... and now I'm job-hunting in earnest and jfcsstrrssfgchujbgfryhgftyhgerswww. I hope this is the right place to vent about this sort of thing, but I'm feeling so incredibly stressed and frustrated because I really want to change careers (TEFL teaching is a dead end, and the conditions have got so much worse in recent years) and I know I could do a junior frontend job perfectly well — I've put so much with into getting good at it in my own time — but it's beginning to dawn on me that there's basically no way in to the industry unless you know someone who can help you get a foot in the door.

I don't know where I'm going with this tbh — I just needed to vent somewhere — but it would be nice to hear any advice anyone can offer, or even just the lamentations of anyone with similar experiences...

  • roux [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 months ago

    What all frontend do you know stack-wise? If you have HTML, CSS and the fundamentals of JavaScript down, look into picking up Angular or React. I see jobs listed for these 2 a lot.

    Another bit of advice that I've heard plenty of times is that you should have a portfolio of projects to show what all you can do instead of just listing langs on a resume. I have one with 4 websites and 2 mobile apps but it hasn't panned out much but ymmv. Not only will you have something to show potential employers but it will keep you engaged and learning more. I made the mistake of getting a degree in programming and then not touching code for like 3 years and I got rusty.

    • Andrzej3K [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      I'm pretty competent with React, and I just finished a crud project with Next.js (never again lol). It does seem like there are a lot of offers looking for Angular, so I guess that's next on the list - just as soon as I get good enough with Go to use that as the backend. My portfolio is hosted on my own hardware with a self-hosted git server and Jenkins pipeline. I worked so hard on it, and felt so proud, but it seems getting anyone to even look at it is incredibly difficult shrug-outta-hecks

      • roux [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Also I feel you on the portfolio part. Keep it up tho. It's a step above the hiree that doesn't even have one.

      • roux [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        One more bit of advice speaking from experience: pick a few languages you like and get good with those. I've spent the last 10 years dicking around with just as many languages and I'm not really great with any of them.

        A lot of the fundamentals and syntax is easy to adjust for like going from Java to C# or whatever, but each language has its own nuance as well. Right now I'm taking a gamble and stubbornly focusing on a stack that I hand picked. Typescript is here to stay but TailwindCSS and AstroJS are in various stages of wide acceptance so my future hirability is contingent on if something like Astro takes off. I'm not super worried since it's practically ReactJS-lite in a lot of ways and even supports drop in React components. But it's still a gamble against HR.