Hello. Please forgive me if this is in the wrong place.
I am what you would call an aspiring web developer. I have been self teaching for around six months and still have not found a solid path to follow. Six months sounds like a lot but realistically it has been a few solid weeks of learning since it is a side hobby that I hope will turn into my career.
My question is: How are web development jobs doing nowadays? For years I have heard how this technological boom will bring millions of jobs, but more recently I have noticed that they seem to be hard to come by for developers that I know and talk to. Did the boom bring too many developers? I live near a rather large city and I have heard that it’s hell to find a job doing something as a developer.
Is this crazy talk or should I just take up a damn trade? haha. I just graduated college last year doing computer sciences. I work in a grocery store. The job market around me is tough, but we are hoping to move very soon and possibly go back to college.
Is the Web Dev job market in a good enough state that I should risk more college(LOANS)?
Thanks for any advice…
Edit: thank you guys so much for the kind and informative replies. This sub is one hundred times nice than any of the other subs I have posted to about this. I will try to reply to you guys when I’m off work. Thanks!
Web development is definitely still a job. (It’s my job, for example.) What you may be seeing or hearing about is that the job market for people who only know front-end technology is shrinking quickly. If the city you’re in doesn’t have much of a technology industry, then you might want to look for jobs in cities with a large skill gap. I’m not really sure what you’re considering more college for. You say you already have a CS degree, and that’s the most appropriate course of study for a developer.
If you have a CS degree already, there is nothing else to learn from a uni for most developer jobs.
Just learn to code and build a portfolio. The rest is luck and grinding.
However, if you want to potentially delve into a more data science focussed career (machine learning jobs opportunities in my city are really starting to take off) then doing a Masters in Maths or data science might be beneficial. But obviously, more loans is no small matter, so consider this carefully.
You absolutely do not need more tertiary study to become a dev - I have a degree in English Literature and still got a dev job.
My current company can’t seem to find good developers no matter how hard they try. There is still a big market for developers over here but we do expect people to be full-stack developers and not just front- or backend. Of course,it is not expected that you are an expert in both but you should have some general understanding of the other side.