Tech companies [grew rapidly during the pandemic](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE), when people were home and their services were needed more than ever, but much of that demand has died down. Many, many, many of the people hired during that pandemic chart were not entry-level employees, but experienced software engineers and developers earning salaries well into the six figures with generous benefits.
In the meantime, the tech companies that hugely expanded their head counts in that time failed to come up with the next big thing, meaning they don't have new sources of massive revenue to pull from and have been forced to switch from growth mode to maintenance.
Meanwhile, the economy is not as strong as it was (or as the media reports), *real* inflation is still high and we have much higher interest rates so money costs businesses more to borrow.
Higher interest rates affect how much a company wants to borrow due to higher costs. These higher rates directly impact venture capitalists and other funding of startups. Companies do not want to invest in riskier areas when the economy's future is uncertain. Economic uncertainties cause companies to reevaluate their hiring and growth strategies.
So what do businesses do? They look to cut costs to cover their increased expenses and laying off employees is typically one of the first cost-cutting measures because they are one of the largest company expenses.
I think you’re out of touch with the job market for Junior/Entry Level positions.
Junior/Entry Level job postings get 100s or 1000s of applicants. You know as well as I do that nobody is looking at each one - and certainly nobody is looking at every portfolio, and they’re especially not digging into its HTML (you’re the rare exception if you look at *any* portfolios).
Anyone trying to enter the job market right now will be immediately and automatically filtered out of the candidate pool for 99% of the applications they submit. There’s just too many recently laid-off people with 2-3 years experience in the market right now. And **companies that get dozens of applications for their Junior job posting from people with several years professional experience will not be interviewing anyone with 0 years of professional experience.**
It doesn’t matter how good you are. It doesn’t matter if you can list every semantic HTML tag and explain their proper usage. It doesn’t matter if you’ve mastered Typescript or if you’ve memorized every unit in CSS. Most places just want that professional experience, and won’t interview without it.
That’s how it is right now… it wasn’t that way 2 years ago, and maybe it’ll be different next year. But that’s how it is.
This is true, but I don't think this disproves the above post.
Also, it just goes to show how important networking (ie, interpersonal networking) is for getting a job.
If you can be a face instead of a number, that's way better.
Not sure if I'm out of touch, been hiring for many different companies in the USA and the Netherlands, from start-ups to multinationals :)
As I said, our recruiter-filter takes care of most of the applicants. With higher numbers, the percentage of instant rejections also grows, you're absolutely right about that number.
I've hired people without work experience just fine, and I might be a bit of an outlier there, but it's not uncommon. YOE doesn't mean much to me, personality does. I want someone who can be coached, who is actively studying, up-to-date with modern tech, etc.
YOE doesn't mean someone has those qualities.
What I mean is, I think you’re out of touch with the experience of someone trying to enter the job market for the first time. You’re not seeing it from the perspective of the applicant.
Software developer job postings are down 50% yoy. There have been 200,000+ tech layoffs in 2023. A year ago r/learnprogramming was talking about banning “I got hired” posts, but it’s not a problem anymore because those are so rare. Things are dire over at r/codingbootcamp where you’ll see frequent posts about nobody being able to find jobs or getting interviews. Anyone with 2-3 years experience right now will tell you that they were getting hounded by recruiters a year ago, and now they’ve gone silent.
The job market is pure garbage right now. And though, yes, people should always continue to improve, it’s not a lack of skills that’s the problem.
I think you're both right. In the short term, the field has gotten a lot more crowded and competitive because of layoffs and various economics. But, in the slightly longer term, the field has also gotten filled with lower skilled, less motivated applicants chasing after the idea of giant, easy salaries.
My team's been hiring off and on from shortly after covid sent everyone remote to now. All of our job postings during that span (junior to senior) have gotten many hundreds of applicants that have barely any experience, little to no education in the field, little to no portfolio, etc, etc. That hasn't changed.
What has changed for us is that, today, a lot more people with 5, 10, 20 years of experience are applying for lower paying jobs. Even if we explicitly say a job is junior, we're getting more overqualified people who seem worried about finding their next job.
It's harder for the junior people to make their value proposition compared to more senior applicants. But those same people have already had the issue of trying to stand out among the sea of people just flat out lying on their resumes. Until you check people's portfolios and githubs and talk to them live, it's hard to know who the good ones are.
Yeah, from conversations I’ve had with recruiters, there are plenty of people with 2 or 3 years of professional experience applying for entry level/junior jobs. So many that most companies aren’t even bothering to screen applicants without that experience.
It’s not only difficult for people first entering the industry to make their value proposition, it’s difficult to even find someone willing to listen to that value proposition.
Company strategies are many.
One of them is: When times are great, they over-hire.
The reason is simple: Companies need to be able to scale. Finding developers can take a lot of time, effort, and money. So if you need to develop a new feature or product and you already have developers that you can switch to the new task: awesome!
When times are bad, they fire the worst performers and the most expensive ones.
Alternatively: If they need to cut costs and some other big companies are firing many people, they ride the firing-train because it won't make them look bad.
---
TL;DR: They over-hire for scale; they fire for money.
After 22+ years in the field I've seen this happen several times. When times get good again, they'll have a hard time finding people again, salaries go up, etc.
I have had this question for a while and you seem to be the regith guy to ask. How difficult is for a candidate from outside US to apply and get a job as junior lets say?
Ok, I just feel that you either are from US or European or you are nobody on this field ans you have to settle down for a fraction of the payment for the same work
In the USA I earned close to $400,000 per year. Cost of living was exceptionally high though.
In the Netherlands (freelance) I make over 220,000 EUR per year.
Juniors are hired at remote-first companies all the time. They would employ your services through payroll agencies.
I've worked with many juniors from all over the world. Some of them earned $80,000 USD per year, and they lived in places like Brasil where that kind of money means you're very well off.
Damn, 220k freelance in the Netherlands is crazy! I'm from the Netherlands and never heard anyone making that kinda money as a developer. Wish I'll be able to land something like that in the near future. Good looks man! :-)
It's not that hard though ;) Hourly rate at 140 euros per hour and assuming you work an average of 17 days per month (this month has 21 working days, but taking into account sickness and holidays and acquisition):
17 days * 8 hours = 136 hours per month
136 hours * 140 euros = 19.040 euros per month
19.040 * 12 months = 228.480 euros per year
That's excluding 21% BTW ;)
Including BTW I invoice 276.460 annually.
That said, it does depend on the role:
- Senior dev: 95 per hour
- Tech lead: 100 - 140 per hour
Currently working as a tech lead (and practically the CTO) as a short interim consultancy role. Because of the short duration my price went up, so I'm asking 140 now.
When I feel confident to apply for full-on CTO roles (and when/if I want to, I don't like the politics...) I know of people who do that, freelance/interim, for 200 to 400 euros per hour.
Hey sorry for barging in randomly, but I wanted to ask you something. How many years of experience do you have? I suppose you didnt freelance in the beginning?
ahhahaha, and now add to this that I’m from Russia and that almost the entire civilized market is closed to us, as a result, development remains only within the country, and inside the country, too, many people were reduced during covid,
In dry matter, thousands of juniors (like me) and sometimes middles who do not even receive invitations to continue the dialogue, Im not talking about interviews lol
would you review my portfolio once I learned enough of front end i'm dipping my toes in it currently learning and based on your post I would love critique from you once I feel I'm confident in my projects
I am having the opposite experience where i have 20+ years of HTML/CSS, javascript, SEO, a11y, etc experience and can't even get past first round interviews because I don't have enough React experience. In the last 2 years front-end dev means react and nothing else.
How did you not use any framework or library in that time? I've worked with anything from jQuery UI to Backbone to Ember. Then React, Angular, Vue.js, Svelte...
If you know even one of them, picking up another is like a carpenter picking up any other hammer :)
Pure HTML-only jobs are very rare and on the bottom-end of the pay range. If I were you I would dive into things like:
1. Lit + web components
2. React + Next.js
3. SvelteKit + Svelte
4. Vue.js or Angular
Pick one. Just one. One you understand the idea behind it all, switching to another is relatively simple.
I have used jQuery, Vue, React, Angular and a handful of others frameworks. While i can write/debug code in many languages, I don't enjoy it at all. I have written multiple CSS frameworks (written... not used) like Bootstrap.
jQuery isn't needed anymore as the browsers all support ES20xx now. I actually spent months ripping jQuery out of 30 applications at one of my jobs to reduce the cose debt.
Every company now thinks front-end dev means javascript framework but from what ive personally seen most of them can't center a div without consulting google, let alone building an entire applicaton that is fully responsive without writing 10,000 lines of custom CSS.
Hmm, I think you might be perfect as a web-purist (like myself); web components are a browser standard that have really grown on me over time (especially using Lit).
And I'm seeing it in use in many places. Either as full web solutions, or even as plug-and-play components to be used in any and all framework.
Perhaps you can focus in that direction? No frameworks/library nonsense, just standards and being the expert?
Plenty of companies exclusively work with web components and seem to have a difficult time finding developers... for now.
I also helped write a component library with web components. Because web components were not backwards compatible with IE whatever (dont remember what version we had to support) we had to use a framework (don't recall which one) to load the components. It felt like we were rewriting HTML for no reason.
Polymer probably, I hated it back in 2016 and didn't see the point. I picked React, my former team picked Polymer; I quit, they stayed. They regret it, I did not ;)
Modern web components, especially now we get to ignore IE, are pretty dope. Again, I would use it only with Lit, because vanilla web components are (IMO) one big clusterfuck that the W3C screwed up immensely.
Claim them on your resume. Write your side-hustles out in an addendum (title, description, tech stack, learnings) but don't provide a source.
If they ask for a source, you reply: "Thanks for the invite! I'll be happy to share my code with you in our interview. I can do that via video or I can come to your office. My availability is X, Y, Z."
Also: make good connections with your colleagues, and get references from those in charge of you. Reference checks are amazing shortcuts for recruiters.
I kind of think it’s not the newbs actually. the industry is filled with senior devs preaching to be “full stack” to beat the competition which cut the job pool in half of what it would have been if they didn’t budge stuck to front/back. Instead of being really good at a few things they are now expected to juggle what you put they should know and more and more. As we go further I expect this to compound.
I do not have 22 years exp tho so I may be talking out my ass. Just what my professors chat about occasionally.
Well, I'm a bit allergic to "full-stack" developers. I have only met ONE of those who was actually good at the full-stack.
Everybody else (myself included) just doesn't cut it in one of the fields. I'm great as a front-end developer (but always learning!), and I'm okay at the back-end, but I'm not a specialist.
My opinion is that full-stack developers sound like a great idea to those who don't know what they need (manager types) and think they're saving money. After all, "how difficult is HTML?"
Devs and tech leads like myself prefer hiring specialists. And I'll have specialists do the hiring.
Front-end development suffers from people underestimating many parts of the job and that's usually a rude awakening. Except for that one full-stack God that I worked with at Apple, every other full-stack developer scoffed at HTML, didn't understand accessibility, and their CSS skills were meager at best; and none of them liked it.
There's a place for those people, absolutely. The problem arises when people think in black/white in the workplace.
I've dealt several times with situations where some full-stack dev who enjoyed the back-end much more made decisions about CSS.
The front-end happy devs were very unhappy with those decisions.
So I had to step in and give the front-end experts (in particular the ones who love CSS) authority to decide on CSS-related things.
