Hey all, I’m in a bit of a pickle here. I’ll spare the fine details, but here’s the rundown.
I have been “getting into IT” since 2013. Various attempts at college until 2018 where I dropped out completely. A coding bootcamp in 2019 that yanked me around and ultimately wasted my time (while operating illegally no less). I finally buckled down and just started throwing my resumes at IT Support positions until one stuck.
I was relieved to have gotten in, but here I am now realizing that this little sector of IT might be more than what I was looking for. I’m always exhausted, annoyed, and there’s no clear path forward in my company besides up the support chain. I’ve decided I want to go back to doing web after a long bootcamp burnout, to try and improve work/life balance, pay (I’m severely underpaid as it stands), and to give me prospects of working abroad remotely.
I guess I am just wondering how to best tackle this. I know to learn a foundation, which I am re-learning now, build a portfolio of projects that stand out, but it’s the transfer from lines of work that I’m not sure how to make. Presenting my LinkedIn properly to try and reach the right people after it being so focused on IT Support and SysAdmin. Marketing yourself is pretty huge, and I have no idea how to do it.
It sounds like you’re saying that you already have a plan for learning and building projects, so I won’t belabor that point. My understanding is that once you’ve accomplished those goals you’re worried about how to build your resume/linkedIn profile, right?
Build experience. Experience doesn’t have to be paid to be worth putting on your resume. Projects that you built which you think represent professional quality, are great - especially if you actually can show that real people are using your application. (Note: tutorial/course projects add very little to your resume so if you’re including any of these focus on the ones that you think are really outstanding.) If you can work with other people on a larger project, that’s huge. That can mean working with a friend on a tool or application that you work on for months or years to release for actual users. It can also mean contributing to an open source project. Understanding how to plan and manage software development is a big differentiator. So is having worked in a codebase with other developers. Code worked on by a team presents challenges that code worked on alone does not. Effective communication is a huge part of being a professional developer.