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On the web, no matter how much time you spent preparing, or how accurate your estimate is, a client is gone with one mouse click. Why? There is no explanation. - Jeff Knooren
The Bad News
I suppose you’ll want to get a job at some point. Given that you have such a short window to learn, and you have a family, I can’t be all that encouraging. Most of the things you’ll be asked to do, will suck. See, learning on your own is fun, because you get to go to the library, and get any book you want, and it’s all so new and limitless. But when you’re under the eye of managers, and being commanded to calculate interest rates on some crappy, hacked together software, and customers bitch, it’s no longer fun. Maybe it beats scrubbing toilets, but I question if that is true.
Secondly, all corporations make you sign an At Will Employment Agreement. That means they don’t need a reason to fire you. They monitor all your activities, log all communications, and you’re a resource to be allocated like a piece of furniture. That’s another good reason to build your own applications, even if they’re just examples. When a company escorts you out of the building with security guards, they don’t need a reason to fire you, or even give you screenshots of what you’ve worked so hard to build. Then, you have nothing to really show the next potential employer what you’ve been working on. I’ve seen it done, and it’s been done to me.
Finding a job doesn’t get easier with experience. On a daily basis I encounter NOT knowing the right skill, or have the right program, operating system, or qualification to get that next job. And yet I’ve been rejected for being overqualified too. Sure, there have been times when I’ve made $5k in two weeks. But I’ve also worked for less than minimum wage. Just the other day, someone needing their wedding photos scanned, thinks I charge too much. So, he wants me to supply him with references. There is no way I’m letting him call people I know, asking if I’m qualified to operate my own scanner. It’s so absurd, I can’t explain it properly. Keep in mind, most of my work is freelancing, and desk jobs are the exception for me. So I probably deal with more people who don’t know what they’re doing, than the average “techie” person would.
But what will make getting jobs easier, is demonstrating that you can solve problems. Like that address book thing I mentioned earlier. If you can show a potential employer, how you had a problem finding your contacts, so you built this whiz-bang gizmo that finds them. Show them database tables, code snippets, describe the issues you ran into during development, and how you solved them, did you design the interface? All that will be more impressive than any team project done for college credit.
Since chess is our common ground, let’s make some analogies. You know how there are millions of people play chess because it’s fun, but only a handful rise up to master level? They only get to that level, after many years of study and practice. A tipping point is reached, and you have to decide if becoming a master is worth the time and effort. At some point, the game is no longer just fun, and becomes your job. It would be cool to be as good as Kasparov, but could you devote 10hrs a day to study? That is what it takes to play at his level. That is exactly what happens being a web developer. Millions of people want to do what I do, but rising through the ranks is difficult and frustrating.
The Clients want an unlimited number of price quotes. It’s like competing for a mortgage, and all parties loose, except the ones providing the system for our failure. They get paid up front. - Jeff Knooren
Anyone can learn to build websites, given enough time. It’s all basically simple. HTML is easy. CSS is easy, and yes, eCommerce is easy. But all those easy things must come together seamlessly to build a website. All those tips/tricks/shortcuts you learn along the way can only come from doing it. That’s the hard part. I hope that makes sense.
Summary
My advice is to ignore whatever you hear about how much money people are making on the internet. Be careful about falling for scams. The only people making $6k in one month, with no experience, and no computer; are the people selling the information on how to make $6k in one month, with no experience, and no computer. What is really dangerous, is that a lot of these scams, prey on people looking for jobs. It’s really evil that in your most desperate time, someone is there to rob you.
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