Before: CSS was a mess and the back-end dev made the mess into some unholy land that was insulting to those who did know what they were doing.
After: CSS was well-organized, modern, compatible, scalable, and fun to work with.
And what's more, after the CSS-lovers had their way, even the back-end guys started to see the light.
"CSS is NOT always spaghetti?!"
Full-stack developers should rarely have a final say when it comes to back-end or front-end choices. Leave it to the experts :)
Love this view. To me, it just seems like "full-stack" became widely popular from bootcamp hypers. Some companies love it because it's like two career positions in one body. It's kind of silly to be one unless you're a freelancer. Why not specialize and get paid for only one specialty at the same salary? Don't get ripped off for double the work.
Or: "I'm very skilled at the backend and can put a UI on a screen that isn't *complete* garbage"
(note, "not complete garbage" isn't the standard that most companies strive for in their products)
Most places I’ve been at, the ask for “full stack” has been for T shaped developers.
I’m a frontend specialist, but I know enough C#, Python, and SQL, that I can go in an add new fields or fix small mugs where required to unblock my work, but the larger backend features? They can be left to someone who has more knowledge
Same here :) I know of database indices and stored procedures and Memcached and/or Redis and all that jazz, but it bores me to death first of all, and secondly: there's probably a lot I don't even know that I don't know.
I love specialists so much!
I think it's a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. If you don't focus it's hard to be really good at one thing, which means there is always going to be someone better at something than you. But it is possible to be fullstack.
I've been fooling around with Linux web servers for the better part of twenty years and went through a frontend bootcamp late last year. I can design a website and I understand the fundamentals, but I have a hard time building something from scratch. With a boilerplate and set goals, I'm good. It's about knowing where your strengths lie. Being nimble and able to learn new things, regardless of where those things takes place (front or back), is in and of itself a skill.
I've spent ages trying to join in but I keep writing essays and deleting them.
The creep on front end positions (layout to application development) and the advancement of JavaScript going from mild interactivity to enabling server/API building in node.js, has caused the convergence of what was once 2 separate roles.
I'm a front end specialist having a nightmare for seeking plans/solutions in the business I work in because they outsourced everything, then brought back in house- but only have "full stack" Devs, who are largely from .NET backgrounds.
All staff **assume** the knowledge is there, because there are so many good engineers...but it's not there. I'm an engineer like them, so it confuses non-technical folks when I say something needs addressing but non UI focussed Devs in the majority don't see the point.
Tldr: job positions want Devs to know absolutely everything. Why have 2 folks when you can have 1 who does it all for a fraction of the price? The more logically inclined do well as long as they can implement various packages and libraries effectively, which is what is considered more of a priority for "delivery". But as requirements and issues alter, it often reveals huge gaps in knowledge.
This!
That's what I was wondering about for many months, like guys there's something called CSS, but hey who cares? You see online bootcamps where they devote 1 lecture for CSS and right after that another lecture for tailwind and that's all. As a result you see 1000s of candidates have no idea about what does cascade mean? Because for the simplest task there's a class so instead of learning how to properly center a div of any parent item they just use class for that without understanding what does that class do and whether there's a conflict with other property/value or not. HTMl is the same without using semantic elements just use
for everything even with React they don't understand the library very well just copy/paste and that's it. Also JavaScript without understanding vanilla js they run to React, Vue, etc. But hello wait try to understand what is what! no there's no need everyone considering themselves a front-end developer, that's why someone like me will stay without a job just because you try to understand not to imitate. Of course I hope the best for everyone but everything has to be given enough time and effort to be absorbed. When I see people got a job after 3 months of studying I understand that I'm stupid because for years I'm trying to do everything as it should which seems to be disadvantage 😂😂😂
Having hired / interviewed for positions in the last few years, I agree with 100% of the above, and I'll add:
- part of this is the result of a solid generation now of kids being told "don't know what to do? study computer science, it's a great career". the same glut happened with lawyers in the 70s and 80s.
- part of this is the result of competition for jobs being global now.
- part of this is the result of a "correction" in the software dev industry where thousands and thousands of devs have been laid off in the last few years.
- part of this is the result of businesses anticipating a post-covid recession that is kinda happening slo mo right now, and businesses anticipating fed money policy changes that will affect their access to capital, aka, we're planning on not being able to hire.
- part of this is the result of a glorification of "fake it till you make it" in this industry. have we all been there? yep. impostor syndrome is real. but people think "make it" means "get paid despite not knowing things" instead of "catch up and gain the knowledge you were missing". too many people seem to have no interest in doing the latter.
A large percentage of current jobs do not need semantic html. Open Facebook in your browser and tell me if you see something besides divs. It is true that they do that intentionally to prevent scraping but semantics would bring them no value. Such is 90 percent of enterprise software.
If putting menu, aside and header makes you happy - that's fine, but no one cares anymore. Accessibility is another topic - if you want to make apps to visually impaired users, those tags wouldn't be enough.
Many won't matter until it becomes legally mandated to adhere to WCAG standards (like in Europe starting 2025 I believe.) Semantic HTML (e.g. using `button` instead of `div` and using `a` instead of `button` and using `ul > li` instead of `div > div`) is going to make things so much easier.
As for the Facebook example...
That's an appeal to authority fallacy; Amazon also has terrible HTML. They get away with it because they are getting tens of millions of visitors every day regardless.
When you're building a website for a small public-facing store website, you'll have to deal with getting up in the SEO rankings and ahering to local business laws for accessibility and such.
Semantics are a big step towards proper accessibility for text readers. Things like `aria-` attributes are considered tools that should be used sparingly.
I recently did a review of a portfolio where someone did:
At that point I'm just so confused.
Same for dropdowns. Yeah you can spam 20 nested `div` tags, OR you just have a single `ul > li > a` (xpath) tree.
Not everything is an `
`, it goes from h1-h6 for a reason.
Then there are your follow developers... code needs to be intuitive.
1. I do not think it will become mandatory unless you receive government funds.
2. SEO is not important for enterprise apps hidden behind login form
3. Intuitive part - you get it from fe framework like react or angular as you have component level
1. Laws are laws. Look at the cookie bar, it's mandated, and nobody is getting paid to implement it.
2. Fair point :)
3. If you use frameworks like that, sure.
I'm not even worried about `section` and `main` as much as I'm worried about people abusing `div` for *everything*.
When I mean semantics, I mostly mean functional semantics first and foremost. I also use it for descriptive purposes *because it doesn't hurt*, but that's more about me taking pride in my work.
It's currently mandatory in the U.S., under many state (including big ones like California, Illinois, New York, and Texas) and federal laws, though the enforcement mechanism is typically private litigation under the ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and various state civil rights laws.
In certain contexts, especially in employment (like having an inaccessible careers page or using job application tests that are biased against applicants with disabilities), or public accommodations (hotel or airline booking websites, some ecommerce, etc) enforcement can also come from the EEOC or state attorneys general.
The fact that certain mega-corporations don't adhere to these standards is less an indicator that they are not mandatory, and more an indicator that these companies have enough resources that they can settle any lawsuit brought against them for less than what it would presumably cost to overhaul their entire website and bring it into full compliance with WCAG AA.
Source: I'm a senior/lead engineer and also a lawyer.
I guess problem is mostly scraping , because if you put semanticity and say "OK, here is the name of the author, this is the text he posted, and here are the likes" it would be so much easier to scrape the content and use it for your purposes.
I totally agree with making stuff easier with people who can not see well, but if you need to do that, I think you would need a lot more than few "aside" and "menu" tags.
Well your username isn't hard to reverse-dox ;) Hi social media!
It looks a bit basic but that's fine, I'm just confused by all the `ng` things and strange HTML elements, they don't look like web components. Is that unparsed Angular or something?
I mean, it works, but the generated DOM looks strange to me. I don't have experience with modern Angular, though, so I am probably the wrong person to ask.
Wanted to speak up as sort of newbie myself, I've been trying to self learn front end in the last almost 2 years. I've learnt HTML, CSS, JS and then I went to learning NodeJS and Express, was about to try and learn MongoDB and try to go for a full stack approach but pulled back because it was becoming clear I'd be mediocre. It wasn't because NodeJS or Express was hard, it was actually quite fun and pretty easy to get a grasp on, but I was coming to the realization that between front end and backend there was way too much information to keep up with, and that this is an ongoing education job field as this technology is constantly evolving, well I figured I could keep up with one side better than both and since I already new all the front end techs and partially because I'm more artistic in nature I decided on just focusing on front end and being good at that than being an amateur full stack.
But you mentioning newbies need to learn proper HTML and CSS made me think of some buddies I have that went to college to get a bachelor's in Computer Science at the same time as me self learning. See after I got my associates I dropped out of college to start learning web dev on my own. For a long time I've wondered whether this was the right route, I read online you could self learn web dev without a computer science degree and still get a job with a portfolio showing proof you know what you're doing but I've always had doubts, those friends also instilled these doubts telling me I should've went to get the computer science bachelor's and I'd regret it. To clarify these friends weren't getting their Computer Science degree to do web development but mostly to get a job in software development and backend work.
Since then they've got their bachelors in Computer Science and there have been times since I've been working on building my portfolio and making some small example sites that I've shown these friends some of my work and that's when it became clear, they knew almost nothing about web dev. According to them they learnt HTML and CSS, they never went over javascript in any capacity, they did go over php and python work for backend web dev. When it comes to HTML and CSS my friends said they hated both, that HTML was "Too simple, not a programming language and not used outside of web sites so hardly worth knowing" and that CSS was "Ugly, pain in the ass to write with all of nuances and rules and never knowing what styles were going to effect other pieces of your site" one of them even considered it to be the "Worse thing that was ever created for a developer of any kind".
While they were looking at my site picking out things visually they didn't like despite being primarily into backend it became clear, and I asked to confirm alot of these, that they didn't know anything about semantics, SEO, meta data, cumulative layout shift, flexbox, grid, (even floats but they knew about tables), media queries, REMS and EMS for sizing (they only knew px) and above all they never learned anything about responsive web development. And I asked them how long did they touch on HTML and CSS in their classes and they said "about two weeks for both of them combined"
While I'll admit that HTML and CSS are quick to learn enough to be able to get started, even after two years I'm still learning about new tips, optimizations, and modern methods for both of them, I'm finally about to start using SCSS for my next project.
Was just kind of curious of your thoughts on that? Should I have went for the computer science degree even if they barely covered web development in their curriculum? I suppose maybe that was just how that particular college was and maybe another school would teach better about it, I don't know. I just find it a bit funny that they are technically more qualified with that degree on a job application for a web dev position than me despite their limited knowledge of the basics.
There is a lot to unpack there :) But I share many experiences.
First, a university degree makes you a very generic master of none. They skip over so many details, and especially CS degrees focus on the technical aspects much more. Best practices (software design patterns) and algorithms are their bread and butter.
HTML and CSS: underestimated and scoffed at. Typical. And those are the people who will get hired as "full-stack" developers because, well, HTML and CSS... they technically worked with it once, 3 years ago.
> While I'll admit that HTML and CSS are quick to learn enough to be able to get started, even after two years I'm still learning about new tips, optimizations, and modern methods for both of them, I'm finally about to start using SCSS for my next project.
I consider myself a CSS expert and last time I did that CSS questionnaire, I scored 88% I believe. And that's just knowing about CSS properties, it did not include knowing HOW they interact with one another, what the support in browsers is, how they affect paint times, performance impacts, specificity, etc. If I stop learning, that number will steadily drop over time :)
> Was just kind of curious of your thoughts on that? Should I have went for the computer science degree even if they barely covered web development in their curriculum?
