Studying web development: are my goals reasonable?
June 21, 2015 10:05 AM   Subscribe

I've been studying web development in addition to working full-time, and I'm finding it a pretty tough slog. I'm starting to wonder if my long-term goals are reasonable, and am hoping for a reality check.

I'm giving myself two years to tough it out at my job, save some money, and study for a new career on the side. I picked web development because I like making things, it seems like a field with a high number of freelancers and work-from-homers, and if the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to be believed, it appears to have a decent job outlook.

My long-term goals are to someday (soonish, defined as within the next 5-7 years) work mostly remotely and/or with reduced hours (30 or so a week on average, with commensurate reduced pay) so that I have a lot of extra time to volunteer/work a fun part time job/work on personal projects. And as an extreme night owl, the prospect of freelancing or working from home is especially appealing.

As with anything I do, however, I'm pretty much plagued with doubt: I'm too old, I'm not smart enough, I'm more of a word nerd and not as much a tech nerd, I'd be competing against much younger, more experienced and more talented people, plenty of those talented and experienced people have a hard time finding work, etc. I could keep going, but you get the picture.

I have a tendency to give up when the self-doubt creeps in, and it's definitely been creeping in. Metafilter seems to have its fair share of web development people, and I'm hoping for a completely honest reality check. Are some (or most?) of my doubts valid? Are my long-term goals reasonable or total fantasyland?

FWIW, if I stick with it I am planning to attend a session of our local Girl Develop It chapter, in hopes that having a sense of community might help.

Thank you!
posted by Sockrates to Work & Money (10 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Assuming your can do the work coding up a basic site, from what I understand 50% of the freelancer time is spent selling the services, getting jobs, "networking". So two very different skill sets. But good luck and be persistent.
posted by sammyo at 10:20 AM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I can't tell you if your self doubt is reasonable - how are you finding it so far? I taught myself php from a couple of online tutorials to build websites to showcase my retouching and Sims 2 mods. I got my first job (doing asp and php) having only built 2 websites ever - both php (and very basic). It was a "temp to perm" that didn't work out when they realised that I wanted paying above minimum wage ;) I worked that job for about 4 months but spun it to look like 6 on my CV. Got an interview for a new job the week after the temp contract ended and started a month later. After another 6 months I was head-hunted by a startup who were closer to home and offering a lot more money. After 12 months there I left and started my own freelance firm, within a month I was making a full time wage - I now make than 3 times that. I went from 0 experience to running my own freelance business in 2 years. I have an aptitude for coding though and I've been very lucky. (I'm also fortunate in that I have steady clients so I spend no time at all networking, and tbh, I've never really had to. My clients have mostly come from word of mouth)

IMO, unless you have a partner who can support you, the idea of doing only 30 hours a week isn't realistic. You have no job security so you never know when its all going to come crashing down, you take the work when you can get it and you'll often take more than you can fit in because you could have nothing next month.

There will always be people younger, more talented, more experienced etc than you, but there will also be clients who aren't willing to pay for them.
posted by missmagenta at 10:40 AM on June 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


You haven't really given enough details here to go on. How much of your two years have you already invested? What's your current stage of development/competence? Did you start with any technical training/education?

"Web development" is broad - where are you aiming to specialize first? Are you going to become a pro with some CMS (Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, etc.) and make small shops/boutique websites/etc.? Are you going to learn HTML5/CSS in and out and make meticulous parallaxy websites with incredible visual effects and animations, and only work on the frontend, and specialize in collaborating with artists and designers? Are you going to learn Angular/React/etc. and make the frontends for sophisticated webapps like Trello or Gmail? Are you going to learn a backend stack (rails, django, etc) and make traditional backend-driven websites? Or some combination of these?

I ask because these are all quite different goals, some are easier and some are harder, and you have to know where you're going. Once you have a decent 3 year goal, you have to pick the right milestones and work for those, one step at a time. Trying to bite off the whole thing at once can definitely be an exercise in self-doubt and frustration.

Generally, I think you're in for a good 4-6 months of frustration and bewilderment with the occasional gleaming spark of accomplishment. After that, it's a roller-coaster of feeling that you're getting a handle on things, then reaching for the next level of complexity and being plunged back into what-in-the-world-is-going-on-here-what-is-all-this-itis. I think by around 2 years, most dedicated people will have achieved a decent amount of competence in some not-terribly-complex niche which is nevertheless good enough for a respectable income. From there, mastering a higher level of complexity will take at least another 3 years, though they'll be much less fraught as you will more rarely lose sight of what direction up is.

