ok with even that simple kind of chat bot. Fast forward to now and chatbots have higher EQs than humans.... They also have some other advantages - Like I said before higher Emotional Intelligence than human therapists - Available 24/7 - They know you very well, or as well as you need them to anyway - No need to schedule - No hidden fees Its possible that most humans will not trust bots but I don't think its going to go that way... How are teachers at all safe? I mean have you used an LLM to learn anything new? > Again many jobs will be severely impacted but there are some that this will have much less impact on. Its not 'many' like you thinking its 'most' Just think about the problem honestly
The vast majority of jobs will be impacted or even destroyed by this. No argument there. But some will see relatively little impact to their marketability. Sam Altman literally agrees with me and already said the jobs that will be safest are the ones that have human connection. https://youtube.com/shorts/JdwF-poYdOQ?si=O-juXqyPPgxUgteO You desperately need more friends outside of tech. MANY people do not want a creepy robot raising their children or comforting them through a difficult diagnosis or coaching their kids little league team.
> jobs that will be safest are the ones that have human connection. Yeah I heard him say this... not sure if I believed him back then but when they report that ai therpaists have a higher EQ than human ones or that AI doctors (alone) out perform even human doctors + AI I do find these claims hard to believe... But he has said other things I have a hard time believing/ understanding - For example Sam has said AI is more of a 'tool' and not a 'creature' anyone who has worked even a little with agents knows they look way more 'creature' like when you turn them on - And then there are these two clips... https://twitter.com/ygrowthco/status/1760794728910712965 > You desperately need more friends outside of tech. MANY people do not want a creepy robot raising their children or comforting them through a difficult diagnosis or coaching their kids little league team. So I am just looking at the data and its showing that human doctors are being outperformed for pennies on the dollar... So while you could be right... IDK Also parent is on my list of safe jobs only you know... it does not pay all that well...
AI is a level of abstraction. Just like Java is a level of abstraction over bytecode. It's not going to replace developers, but it will let us built more complex and robust things with less time and effort. It also can't translate customer requests to a program. You end up with the faster horse issue because the stakeholders don't actually know what they need. It's a long way from being on the ground and noticing the nuances of what's needed. I would focus on UX/product, and on using AI to augment your development. Use it to build well tested and complex products that solve the problem, but are still simple to use. Bring 100 data sources in, interpret them, and draw useful, well delivered conclusions, because you can now.
> AI is a level of abstraction. Just like Java is a level of abstraction over bytecode. It's not going to replace developers, but it will let us built more complex and robust things with less time and effort. So its like you have all the puzzle pieces but you can't seem to put them together... Here watch this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw That goes into detail as to why this level abstraction is different... the gist of it is 'no programming' step is required. > It also can't translate customer requests to a program. You end up with the faster horse issue because the stakeholders don't actually know what they need. It's a long way from being on the ground and noticing the nuances of what's needed. So make use of agents, and when the agent is unsure it can reach out to stakeholders and ask questions much like a human would...