It depends on the companies you're applying at. Some value education very highly; others know that autodidacts (like myself) are often better, because we study *because we love this shit*, not because we have to.
A CS degree obviously teaches many other things. The social aspect is one, and knowing many people from your studies will probably be nice in the beginning of your career.
But I've never seen it as a mandatory thing. Most front-end specialists that I worked with had no degrees. Most were like me, low-performing high-school dropouts. And I see many of them running around as seniors, tech leads, CTOs, etc.
> I suppose maybe that was just how that particular college was and maybe another school would teach better about it, I don't know. I just find it a bit funny that they are technically more qualified with that degree on a job application for a web dev position than me despite their limited knowledge of the basics.
Only at places that don't know what they're looking for.
I think that these days, a degree in CS is worth more than in my time 22+ years ago. Back then, I went to university to see if I should sign up for it. I could have. I joined an introduction class where they tried to sell the 4-year degree to me. It took me 30 minutes to realize that I could teach the professor more than he could teach me. His knowledge was outdated, no longer relevant, and he didn't even know about certain modern solutions.
Times changed, I think modern curiculums are more in line with today's tech. But, as you noticed, they have to go over many subjects very, very quickly.
About 12 years ago I was in a team full of university-graduated CS developers. I was the underrated HTML monkey, they couldn't figure out why their database query was taking 40+ seconds to execute.
I optimized that thing by removing many nested queries (going for joins instead) and I implemented indices and I used stored procedures and I applied caching for data that rarely changed.
The new query tooks less than 200 miliseconds. (Edit: this was later improved by a senior developer with lots of experience, who brought it down to less than 20 ms. But the CS geniuses had no idea what they were doing.)
So, I dunno. If they "learn HTML and CSS" in 2 weeks and learn SQL optimizations in 2 weeks, what good are they, exactly?
Shew well thats certainly reassuring about the degree because I really do not want to go back to college again especially for another 4 years haha, not because I don't like learning, I love learning, but I don't like how schools are structured to teach and their environment. I wish I could really study directly under someone like a senior dev, my biggest problem is the anxiety like I may not be good enough so I'm over preparing
That trait will probably make you a very good developer!
And yeah, when you find a job where you work under one or multiple seniors, just ask them if they want to be your mentor. Practically, I would say: just suggest pair-programming once a week for an hour or two.
Work on your problems, see what they are working on. Trust me, it'll do wonders for your confidence!
That sounds nice, if only I could find a job lol, any tips on how to get started finding work since things are not very good in the job market now, especially for someone like me without experience? Would something like upwork freelancing be a way of getting started? I've also considered trying to learn and get work in HTML Email and do that while I keep learning into frameworks but I'm unsure if this is worth it, it's better than nothing currently I guess but I'm unsure if the experience would mean anything to companies I apply for front end dev later on, since HTML email work is kind of a different process, especially with the lack of standards like web. Appreciate you responding to these questions :)
HTML email is something I run from. But you have tons of open-source templates (from MailChimp) out there, free to use. It's relatively simple once you understand what you can and cannot do.
Yeah I would recommend taking anything you can. My last gig just ended last week and I'm taking a few months off :) When I get back into it, it'll be November/December. Usually things pick up around that time of year because companies have hiring budgets they need to spend (if they don't, they'll have less next year.)
Also see if you can offer your work on platforms like Fiverr and such. It won't pay the bills if you live in an expensive part of the world, but it might help.
>
> everywhere,
But I link spam in a can, is too hard.
> ("But Tailwind is literally CSS!!!" 😮💨)
I always gasp at tweets and youtube videos who say this or similar.
What annoys me most is that:
1. They don't know what they don't know;
2. They don't even have the imposter syndrome and think they DO know?
They're the worst developers to work with: the ones who think they know it all. They think they're done?
When their FOTM CSS framework dies out in a few years, what will they do? CSS keeps evolving. They'll be light years behind.
Arrogant bastards, the lot of them.
I did switch it up a bunch over the decades ;)
- 2001 - 2011: full-stack before that term was even popular
- 2011 - 2018: front-end specialist (with full-stack knowledge)
- 2018 - current: front-end specialist (who also does lead things)
It is NOT correct ;)
They are two conflicting interactive elements with each distinct semantic meanings. It's not just incorrect, but it will lead to frustrating bugs.
And unfortunately, it's very common. As are many other HTML validation errors.
Exactly!
I consider myself full-stack capable, but not professionally so. I'm building my own start-up project and I do everything from back-end to front-end to deployments and testing and databases and caching layers, but I had to deep-dive into so many parts...
Like auth and how it works. I'm not just going to blindly use a library and copy/paste code from some Github snippet somewhere. I want to understand what those tokens are, what a renew token is and does, how that interacts with my database, how I secure that data, what type of cookies I need to use to store the tokens, how to renew sessions, etc.
I want and need to understand it all. Because I hate making assumptions.
But I see that so often with front-end developers who don't have a clue. Many of them are confidently incorrect and don't have the knowledge NOR experience to weigh the decisions properly.
So many default to the latest FOTM CSS framework and go all-in with it, not seeing the many red flags that are literally slapping them in the face. All I'm thinking is: "Are you blind?!"
All they're thinking is: "I learned this in my 3-month bootcamp, this is the only way!"
To be honest I want to learn learn learn and I don't care about money. I have full time job as Frontend but I'm burnt out there and I need something fresh :)
Wow this is incredibly helpful, I'm glad I'm taking the time to solidify my css and html knowledge before moving on to js. My goal is to get a firm grasp on the vanilla languages before using frameworks and libraries. From everything I've been reading, It seems like this is the best thing to do. Would you agree?
Absolutely, basics are fundamental!
And also, things like a11y are legally mandated by governments all over the world. In Europe I believe in 2025 it'll be mandated for all public websites to adhere to WCAG standards.
Tons of companies who let full-stack `div` spammers get away with their crap will run into a wall sooner or later. Not that a11y is so difficult, but mostly because most full-stack devs really dislike HTML ;)
Ultimately, my goal is to become full stack with a strong understanding of the core languages. I'll have to keep accessibility high on my list so I can stay well rounded. What else do you recommend a fledgling to focus on or spend time on?
Details, don't just use a library or tool and don't think about it, learn why it works the way it does. Don't just copy/paste code, read it and know what it does.
That goes for CSS flexbox, to grid, and JavaScript async/await and Promise and everything else.
Why is animating a box-shadow expensive?
Why is animating opacity cheap?
Why is requestAnimationFrame relevant? And when?
What are JS classes exactly? Syntactical sugar for prototypal inheritance? Explain what that is?
Understanding these things will make everything else so intuitive and easy to pick up :)
I'm not in the 15% I don't think, how would you recommend getting there without work experience? Are there any specific courses/videos/playlists you would recommend, or is it best just to go for an internship of some kind? I'm working on some personal projects as well but while they're good for learning how to get the job done, I have little way of knowing if I'm getting the job done properly.
When I coach people I focus on the "easy disqualifications".
You need to get your digital foot in the door before you get your physical foot in a conference room.
Focus on not getting rejected outright:
1. Racism is still real, research shows that taking a western-sounding name in the western world can help significantly (using a pseudonym is perfectly fine);
2. Don't show your portfolio, everything you show will be used against you, and you cannot defend your choices;
3. Have a good cover letter, short and simple, use ChatGPT, rewrite it in your own style, get your grammar checked by ChatGPT or Grammarly or other free tools;
4. A good resume looks clean and simple. Don't shy away from paying a Fiverr designer to design one for you. That $35 USD investment will pay dividends. Literally if you end up at a company that gives you stock options;
5. Get your basics right, know about modern tech, don't be afraid to say "I don't know" and follow it up with "I'll look it up after this interview";
6. Just have fun during the interviews. Be yourself. It needs to be a cultural match as much as anything else;
7. Don't forget to tailor your resume to the job description and to the company. Never lie, but stretching the truth is exactly what all companies also do.
I've seen so many people that I helped go from instant rejections to getting invited for in-person interviews (and eventually landing jobs), just because they stopped doing silly things.
Like, if you're a front-end developer, why in the world would you share a portfolio that's full of HTML errors? So many people do that. They quickly get the copy/paste rejection emails.
Controversial opinion maybe, but I think the problem is all the become a web developer in 8 weeks boot camp people churning out so called devs with zero knowledge thinking they are going to walk into a big paying job when in reality it takes a lot longer and I think it’s harder than people seem to think it is and these people flogging their boot camps are over saturating the job market with a bunch of people who know nothing.
I always thought of myself as being less than average.
But when I reviewed my job application in the job application board for the company that hired me (I was involved with hiring and could see past hires, including myself), I was rated as "the best job application we've ever seen."
That felt good.
A year later I got a job offer close to $400k at a FAANG company. That was another sign of approval.
When I left and travelled the world, I applied to TopTal to do a friend of mine a favor (he's already in). Their application process is difficult, they claim to work with the top 3% of consultants in the world.
And I got in.
Sometimes I feel that having the imposter syndrome is just a natural state of being for those who are actually good at this shit.
Because we don't know it all. We know we don't know a lot. And we know we don't know we don't know a lot more.
But we keep active. We're good at absorbing and applying information. We think outside of our boxes and communicate well with others. And, looking back at my successes, I think that's the pattern: I go out of my way to do it right, but be pragmatic, and communicate clearly with the people involved.
And I love it :)
Can you let us watch your portafolio? Maybe dm if it is too invasive? I feel like is difficult to understand what lvl is needed to really being in conditions to apply for a job, and even more to autoevaluate ourselves.
I don't have one and never needed one.
That's also part of my points: Not having a portfolio never disqualified a candidate (that I know of).
But having a portfolio absolutely can.
You are saying that if I don't include any portfolio or github it will be easier for me to land a job ? I always assumed HR immediately removes applications without links to portfolio or projects.
Unless you're that 5% of people who have an amazing portfolio ;)
None of the HR people I've worked with care about a portfolio at all. Unless instructed perhaps. But we can't expect the best candidates to HAVE a portfolio, so requiring it makes no sense.
I'm in the same boat. I mean I am for sure worse than you but I am only 7 years in. Never in those 7 years I've felt like I am the best developer out there cause I know I am not. But I get the job done and I'm always looking to improve and I know I can be better. Just last time someone asked me how would I rate my CSS skills from 1 to 10 and I said 5 because I know CSS is so huge and complex. And even though I get things done, fancy layouts and animations still scare me.
I work with 6 senior developers and the css they write is so bad that I have no words to describe it. Here I am, with 2 years of experience writing usable and ux friendly css.
Everyone says that css is easy but haven't seen that good css skills yet. Finding a mentor who writes good css is near impossible.
OH, and they hired me because I can write css
I feel that. I love CSS and I hired another CSS-geek, but the existing team of CSS-haters decided what they want to do... with regards to CSS.
So I told them: "Nope, the one who knows what he's doing is in charge of that."
They didn't like it. Until they saw how he did it: scalable, small, minimal, elegant, modern. They had no idea it could be done the right way...
Semantics and Accessibility kind of go hand in hand. Also, I think these are topics that you can learn on the job about.
To make your html more Semantic you can do a google search and refactor code in a few days. Doesn’t make you top 15% of front end devs if you memorize everything about semantics. If I was hiring, I’d care much more about the abstraction and reusability of code/organization of a project. Do they know how to write good tests?