Mentorship is certainly a great idea.

If you gave more details I could be more specific. Godspeed!
posted by tempythethird at 10:45 AM on June 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks for your responses--to answer your questions, I'm a couple of months in (I've been studying for longer but have had to take a couple of breaks due to some family issues). And honestly, I'm not really sure where I'm headed, which may be part of the problem--I've simply been dipping in and out of several free online boot camps.
posted by Sockrates at 11:24 AM on June 21, 2015


None of your doubts are reasonable. If you want to be a senior architect at Google then yeah, the ship may have sailed by now. But there is no reason a person of any age who is willing to work to gain skills and experience would not be able to do so because of their age. I think the reasons people beyond a certain age tend not to change careers have more to do with finances than anything else. If you are serious about this transition, you're just going to have to learn to ignore those irrational doubts. (But do pay attention to real concerns, such as cost of education, savings, etc.)
posted by deathpanels at 1:15 PM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Just as a datapoint, I've been a freelance web developer for 20 years now. Durring that time I've spend maybe 1% on selling the services, getting jobs, "networking".
posted by humboldt32 at 4:05 PM on June 21, 2015


Bottom line: if you're older than a lot of the people you're competing against, you can still succeed, but you've got to be willing to be patient. There are a lot of factors that go into getting work as a coder, and many of them are out of your control. Just work on your skills and try to build up contacts gradually. This strategy of patience worked for me, and I'll bet I'm older than you.
posted by aestival at 4:49 PM on June 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have been studying web development for about a year and a half. I can now build stuff that does things. I have not started actively searching for jobs, although I've been monitoring the local job market and started networking.

There are a couple of things to think about here. Can you program? If you can't, can you learn?
If so, it's just a matter of buckling down and learning. The jobs are there. No one I know who does this work is unemployed, although I know some freelancers who have dry spells. I also know some folks who started learning about the same time as I did who have found jobs pretty quickly once they started looking.

You say you are more of a word person than a tech person? So was I. And actually, studies have shown that programming activates the language centers of the brain more than you might think. Basically you're learning a new language. Easy stuff, for word people.

If you decide that programming is the thing for you, I can recommend freecodecamp.com and The Odin Project. Both are free, and have communities that you can reach out to for support. Take some time looking at the job market where you are. Javascript and front end work seem to be in demand all over. If you want to do back end stuff, what are the languages that are hiring? Then go for that.

Once you pick a language/framework, stick with it until you can build some basic things with it. Don't keep dipping your toes into different things. Decide, and then do. Give it at least 6 months. It will be hard. You will feel stupid. Often you will feel stupid for days. But eventually you will be able to make stuff that does things, and it will be very cool.

If you find (or decide) that you don't have any aptitude for programming, there are still plenty of tech jobs out there that you can do freelance. Content, SEO, design. Some photoshop skills with a little html and css knowledge can take you a long way. What experience and skills do you already have? Can you build on that in some way? Can you start blogging? Do you have some niche or special skill that is unique, but not related to tech?

Your overall goal is attainable. Two years is a good amount of time to get the basics down, at which point you should be hireable, or confident enough to start hiring yourself out.

Good luck, and memail me if you want more details about teaching yourself.
posted by natteringnabob at 5:05 PM on June 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Here's the thing about the work you're talking about doing, at least initially: the younger, more talented people probably don't want it. You're talking about sitting down with a client, finding out what they want, and building that for them. Odds are, the thing they want isn't new and cool and cutting edge. Odds are, it's the same site that's been built over and over again.

The kind of people who really get into and excel at programming, in my experience, want harder problems to solve. Their experience also typically prices them out of these bread and butter freelance contracts.

Your other doubts may be reasonable (I lean toward "give it a shot and see"), but I wouldn't worry too much about all of those whiz kids coming to take your freelance gigs.

Also, I'd like to echo the above that 30 hours a week will be a difficult thing to sustain early on (and maybe forever) without external support.
posted by toomuchpete at 11:19 PM on June 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm a woman working in web development and the crippling self-doubt never goes away, at least in my experience. I just finished my degree in Web Dev and have been actually doing the job for 5 years. Still get crazy OMG I AM TERRIBLE AT THIS about once every couple of months. I think it's growing pains. (And re: age, I'm 38 and just got my BAS degree)

Give it some more time. There's so much to learn. I wouldn't worry too much about the future until you have mastered some languages and have a portfolio ready. (And if I were starting right now, I'd want to learn Ruby. It seems like Ruby is crazy in demand lately.)
posted by getawaysticks at 9:32 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


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