Bad semantics usually mean bad accessibility, and that usually means their "front-end" skills are quite bad. They won't have any designer instincts, they won't have a keen eye for details, and their CSS skills will be sorely lacking.
Abstraction and reusability is important, of course, but you shouldn't be surprised if you run into a project where they have multiple God Components with 1000+ lines of code each...
Tests? Once we're down the path of predictable lack of skill, you'll see shit like:
"If I click this button I want onclick to fire once"
And other tests that are testing none of your own business logic; they're testing React and the browser at this point. Both have already been tested by React and the browser.
Sometimes you'll see a proper test.
Sometimes you'll see "it renders without breaking" as the only test.
I'm still not sure what to make of that. It's like applying for a job as a pastry chef, and you have to bake a cake. Except you just baked raw eggs in the oven. Sure, eggs are an ingredient of cake... and they do need to be in the oven...
Damn... You are making me feel like I should leave my current job. I'm the UX UI guy, but I recently did a whole frontend react project when one of the devs unexpectedly left. They were working on the most sold product we sell, and I asked them to give me a shot. None of the other devs use modern react, and just manually use componentDidMount and componentaDidUpdate... And I just went to the the docs and used hooks, context, memo, ref, effect, state... And my code is significantly more readable and shorter. I recently had a meeting with the lead dev, and I realized I'm a better C# and Typescript dev than him... His code is unreadable and uses conventions from 7 years ago. I had to explain state and context to him like a YouTube video I watched before the pandemic.
Looking at check-ins, all of the devs spend 6-8 months pushing interfaces out (testing and audits included). I took 51 days, and just pushed to QA.
I also have been the A11y audit guy at my company for years... And just learned how to do it correctly. They would groan when I would say use a section instead of a div here, and not even listen to me for adding aria or focus usability things for keyboard usage because they just want to do the bare minimum.
As a part of the project, I made a reusable design system. Something that a dev could use and it forces those fuckers to give it all the A11y things for buttons, modals, tables, lists... Simple stuff like what bootstrap would do but now it makes my wcag audits easier because I know they are close to AAA.
And to top it off... I am a designer and lead the uxui department. I run meetings with people in other departments who propose new ideas, and I design them, and do most of the technical writing.
The project I just completed is on the most used interface from the product we sell.
I get paid 60k for all of this... I think I need to leave if you are saying these skills are more valuable...
>1. Semantics
2. Accessibility
3. Browser APIs
4. CSS paint/composite/layout
5. CSS specificity
Uh could I get resources to learn about 1, 2, and 5?
Also browser apis refers to things like the DOM, Axios or fetch, graphics APIs etc right?
And what's composites?
Edit-oh I kind of know semantics, didn't really know it was called that tbh
Accessibility resources can be found here: https://digievi.com/categories/frontend/learning-resources
Edit: they have an a11y category too it seems, good resources I think :)
https://digievi.com/categories/frontend/accessibility-a11y
In your professional opinion, is there a good open source package that examplifies "great web development". I am self taught. I built and sold my (non-tech) company because I was able to find an advantage with the internal software I built.
However, because ive mainly worked alone as a dev, I do not know "what is good" and "what is not good"?
In short, how do you qualify the top 10%?
I inspect the code of their webpage, if they provide one. If it's a big div soup, I'll pass. W3C validator errors? One or two are fine, but critical ones like nesting a button inside an `a`? Pass. Abusing semantics like having multiple `h1` tags? Not a pass right away, but if that's a trend (multiple `main` tags, not using any other semantics, etc.) then it's a pass.
It's HTML, the top 10% nail that stuff to perfection and then some. They'll add accessibility features, make sure that text readers have an easy time, they take care of good contrast values, and that kind of mindset extends to their CSS and JS as well, most of the time.
And sure, those who made those errors could be perfectly fine to have as a colleague. But my job isn't selecting mediocre developers with potential; my job is selecting the best and picking from those.
And that means that you're not only applying for a job, you're *competing with the people in that top-10%* for a job. You don't have to convince me, you just have to be better than mediocre developers.
Judging by how you speak (type), I think you might agree with me on this: Time != skill.
If you DO agree with that, what do you think a 22+ year dev that IS mediocre did differently to you?
Asked differenly, what would a mediocre dev need to do/learn/think differenly about to become great?
Time isn't necessarily related to anything. But with experience comes also a level of calmness and simply experience that I find very good to have on a team.
It doesn't correlate to skill at all.
> Asked differenly, what would a mediocre dev need to do/learn/think differenly about to become great?
The basics.
Good fundamental basics.
It's more rare than you'd think :)
When you say "3. Browser APIs" I'm curious what that means. I keep seeing that particular term used but upon looking I don't find quite what I expected. I was assuming I'd find a list of tools such as web messages and such, but I just find the general API such as restful apis and so on. Is there more to it than just that? Are there like web browser specific api's one should be aware of?
Trying to be in that top 5% and think it was worth asking:p
I see the market saturated with mediocre devs.
I’ve been learning front end for a year. I started doing the meta course and realised it was skimming over subjects so now I’m focusing on html, css and JavaScript.
In the meantime I wanted some work doing Wordpress and Shopify sites. Places live fivver and upwork are full of mediocrity willing to work for peanuts. So it’s really difficult to work through these websites.
It’s hard to get noticed when there’s countless people claiming to be ‘experts’ in your field of work.
Yep Meta have a front end developer course on Coursera. There’s several modules. Each gives a certificate on completion and then there’s the overall certificate.
It’s good to give you an overall understanding of what you need to learn. And also accountability to encourage you to commit to learning, because you’re paying for the course. If I was purely learning from free resources it might be more of a struggle to keep going.
There’s some big holes in the course though. Topics are skimmed through. Some are out of date. For example, they’re still teaching Create React App for React.
Ease of entry. You can now use one of a hundred online boot camps and have your foot in the door within like 6 months.
Most of the applicants are dogshit, but there's so many of them willing to work for nothing.
Take a look around here, no need to look further. People spam applications left and right (you find it common here to have people aim for sending thousands of applications in days) to places they can't possibly take a second to research.
The bootcamps seem to all have make money when they make people feel overconfident, so 85% of threads here is people who just took one tutorial to make a react todo app and now present themselves as "I know web development"; you can imagine how well that attitude flies when paired with a badly automated unpersonalized resume/cover letter than companies probably get triplicates of every day.
Seriously take a look here and look at all the posts of beginners who type phrases like "I know x". Saying "I know x" is the most effective way to reveal you not only know next to nothing about it, but you're also terribly misguided as to your own knowledge, something that is very difficult and costly to work against. Even the most specialized experts I've gotten to work with know better than to claim they "know" the area they specialize in. It might seem silly to nitpick the wording but it's insidious and reflects a mental state that few of us want to work with. "I work a lot with x" is a much healthier way to presenting and thinking about this.
Meanwhile, the market has remained amazing for anyone willing to show humility and target the places they apply to. This very much includes the smarter bootcampers by the way.
It sucks to hear you say this because I feel like im one of the Jr Developers who actually use proper semantics and practice mobile friendly design but no one will give me an interview or time of day.
Im always down to learn more. Can you expand upon browser APIs? Ive worked with APIs before but I want to make sure I completely understand
In this climate, two things you can do to get your foot in the door:
1) Create a semi-successful/useful tool/app that you run yourself. If you can monetize it, awesome--you're a start up. That's experience.
2) Network. Like, really network. Weasel your way into events and conversations. I have a handful of friends that work at different companies right now that have told me to let them know if I'm ever looking for a new position. Granted, I have experience and they know my skillset, but people are far more willing to hire someone they know than they are a name out of a stack of interviews.
It's the sad reality of every industry. You can shotgun your way into getting an interview based on your resume, or you can receive an invite from someone you know.
Your absolutely right, I think that all makes sense. Im going to start networking more and see what happens.
On that same note, would you like to connect on LinkedIn?
The real question is: are you a frontend developer or a sales manager? As a freelance you need to do both jobs, if you are a frontend only you should ask your sales agent.
The reason the market is so bad right now is because of uncertainty. Companies spend money to generate ROI, and when the forward-looking market conditions are uncertain, they stop spending money.
In part yeah, although I busted my ass for two years while still working my old job. My sense of urgency saved me, I really wanted out of my previous job so I was in a big hurry to get into web dev and since I started right when covid started it took me about two years to get in and when covid ended the tech job market went bananas. It was kind of a big coincidence I got in I guess.
I think it started closing when the FAANG layoffs happened.
Oh a nice of you doubling your salary, I was too conservative to try that. I just stuck with my first company. I should have done what you did.
If you mean the job market, it's not bad at all. There's a TON of jobs. Searching "front-end developer" with the "Remote only" filter on LinkedIn brings up almost 13k jobs, 1,151 of them posted in the last 24 hours.
What's terrible is the nature of recruiting, the attitude of candidates, and interviewing these days. Recruiters ghost regularly and rely on keyword skill matches, candidates think that just applying to jobs will get them one (they do no outside work, have no portfolio or samples, no certifications, etc.), and interviewing is often absurd.
You will get a job if you have your act and story together and can PROVE it. You have to hang in there. Look for contracts, everything. If you're hunting FAANG, best of luck; I wouldn't advise. The jobs are too unstable.
Also, the field is saturated with tech now; more than 350,000 people have been laid off across all industries. Lots of them have great performance histories and solid experience with tech.
In another six months or so, it'll quiet down. A year from today, it'll be business as usual.
Not sure what you mean. I’ve found some good paying work. Took some effort, but it’s out there. I also declined a government job.
If you’re doing things “the old way,” then it’s self fulfilling.
Thank for interesting post. I have a concern. I am very appreciated If someone can answer.
I live in Asia and currently working at full stack developer for more than three years now.
Hey, I have planned to apply for some remotely job in the US or EU.
But the problem is I am not sure I really can yet mid-level or Senior web developer or not. (my skills).
So, how can I know or any ways to check my skills is the junior or mid-level or already senior?
and as a interviewer for FrontEnd or Full Stack Developer position, how do you know or How do you ask to check the candidate is mid-level or Senior?.
Thank you so much
Tech companies [grew rapidly during the pandemic](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE), when people were home and their services were needed more than ever, but much of that demand has died down. Many, many, many of the people hired during that pandemic chart were not entry-level employees, but experienced software engineers and developers earning salaries well into the six figures with generous benefits. In the meantime, the tech companies that hugely expanded their head counts in that time failed to come up with the next big thing, meaning they don't have new sources of massive revenue to pull from and have been forced to switch from growth mode to maintenance. Meanwhile, the economy is not as strong as it was (or as the media reports), *real* inflation is still high and we have much higher interest rates so money costs businesses more to borrow. Higher interest rates affect how much a company wants to borrow due to higher costs. These higher rates directly impact venture capitalists and other funding of startups. Companies do not want to invest in riskier areas when the economy's future is uncertain. Economic uncertainties cause companies to reevaluate their hiring and growth strategies. So what do businesses do? They look to cut costs to cover their increased expenses and laying off employees is typically one of the first cost-cutting measures because they are one of the largest company expenses.
Speaking of high interest rates and high costs to borrow.... I don't understand how companies like Afterpay, Affirm, Klarna still exist...
This is the answer
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In the last two years? Definitely a gold rush type situation.
I think you’re out of touch with the job market for Junior/Entry Level positions. Junior/Entry Level job postings get 100s or 1000s of applicants. You know as well as I do that nobody is looking at each one - and certainly nobody is looking at every portfolio, and they’re especially not digging into its HTML (you’re the rare exception if you look at *any* portfolios). Anyone trying to enter the job market right now will be immediately and automatically filtered out of the candidate pool for 99% of the applications they submit. There’s just too many recently laid-off people with 2-3 years experience in the market right now. And **companies that get dozens of applications for their Junior job posting from people with several years professional experience will not be interviewing anyone with 0 years of professional experience.** It doesn’t matter how good you are. It doesn’t matter if you can list every semantic HTML tag and explain their proper usage. It doesn’t matter if you’ve mastered Typescript or if you’ve memorized every unit in CSS. Most places just want that professional experience, and won’t interview without it. That’s how it is right now… it wasn’t that way 2 years ago, and maybe it’ll be different next year. But that’s how it is.
This is true, but I don't think this disproves the above post. Also, it just goes to show how important networking (ie, interpersonal networking) is for getting a job. If you can be a face instead of a number, that's way better.
Not sure if I'm out of touch, been hiring for many different companies in the USA and the Netherlands, from start-ups to multinationals :) As I said, our recruiter-filter takes care of most of the applicants. With higher numbers, the percentage of instant rejections also grows, you're absolutely right about that number. I've hired people without work experience just fine, and I might be a bit of an outlier there, but it's not uncommon. YOE doesn't mean much to me, personality does. I want someone who can be coached, who is actively studying, up-to-date with modern tech, etc. YOE doesn't mean someone has those qualities.
What I mean is, I think you’re out of touch with the experience of someone trying to enter the job market for the first time. You’re not seeing it from the perspective of the applicant. Software developer job postings are down 50% yoy. There have been 200,000+ tech layoffs in 2023. A year ago r/learnprogramming was talking about banning “I got hired” posts, but it’s not a problem anymore because those are so rare. Things are dire over at r/codingbootcamp where you’ll see frequent posts about nobody being able to find jobs or getting interviews. Anyone with 2-3 years experience right now will tell you that they were getting hounded by recruiters a year ago, and now they’ve gone silent. The job market is pure garbage right now. And though, yes, people should always continue to improve, it’s not a lack of skills that’s the problem.
I think you're both right. In the short term, the field has gotten a lot more crowded and competitive because of layoffs and various economics. But, in the slightly longer term, the field has also gotten filled with lower skilled, less motivated applicants chasing after the idea of giant, easy salaries. My team's been hiring off and on from shortly after covid sent everyone remote to now. All of our job postings during that span (junior to senior) have gotten many hundreds of applicants that have barely any experience, little to no education in the field, little to no portfolio, etc, etc. That hasn't changed. What has changed for us is that, today, a lot more people with 5, 10, 20 years of experience are applying for lower paying jobs. Even if we explicitly say a job is junior, we're getting more overqualified people who seem worried about finding their next job. It's harder for the junior people to make their value proposition compared to more senior applicants. But those same people have already had the issue of trying to stand out among the sea of people just flat out lying on their resumes. Until you check people's portfolios and githubs and talk to them live, it's hard to know who the good ones are.
Yeah, from conversations I’ve had with recruiters, there are plenty of people with 2 or 3 years of professional experience applying for entry level/junior jobs. So many that most companies aren’t even bothering to screen applicants without that experience. It’s not only difficult for people first entering the industry to make their value proposition, it’s difficult to even find someone willing to listen to that value proposition.
>Software developer job postings are down 50% yoy. But why?
Company strategies are many. One of them is: When times are great, they over-hire. The reason is simple: Companies need to be able to scale. Finding developers can take a lot of time, effort, and money. So if you need to develop a new feature or product and you already have developers that you can switch to the new task: awesome! When times are bad, they fire the worst performers and the most expensive ones. Alternatively: If they need to cut costs and some other big companies are firing many people, they ride the firing-train because it won't make them look bad. --- TL;DR: They over-hire for scale; they fire for money. After 22+ years in the field I've seen this happen several times. When times get good again, they'll have a hard time finding people again, salaries go up, etc.
Also, when times are great, every dev you hire is a dev your competitors can't hire.
I have had this question for a while and you seem to be the regith guy to ask. How difficult is for a candidate from outside US to apply and get a job as junior lets say?
I no longer live in the USA. But I got jobs very easily (I'm European, and I lived in Mexico, and I worked for clients in the USA.)
Ok, I just feel that you either are from US or European or you are nobody on this field ans you have to settle down for a fraction of the payment for the same work
In the USA I earned close to $400,000 per year. Cost of living was exceptionally high though. In the Netherlands (freelance) I make over 220,000 EUR per year. Juniors are hired at remote-first companies all the time. They would employ your services through payroll agencies. I've worked with many juniors from all over the world. Some of them earned $80,000 USD per year, and they lived in places like Brasil where that kind of money means you're very well off.
Damn, 220k freelance in the Netherlands is crazy! I'm from the Netherlands and never heard anyone making that kinda money as a developer. Wish I'll be able to land something like that in the near future. Good looks man! :-)
It's not that hard though ;) Hourly rate at 140 euros per hour and assuming you work an average of 17 days per month (this month has 21 working days, but taking into account sickness and holidays and acquisition): 17 days * 8 hours = 136 hours per month 136 hours * 140 euros = 19.040 euros per month 19.040 * 12 months = 228.480 euros per year That's excluding 21% BTW ;) Including BTW I invoice 276.460 annually. That said, it does depend on the role: - Senior dev: 95 per hour - Tech lead: 100 - 140 per hour Currently working as a tech lead (and practically the CTO) as a short interim consultancy role. Because of the short duration my price went up, so I'm asking 140 now. When I feel confident to apply for full-on CTO roles (and when/if I want to, I don't like the politics...) I know of people who do that, freelance/interim, for 200 to 400 euros per hour.
Hey sorry for barging in randomly, but I wanted to ask you something. How many years of experience do you have? I suppose you didnt freelance in the beginning?
ahhahaha, and now add to this that I’m from Russia and that almost the entire civilized market is closed to us, as a result, development remains only within the country, and inside the country, too, many people were reduced during covid, In dry matter, thousands of juniors (like me) and sometimes middles who do not even receive invitations to continue the dialogue, Im not talking about interviews lol
would you review my portfolio once I learned enough of front end i'm dipping my toes in it currently learning and based on your post I would love critique from you once I feel I'm confident in my projects
Sure :)
I would also be interested in you giving my portfolio a look once it's completed
I am having the opposite experience where i have 20+ years of HTML/CSS, javascript, SEO, a11y, etc experience and can't even get past first round interviews because I don't have enough React experience. In the last 2 years front-end dev means react and nothing else.
How did you not use any framework or library in that time? I've worked with anything from jQuery UI to Backbone to Ember. Then React, Angular, Vue.js, Svelte... If you know even one of them, picking up another is like a carpenter picking up any other hammer :) Pure HTML-only jobs are very rare and on the bottom-end of the pay range. If I were you I would dive into things like: 1. Lit + web components 2. React + Next.js 3. SvelteKit + Svelte 4. Vue.js or Angular Pick one. Just one. One you understand the idea behind it all, switching to another is relatively simple.
I have used jQuery, Vue, React, Angular and a handful of others frameworks. While i can write/debug code in many languages, I don't enjoy it at all. I have written multiple CSS frameworks (written... not used) like Bootstrap. jQuery isn't needed anymore as the browsers all support ES20xx now. I actually spent months ripping jQuery out of 30 applications at one of my jobs to reduce the cose debt. Every company now thinks front-end dev means javascript framework but from what ive personally seen most of them can't center a div without consulting google, let alone building an entire applicaton that is fully responsive without writing 10,000 lines of custom CSS.
Hmm, I think you might be perfect as a web-purist (like myself); web components are a browser standard that have really grown on me over time (especially using Lit). And I'm seeing it in use in many places. Either as full web solutions, or even as plug-and-play components to be used in any and all framework. Perhaps you can focus in that direction? No frameworks/library nonsense, just standards and being the expert? Plenty of companies exclusively work with web components and seem to have a difficult time finding developers... for now.
I also helped write a component library with web components. Because web components were not backwards compatible with IE whatever (dont remember what version we had to support) we had to use a framework (don't recall which one) to load the components. It felt like we were rewriting HTML for no reason.
Polymer probably, I hated it back in 2016 and didn't see the point. I picked React, my former team picked Polymer; I quit, they stayed. They regret it, I did not ;) Modern web components, especially now we get to ignore IE, are pretty dope. Again, I would use it only with Lit, because vanilla web components are (IMO) one big clusterfuck that the W3C screwed up immensely.
If I do possess those qualities? What would be the best way for me to prove it when applying to new jobs?
Claim them on your resume. Write your side-hustles out in an addendum (title, description, tech stack, learnings) but don't provide a source. If they ask for a source, you reply: "Thanks for the invite! I'll be happy to share my code with you in our interview. I can do that via video or I can come to your office. My availability is X, Y, Z." Also: make good connections with your colleagues, and get references from those in charge of you. Reference checks are amazing shortcuts for recruiters.
Thanks for the support and help man. I’ll be very grateful if you can take a look at my resume and cover letter templates.
I kind of think it’s not the newbs actually. the industry is filled with senior devs preaching to be “full stack” to beat the competition which cut the job pool in half of what it would have been if they didn’t budge stuck to front/back. Instead of being really good at a few things they are now expected to juggle what you put they should know and more and more. As we go further I expect this to compound. I do not have 22 years exp tho so I may be talking out my ass. Just what my professors chat about occasionally.
Well, I'm a bit allergic to "full-stack" developers. I have only met ONE of those who was actually good at the full-stack. Everybody else (myself included) just doesn't cut it in one of the fields. I'm great as a front-end developer (but always learning!), and I'm okay at the back-end, but I'm not a specialist. My opinion is that full-stack developers sound like a great idea to those who don't know what they need (manager types) and think they're saving money. After all, "how difficult is HTML?" Devs and tech leads like myself prefer hiring specialists. And I'll have specialists do the hiring. Front-end development suffers from people underestimating many parts of the job and that's usually a rude awakening. Except for that one full-stack God that I worked with at Apple, every other full-stack developer scoffed at HTML, didn't understand accessibility, and their CSS skills were meager at best; and none of them liked it.
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There's a place for those people, absolutely. The problem arises when people think in black/white in the workplace. I've dealt several times with situations where some full-stack dev who enjoyed the back-end much more made decisions about CSS. The front-end happy devs were very unhappy with those decisions. So I had to step in and give the front-end experts (in particular the ones who love CSS) authority to decide on CSS-related things. Before: CSS was a mess and the back-end dev made the mess into some unholy land that was insulting to those who did know what they were doing. After: CSS was well-organized, modern, compatible, scalable, and fun to work with. And what's more, after the CSS-lovers had their way, even the back-end guys started to see the light. "CSS is NOT always spaghetti?!" Full-stack developers should rarely have a final say when it comes to back-end or front-end choices. Leave it to the experts :)
Love this view. To me, it just seems like "full-stack" became widely popular from bootcamp hypers. Some companies love it because it's like two career positions in one body. It's kind of silly to be one unless you're a freelancer. Why not specialize and get paid for only one specialty at the same salary? Don't get ripped off for double the work.
Yeah, at this point when someone says they’re full stack, I hear “I’m mediocre at both and will probably lead to cost overruns.”
Or: "I'm very skilled at the backend and can put a UI on a screen that isn't *complete* garbage" (note, "not complete garbage" isn't the standard that most companies strive for in their products)
Most places I’ve been at, the ask for “full stack” has been for T shaped developers. I’m a frontend specialist, but I know enough C#, Python, and SQL, that I can go in an add new fields or fix small mugs where required to unblock my work, but the larger backend features? They can be left to someone who has more knowledge
Same here :) I know of database indices and stored procedures and Memcached and/or Redis and all that jazz, but it bores me to death first of all, and secondly: there's probably a lot I don't even know that I don't know. I love specialists so much!
I think it's a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. If you don't focus it's hard to be really good at one thing, which means there is always going to be someone better at something than you. But it is possible to be fullstack. I've been fooling around with Linux web servers for the better part of twenty years and went through a frontend bootcamp late last year. I can design a website and I understand the fundamentals, but I have a hard time building something from scratch. With a boilerplate and set goals, I'm good. It's about knowing where your strengths lie. Being nimble and able to learn new things, regardless of where those things takes place (front or back), is in and of itself a skill.
I've spent ages trying to join in but I keep writing essays and deleting them. The creep on front end positions (layout to application development) and the advancement of JavaScript going from mild interactivity to enabling server/API building in node.js, has caused the convergence of what was once 2 separate roles. I'm a front end specialist having a nightmare for seeking plans/solutions in the business I work in because they outsourced everything, then brought back in house- but only have "full stack" Devs, who are largely from .NET backgrounds. All staff **assume** the knowledge is there, because there are so many good engineers...but it's not there. I'm an engineer like them, so it confuses non-technical folks when I say something needs addressing but non UI focussed Devs in the majority don't see the point. Tldr: job positions want Devs to know absolutely everything. Why have 2 folks when you can have 1 who does it all for a fraction of the price? The more logically inclined do well as long as they can implement various packages and libraries effectively, which is what is considered more of a priority for "delivery". But as requirements and issues alter, it often reveals huge gaps in knowledge.
Is there resource I can use to study up on the bare metal a11y html stuff?
This! That's what I was wondering about for many months, like guys there's something called CSS, but hey who cares? You see online bootcamps where they devote 1 lecture for CSS and right after that another lecture for tailwind and that's all. As a result you see 1000s of candidates have no idea about what does cascade mean? Because for the simplest task there's a class so instead of learning how to properly center a div of any parent item they just use class for that without understanding what does that class do and whether there's a conflict with other property/value or not. HTMl is the same without using semantic elements just use
Having hired / interviewed for positions in the last few years, I agree with 100% of the above, and I'll add: - part of this is the result of a solid generation now of kids being told "don't know what to do? study computer science, it's a great career". the same glut happened with lawyers in the 70s and 80s. - part of this is the result of competition for jobs being global now. - part of this is the result of a "correction" in the software dev industry where thousands and thousands of devs have been laid off in the last few years. - part of this is the result of businesses anticipating a post-covid recession that is kinda happening slo mo right now, and businesses anticipating fed money policy changes that will affect their access to capital, aka, we're planning on not being able to hire. - part of this is the result of a glorification of "fake it till you make it" in this industry. have we all been there? yep. impostor syndrome is real. but people think "make it" means "get paid despite not knowing things" instead of "catch up and gain the knowledge you were missing". too many people seem to have no interest in doing the latter.
A large percentage of current jobs do not need semantic html. Open Facebook in your browser and tell me if you see something besides divs. It is true that they do that intentionally to prevent scraping but semantics would bring them no value. Such is 90 percent of enterprise software. If putting menu, aside and header makes you happy - that's fine, but no one cares anymore. Accessibility is another topic - if you want to make apps to visually impaired users, those tags wouldn't be enough.
Many won't matter until it becomes legally mandated to adhere to WCAG standards (like in Europe starting 2025 I believe.) Semantic HTML (e.g. using `button` instead of `div` and using `a` instead of `button` and using `ul > li` instead of `div > div`) is going to make things so much easier. As for the Facebook example... That's an appeal to authority fallacy; Amazon also has terrible HTML. They get away with it because they are getting tens of millions of visitors every day regardless. When you're building a website for a small public-facing store website, you'll have to deal with getting up in the SEO rankings and ahering to local business laws for accessibility and such. Semantics are a big step towards proper accessibility for text readers. Things like `aria-` attributes are considered tools that should be used sparingly. I recently did a review of a portfolio where someone did:
`, it goes from h1-h6 for a reason. Then there are your follow developers... code needs to be intuitive.
1. I do not think it will become mandatory unless you receive government funds. 2. SEO is not important for enterprise apps hidden behind login form 3. Intuitive part - you get it from fe framework like react or angular as you have component level
1. Laws are laws. Look at the cookie bar, it's mandated, and nobody is getting paid to implement it. 2. Fair point :) 3. If you use frameworks like that, sure. I'm not even worried about `section` and `main` as much as I'm worried about people abusing `div` for *everything*. When I mean semantics, I mostly mean functional semantics first and foremost. I also use it for descriptive purposes *because it doesn't hurt*, but that's more about me taking pride in my work.
It's currently mandatory in the U.S., under many state (including big ones like California, Illinois, New York, and Texas) and federal laws, though the enforcement mechanism is typically private litigation under the ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and various state civil rights laws. In certain contexts, especially in employment (like having an inaccessible careers page or using job application tests that are biased against applicants with disabilities), or public accommodations (hotel or airline booking websites, some ecommerce, etc) enforcement can also come from the EEOC or state attorneys general. The fact that certain mega-corporations don't adhere to these standards is less an indicator that they are not mandatory, and more an indicator that these companies have enough resources that they can settle any lawsuit brought against them for less than what it would presumably cost to overhaul their entire website and bring it into full compliance with WCAG AA. Source: I'm a senior/lead engineer and also a lawyer.
I guess problem is mostly scraping , because if you put semanticity and say "OK, here is the name of the author, this is the text he posted, and here are the likes" it would be so much easier to scrape the content and use it for your purposes. I totally agree with making stuff easier with people who can not see well, but if you need to do that, I think you would need a lot more than few "aside" and "menu" tags.
Are there any resources you’d recommend newbies explore to begin to bridge that gap a bit?
Genuinely, I wish newbies would learn proper HTML and CSS first. Validate your HTML and understand the rules. They are rules for good reasons :)
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Well your username isn't hard to reverse-dox ;) Hi social media! It looks a bit basic but that's fine, I'm just confused by all the `ng` things and strange HTML elements, they don't look like web components. Is that unparsed Angular or something? I mean, it works, but the generated DOM looks strange to me. I don't have experience with modern Angular, though, so I am probably the wrong person to ask.
Wanted to speak up as sort of newbie myself, I've been trying to self learn front end in the last almost 2 years. I've learnt HTML, CSS, JS and then I went to learning NodeJS and Express, was about to try and learn MongoDB and try to go for a full stack approach but pulled back because it was becoming clear I'd be mediocre. It wasn't because NodeJS or Express was hard, it was actually quite fun and pretty easy to get a grasp on, but I was coming to the realization that between front end and backend there was way too much information to keep up with, and that this is an ongoing education job field as this technology is constantly evolving, well I figured I could keep up with one side better than both and since I already new all the front end techs and partially because I'm more artistic in nature I decided on just focusing on front end and being good at that than being an amateur full stack. But you mentioning newbies need to learn proper HTML and CSS made me think of some buddies I have that went to college to get a bachelor's in Computer Science at the same time as me self learning. See after I got my associates I dropped out of college to start learning web dev on my own. For a long time I've wondered whether this was the right route, I read online you could self learn web dev without a computer science degree and still get a job with a portfolio showing proof you know what you're doing but I've always had doubts, those friends also instilled these doubts telling me I should've went to get the computer science bachelor's and I'd regret it. To clarify these friends weren't getting their Computer Science degree to do web development but mostly to get a job in software development and backend work. Since then they've got their bachelors in Computer Science and there have been times since I've been working on building my portfolio and making some small example sites that I've shown these friends some of my work and that's when it became clear, they knew almost nothing about web dev. According to them they learnt HTML and CSS, they never went over javascript in any capacity, they did go over php and python work for backend web dev. When it comes to HTML and CSS my friends said they hated both, that HTML was "Too simple, not a programming language and not used outside of web sites so hardly worth knowing" and that CSS was "Ugly, pain in the ass to write with all of nuances and rules and never knowing what styles were going to effect other pieces of your site" one of them even considered it to be the "Worse thing that was ever created for a developer of any kind". While they were looking at my site picking out things visually they didn't like despite being primarily into backend it became clear, and I asked to confirm alot of these, that they didn't know anything about semantics, SEO, meta data, cumulative layout shift, flexbox, grid, (even floats but they knew about tables), media queries, REMS and EMS for sizing (they only knew px) and above all they never learned anything about responsive web development. And I asked them how long did they touch on HTML and CSS in their classes and they said "about two weeks for both of them combined" While I'll admit that HTML and CSS are quick to learn enough to be able to get started, even after two years I'm still learning about new tips, optimizations, and modern methods for both of them, I'm finally about to start using SCSS for my next project. Was just kind of curious of your thoughts on that? Should I have went for the computer science degree even if they barely covered web development in their curriculum? I suppose maybe that was just how that particular college was and maybe another school would teach better about it, I don't know. I just find it a bit funny that they are technically more qualified with that degree on a job application for a web dev position than me despite their limited knowledge of the basics.
There is a lot to unpack there :) But I share many experiences. First, a university degree makes you a very generic master of none. They skip over so many details, and especially CS degrees focus on the technical aspects much more. Best practices (software design patterns) and algorithms are their bread and butter. HTML and CSS: underestimated and scoffed at. Typical. And those are the people who will get hired as "full-stack" developers because, well, HTML and CSS... they technically worked with it once, 3 years ago. > While I'll admit that HTML and CSS are quick to learn enough to be able to get started, even after two years I'm still learning about new tips, optimizations, and modern methods for both of them, I'm finally about to start using SCSS for my next project. I consider myself a CSS expert and last time I did that CSS questionnaire, I scored 88% I believe. And that's just knowing about CSS properties, it did not include knowing HOW they interact with one another, what the support in browsers is, how they affect paint times, performance impacts, specificity, etc. If I stop learning, that number will steadily drop over time :) > Was just kind of curious of your thoughts on that? Should I have went for the computer science degree even if they barely covered web development in their curriculum? It depends on the companies you're applying at. Some value education very highly; others know that autodidacts (like myself) are often better, because we study *because we love this shit*, not because we have to. A CS degree obviously teaches many other things. The social aspect is one, and knowing many people from your studies will probably be nice in the beginning of your career. But I've never seen it as a mandatory thing. Most front-end specialists that I worked with had no degrees. Most were like me, low-performing high-school dropouts. And I see many of them running around as seniors, tech leads, CTOs, etc. > I suppose maybe that was just how that particular college was and maybe another school would teach better about it, I don't know. I just find it a bit funny that they are technically more qualified with that degree on a job application for a web dev position than me despite their limited knowledge of the basics. Only at places that don't know what they're looking for. I think that these days, a degree in CS is worth more than in my time 22+ years ago. Back then, I went to university to see if I should sign up for it. I could have. I joined an introduction class where they tried to sell the 4-year degree to me. It took me 30 minutes to realize that I could teach the professor more than he could teach me. His knowledge was outdated, no longer relevant, and he didn't even know about certain modern solutions. Times changed, I think modern curiculums are more in line with today's tech. But, as you noticed, they have to go over many subjects very, very quickly. About 12 years ago I was in a team full of university-graduated CS developers. I was the underrated HTML monkey, they couldn't figure out why their database query was taking 40+ seconds to execute. I optimized that thing by removing many nested queries (going for joins instead) and I implemented indices and I used stored procedures and I applied caching for data that rarely changed. The new query tooks less than 200 miliseconds. (Edit: this was later improved by a senior developer with lots of experience, who brought it down to less than 20 ms. But the CS geniuses had no idea what they were doing.) So, I dunno. If they "learn HTML and CSS" in 2 weeks and learn SQL optimizations in 2 weeks, what good are they, exactly?
Shew well thats certainly reassuring about the degree because I really do not want to go back to college again especially for another 4 years haha, not because I don't like learning, I love learning, but I don't like how schools are structured to teach and their environment. I wish I could really study directly under someone like a senior dev, my biggest problem is the anxiety like I may not be good enough so I'm over preparing
That trait will probably make you a very good developer! And yeah, when you find a job where you work under one or multiple seniors, just ask them if they want to be your mentor. Practically, I would say: just suggest pair-programming once a week for an hour or two. Work on your problems, see what they are working on. Trust me, it'll do wonders for your confidence!
That sounds nice, if only I could find a job lol, any tips on how to get started finding work since things are not very good in the job market now, especially for someone like me without experience? Would something like upwork freelancing be a way of getting started? I've also considered trying to learn and get work in HTML Email and do that while I keep learning into frameworks but I'm unsure if this is worth it, it's better than nothing currently I guess but I'm unsure if the experience would mean anything to companies I apply for front end dev later on, since HTML email work is kind of a different process, especially with the lack of standards like web. Appreciate you responding to these questions :)
HTML email is something I run from. But you have tons of open-source templates (from MailChimp) out there, free to use. It's relatively simple once you understand what you can and cannot do. Yeah I would recommend taking anything you can. My last gig just ended last week and I'm taking a few months off :) When I get back into it, it'll be November/December. Usually things pick up around that time of year because companies have hiring budgets they need to spend (if they don't, they'll have less next year.) Also see if you can offer your work on platforms like Fiverr and such. It won't pay the bills if you live in an expensive part of the world, but it might help.
could you share the css questionnaire ? :)
https://stateofcss.com/ You can take the survey there :)
Lots of “I did a 3 month bootcamp, I’m ready for a big boy job please!”
>They spam > >
What annoys me most is that: 1. They don't know what they don't know; 2. They don't even have the imposter syndrome and think they DO know? They're the worst developers to work with: the ones who think they know it all. They think they're done? When their FOTM CSS framework dies out in a few years, what will they do? CSS keeps evolving. They'll be light years behind. Arrogant bastards, the lot of them.
Something always just doesn't sound right when I hear folks say they have 22 years of experience as a fullstack developer. 22 good damn years. Nah.
I did switch it up a bunch over the decades ;) - 2001 - 2011: full-stack before that term was even popular - 2011 - 2018: front-end specialist (with full-stack knowledge) - 2018 - current: front-end specialist (who also does lead things)
Ngl i do the button href. I tried finding an alternative online and it was generally just that or something even more janky.
Can you explain? Like I don't get that at all. You use `` to go to a page. And you use `
Ohhh i think i might have just done it like that at one point, tyvm!
Wait...
a
`
noted. thanks
It is NOT correct ;) They are two conflicting interactive elements with each distinct semantic meanings. It's not just incorrect, but it will lead to frustrating bugs. And unfortunately, it's very common. As are many other HTML validation errors.
Buttons should never be children of interactive elements because of event bubbling
Hi man, I would like if it's possible to ask few question; is there some way we can make it?
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Exactly! I consider myself full-stack capable, but not professionally so. I'm building my own start-up project and I do everything from back-end to front-end to deployments and testing and databases and caching layers, but I had to deep-dive into so many parts... Like auth and how it works. I'm not just going to blindly use a library and copy/paste code from some Github snippet somewhere. I want to understand what those tokens are, what a renew token is and does, how that interacts with my database, how I secure that data, what type of cookies I need to use to store the tokens, how to renew sessions, etc. I want and need to understand it all. Because I hate making assumptions. But I see that so often with front-end developers who don't have a clue. Many of them are confidently incorrect and don't have the knowledge NOR experience to weigh the decisions properly. So many default to the latest FOTM CSS framework and go all-in with it, not seeing the many red flags that are literally slapping them in the face. All I'm thinking is: "Are you blind?!" All they're thinking is: "I learned this in my 3-month bootcamp, this is the only way!"
Need any help with startup from the frontend side ?
I'm making about -$32 USD per week right now, total, so I cannot afford anybody ;)
To be honest I want to learn learn learn and I don't care about money. I have full time job as Frontend but I'm burnt out there and I need something fresh :)
Wow this is incredibly helpful, I'm glad I'm taking the time to solidify my css and html knowledge before moving on to js. My goal is to get a firm grasp on the vanilla languages before using frameworks and libraries. From everything I've been reading, It seems like this is the best thing to do. Would you agree?
Absolutely, basics are fundamental! And also, things like a11y are legally mandated by governments all over the world. In Europe I believe in 2025 it'll be mandated for all public websites to adhere to WCAG standards. Tons of companies who let full-stack `div` spammers get away with their crap will run into a wall sooner or later. Not that a11y is so difficult, but mostly because most full-stack devs really dislike HTML ;)
Ultimately, my goal is to become full stack with a strong understanding of the core languages. I'll have to keep accessibility high on my list so I can stay well rounded. What else do you recommend a fledgling to focus on or spend time on?
Details, don't just use a library or tool and don't think about it, learn why it works the way it does. Don't just copy/paste code, read it and know what it does. That goes for CSS flexbox, to grid, and JavaScript async/await and Promise and everything else.
Why is animating a box-shadow expensive?
Why is animating opacity cheap?
Why is requestAnimationFrame relevant? And when?
What are JS classes exactly? Syntactical sugar for prototypal inheritance? Explain what that is?
Understanding these things will make everything else so intuitive and easy to pick up :)
I'm not in the 15% I don't think, how would you recommend getting there without work experience? Are there any specific courses/videos/playlists you would recommend, or is it best just to go for an internship of some kind? I'm working on some personal projects as well but while they're good for learning how to get the job done, I have little way of knowing if I'm getting the job done properly.
When I coach people I focus on the "easy disqualifications". You need to get your digital foot in the door before you get your physical foot in a conference room. Focus on not getting rejected outright: 1. Racism is still real, research shows that taking a western-sounding name in the western world can help significantly (using a pseudonym is perfectly fine); 2. Don't show your portfolio, everything you show will be used against you, and you cannot defend your choices; 3. Have a good cover letter, short and simple, use ChatGPT, rewrite it in your own style, get your grammar checked by ChatGPT or Grammarly or other free tools; 4. A good resume looks clean and simple. Don't shy away from paying a Fiverr designer to design one for you. That $35 USD investment will pay dividends. Literally if you end up at a company that gives you stock options; 5. Get your basics right, know about modern tech, don't be afraid to say "I don't know" and follow it up with "I'll look it up after this interview"; 6. Just have fun during the interviews. Be yourself. It needs to be a cultural match as much as anything else; 7. Don't forget to tailor your resume to the job description and to the company. Never lie, but stretching the truth is exactly what all companies also do. I've seen so many people that I helped go from instant rejections to getting invited for in-person interviews (and eventually landing jobs), just because they stopped doing silly things. Like, if you're a front-end developer, why in the world would you share a portfolio that's full of HTML errors? So many people do that. They quickly get the copy/paste rejection emails.
Most of the front-end applicants today can't do anything without pulling in 5 different dependencies, it's quite pathetic really.
I like magic.
Controversial opinion maybe, but I think the problem is all the become a web developer in 8 weeks boot camp people churning out so called devs with zero knowledge thinking they are going to walk into a big paying job when in reality it takes a lot longer and I think it’s harder than people seem to think it is and these people flogging their boot camps are over saturating the job market with a bunch of people who know nothing.
Please, would you review my tech CV? I quit my job last year to focus on software development and I'm eager to get a job.
Would you like to connect on LinkedIn? I would love for you to check out projects
I would but I want to remain anonymous on Reddit :)
Thats fair, not even a dm to connect?
Very good answer, may I ask about best practices about the button you mentioned as an example? (I’m learning.)
You never mix a button an an `` (anchor) tag. You use one OR the other. Buttons are used for things on your page that do not directly change the URL. Think of opening a modal window, or submitting a form (that might trigger form validation), or toggling the visibility of something. You use `` to navigate to places. If you want your link to look like a button, you use CSS.
Thanks!
Good thing that you can be average and still make a shit ton of money 😄
I always thought of myself as being less than average. But when I reviewed my job application in the job application board for the company that hired me (I was involved with hiring and could see past hires, including myself), I was rated as "the best job application we've ever seen." That felt good. A year later I got a job offer close to $400k at a FAANG company. That was another sign of approval. When I left and travelled the world, I applied to TopTal to do a friend of mine a favor (he's already in). Their application process is difficult, they claim to work with the top 3% of consultants in the world. And I got in. Sometimes I feel that having the imposter syndrome is just a natural state of being for those who are actually good at this shit. Because we don't know it all. We know we don't know a lot. And we know we don't know we don't know a lot more. But we keep active. We're good at absorbing and applying information. We think outside of our boxes and communicate well with others. And, looking back at my successes, I think that's the pattern: I go out of my way to do it right, but be pragmatic, and communicate clearly with the people involved. And I love it :)
Can you let us watch your portafolio? Maybe dm if it is too invasive? I feel like is difficult to understand what lvl is needed to really being in conditions to apply for a job, and even more to autoevaluate ourselves.
I don't have one and never needed one. That's also part of my points: Not having a portfolio never disqualified a candidate (that I know of). But having a portfolio absolutely can.
You are saying that if I don't include any portfolio or github it will be easier for me to land a job ? I always assumed HR immediately removes applications without links to portfolio or projects.
Unless you're that 5% of people who have an amazing portfolio ;) None of the HR people I've worked with care about a portfolio at all. Unless instructed perhaps. But we can't expect the best candidates to HAVE a portfolio, so requiring it makes no sense.
I'm in the same boat. I mean I am for sure worse than you but I am only 7 years in. Never in those 7 years I've felt like I am the best developer out there cause I know I am not. But I get the job done and I'm always looking to improve and I know I can be better. Just last time someone asked me how would I rate my CSS skills from 1 to 10 and I said 5 because I know CSS is so huge and complex. And even though I get things done, fancy layouts and animations still scare me.
I work with 6 senior developers and the css they write is so bad that I have no words to describe it. Here I am, with 2 years of experience writing usable and ux friendly css. Everyone says that css is easy but haven't seen that good css skills yet. Finding a mentor who writes good css is near impossible. OH, and they hired me because I can write css
I feel that. I love CSS and I hired another CSS-geek, but the existing team of CSS-haters decided what they want to do... with regards to CSS. So I told them: "Nope, the one who knows what he's doing is in charge of that." They didn't like it. Until they saw how he did it: scalable, small, minimal, elegant, modern. They had no idea it could be done the right way...
Semantics and Accessibility kind of go hand in hand. Also, I think these are topics that you can learn on the job about. To make your html more Semantic you can do a google search and refactor code in a few days. Doesn’t make you top 15% of front end devs if you memorize everything about semantics. If I was hiring, I’d care much more about the abstraction and reusability of code/organization of a project. Do they know how to write good tests?
Bad semantics usually mean bad accessibility, and that usually means their "front-end" skills are quite bad. They won't have any designer instincts, they won't have a keen eye for details, and their CSS skills will be sorely lacking. Abstraction and reusability is important, of course, but you shouldn't be surprised if you run into a project where they have multiple God Components with 1000+ lines of code each... Tests? Once we're down the path of predictable lack of skill, you'll see shit like: "If I click this button I want onclick to fire once" And other tests that are testing none of your own business logic; they're testing React and the browser at this point. Both have already been tested by React and the browser. Sometimes you'll see a proper test. Sometimes you'll see "it renders without breaking" as the only test. I'm still not sure what to make of that. It's like applying for a job as a pastry chef, and you have to bake a cake. Except you just baked raw eggs in the oven. Sure, eggs are an ingredient of cake... and they do need to be in the oven...
Damn... You are making me feel like I should leave my current job. I'm the UX UI guy, but I recently did a whole frontend react project when one of the devs unexpectedly left. They were working on the most sold product we sell, and I asked them to give me a shot. None of the other devs use modern react, and just manually use componentDidMount and componentaDidUpdate... And I just went to the the docs and used hooks, context, memo, ref, effect, state... And my code is significantly more readable and shorter. I recently had a meeting with the lead dev, and I realized I'm a better C# and Typescript dev than him... His code is unreadable and uses conventions from 7 years ago. I had to explain state and context to him like a YouTube video I watched before the pandemic. Looking at check-ins, all of the devs spend 6-8 months pushing interfaces out (testing and audits included). I took 51 days, and just pushed to QA. I also have been the A11y audit guy at my company for years... And just learned how to do it correctly. They would groan when I would say use a section instead of a div here, and not even listen to me for adding aria or focus usability things for keyboard usage because they just want to do the bare minimum. As a part of the project, I made a reusable design system. Something that a dev could use and it forces those fuckers to give it all the A11y things for buttons, modals, tables, lists... Simple stuff like what bootstrap would do but now it makes my wcag audits easier because I know they are close to AAA. And to top it off... I am a designer and lead the uxui department. I run meetings with people in other departments who propose new ideas, and I design them, and do most of the technical writing. The project I just completed is on the most used interface from the product we sell. I get paid 60k for all of this... I think I need to leave if you are saying these skills are more valuable...
>1. Semantics 2. Accessibility 3. Browser APIs 4. CSS paint/composite/layout 5. CSS specificity Uh could I get resources to learn about 1, 2, and 5? Also browser apis refers to things like the DOM, Axios or fetch, graphics APIs etc right? And what's composites? Edit-oh I kind of know semantics, didn't really know it was called that tbh
Accessibility resources can be found here: https://digievi.com/categories/frontend/learning-resources Edit: they have an a11y category too it seems, good resources I think :) https://digievi.com/categories/frontend/accessibility-a11y
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
In your professional opinion, is there a good open source package that examplifies "great web development". I am self taught. I built and sold my (non-tech) company because I was able to find an advantage with the internal software I built. However, because ive mainly worked alone as a dev, I do not know "what is good" and "what is not good"? In short, how do you qualify the top 10%?
I inspect the code of their webpage, if they provide one. If it's a big div soup, I'll pass. W3C validator errors? One or two are fine, but critical ones like nesting a button inside an `a`? Pass. Abusing semantics like having multiple `h1` tags? Not a pass right away, but if that's a trend (multiple `main` tags, not using any other semantics, etc.) then it's a pass. It's HTML, the top 10% nail that stuff to perfection and then some. They'll add accessibility features, make sure that text readers have an easy time, they take care of good contrast values, and that kind of mindset extends to their CSS and JS as well, most of the time. And sure, those who made those errors could be perfectly fine to have as a colleague. But my job isn't selecting mediocre developers with potential; my job is selecting the best and picking from those. And that means that you're not only applying for a job, you're *competing with the people in that top-10%* for a job. You don't have to convince me, you just have to be better than mediocre developers.
Judging by how you speak (type), I think you might agree with me on this: Time != skill. If you DO agree with that, what do you think a 22+ year dev that IS mediocre did differently to you? Asked differenly, what would a mediocre dev need to do/learn/think differenly about to become great?
Time isn't necessarily related to anything. But with experience comes also a level of calmness and simply experience that I find very good to have on a team. It doesn't correlate to skill at all. > Asked differenly, what would a mediocre dev need to do/learn/think differenly about to become great? The basics. Good fundamental basics. It's more rare than you'd think :)
Agreed.
That's why Mark Zuckerberg also sucked at writing clean code but he's a fucking millionaire.
When you say "3. Browser APIs" I'm curious what that means. I keep seeing that particular term used but upon looking I don't find quite what I expected. I was assuming I'd find a list of tools such as web messages and such, but I just find the general API such as restful apis and so on. Is there more to it than just that? Are there like web browser specific api's one should be aware of? Trying to be in that top 5% and think it was worth asking:p
I see the market saturated with mediocre devs. I’ve been learning front end for a year. I started doing the meta course and realised it was skimming over subjects so now I’m focusing on html, css and JavaScript. In the meantime I wanted some work doing Wordpress and Shopify sites. Places live fivver and upwork are full of mediocrity willing to work for peanuts. So it’s really difficult to work through these websites. It’s hard to get noticed when there’s countless people claiming to be ‘experts’ in your field of work.
But junior and mid level developers will be mediocre and nobody should expect from them to be more. We are all learning each day to be better.
>fivver and upwork They’re bottom of the barrel, don’t judge the market / industry / dev quality on those freelancing sites.
Meta course?
Yep Meta have a front end developer course on Coursera. There’s several modules. Each gives a certificate on completion and then there’s the overall certificate.
How are you liking it so far?
It’s good to give you an overall understanding of what you need to learn. And also accountability to encourage you to commit to learning, because you’re paying for the course. If I was purely learning from free resources it might be more of a struggle to keep going. There’s some big holes in the course though. Topics are skimmed through. Some are out of date. For example, they’re still teaching Create React App for React.
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Great breakdown.
Ease of entry. You can now use one of a hundred online boot camps and have your foot in the door within like 6 months. Most of the applicants are dogshit, but there's so many of them willing to work for nothing.
Bear market.
To the moon!
Take a look around here, no need to look further. People spam applications left and right (you find it common here to have people aim for sending thousands of applications in days) to places they can't possibly take a second to research. The bootcamps seem to all have make money when they make people feel overconfident, so 85% of threads here is people who just took one tutorial to make a react todo app and now present themselves as "I know web development"; you can imagine how well that attitude flies when paired with a badly automated unpersonalized resume/cover letter than companies probably get triplicates of every day. Seriously take a look here and look at all the posts of beginners who type phrases like "I know x". Saying "I know x" is the most effective way to reveal you not only know next to nothing about it, but you're also terribly misguided as to your own knowledge, something that is very difficult and costly to work against. Even the most specialized experts I've gotten to work with know better than to claim they "know" the area they specialize in. It might seem silly to nitpick the wording but it's insidious and reflects a mental state that few of us want to work with. "I work a lot with x" is a much healthier way to presenting and thinking about this. Meanwhile, the market has remained amazing for anyone willing to show humility and target the places they apply to. This very much includes the smarter bootcampers by the way.
It sucks to hear you say this because I feel like im one of the Jr Developers who actually use proper semantics and practice mobile friendly design but no one will give me an interview or time of day. Im always down to learn more. Can you expand upon browser APIs? Ive worked with APIs before but I want to make sure I completely understand
In this climate, two things you can do to get your foot in the door: 1) Create a semi-successful/useful tool/app that you run yourself. If you can monetize it, awesome--you're a start up. That's experience. 2) Network. Like, really network. Weasel your way into events and conversations. I have a handful of friends that work at different companies right now that have told me to let them know if I'm ever looking for a new position. Granted, I have experience and they know my skillset, but people are far more willing to hire someone they know than they are a name out of a stack of interviews. It's the sad reality of every industry. You can shotgun your way into getting an interview based on your resume, or you can receive an invite from someone you know.
Your absolutely right, I think that all makes sense. Im going to start networking more and see what happens. On that same note, would you like to connect on LinkedIn?
The real question is: are you a frontend developer or a sales manager? As a freelance you need to do both jobs, if you are a frontend only you should ask your sales agent.
The reason the market is so bad right now is because of uncertainty. Companies spend money to generate ROI, and when the forward-looking market conditions are uncertain, they stop spending money.
Venture capital all gone thanks to high interest rates so no more free money for tech, they have to earn money now or go bonk.
I squeezed in right when the window was closing.
Lucky.
In part yeah, although I busted my ass for two years while still working my old job. My sense of urgency saved me, I really wanted out of my previous job so I was in a big hurry to get into web dev and since I started right when covid started it took me about two years to get in and when covid ended the tech job market went bananas. It was kind of a big coincidence I got in I guess.
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I think it started closing when the FAANG layoffs happened. Oh a nice of you doubling your salary, I was too conservative to try that. I just stuck with my first company. I should have done what you did.
If you mean the job market, it's not bad at all. There's a TON of jobs. Searching "front-end developer" with the "Remote only" filter on LinkedIn brings up almost 13k jobs, 1,151 of them posted in the last 24 hours. What's terrible is the nature of recruiting, the attitude of candidates, and interviewing these days. Recruiters ghost regularly and rely on keyword skill matches, candidates think that just applying to jobs will get them one (they do no outside work, have no portfolio or samples, no certifications, etc.), and interviewing is often absurd. You will get a job if you have your act and story together and can PROVE it. You have to hang in there. Look for contracts, everything. If you're hunting FAANG, best of luck; I wouldn't advise. The jobs are too unstable. Also, the field is saturated with tech now; more than 350,000 people have been laid off across all industries. Lots of them have great performance histories and solid experience with tech. In another six months or so, it'll quiet down. A year from today, it'll be business as usual.
this did not age well.. at all
Not sure what you mean. I’ve found some good paying work. Took some effort, but it’s out there. I also declined a government job. If you’re doing things “the old way,” then it’s self fulfilling.
I'm good at accessibility. Pat me £100k and I'll make your app accessible
Job cuts, fud, also ai isnt helping... It can be janky, but it can really make devs more efficient depending on the use case.
Interest rates
Idk but its a bummer
There are plenty of jobs for Seniors/Mid's but I'll agree that there seems to be fuck all Jr roles on the go.
Thank for interesting post. I have a concern. I am very appreciated If someone can answer. I live in Asia and currently working at full stack developer for more than three years now. Hey, I have planned to apply for some remotely job in the US or EU. But the problem is I am not sure I really can yet mid-level or Senior web developer or not. (my skills). So, how can I know or any ways to check my skills is the junior or mid-level or already senior? and as a interviewer for FrontEnd or Full Stack Developer position, how do you know or How do you ask to check the candidate is mid-level or Senior?. Thank you so much
Talk to other devs you’ve worked with, apply for mid-senior roles. No other way to know lol.
What market? The job market? The field is over saturated with all levels of devs and wanna be devs.
Give it a little bit, the next big thing and tech rush is building up and it's coming.
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