Career advice? Not really sure where to go. Junior developer

Peck3277

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could give me some advice on what I should be looking as I'm not sure what I should be looking for in my next career step. I'm 26 if that's important!

I began programming around 15-16. I taught myself HTML and CSS. I progressed onto learning PHP and a bit of MySQL. I self taught myself some Javascript and JQuery. I studied Electronic Engineering in college but preferred the software side of things. After college I got a job with a fairly large company working on huge website.

This is the position I've been in for 3 years. I deal with HTML and CSS daily in a CMS. I have learned some Java and have developed some tools for automating QA tasks on our site. I have also learned a fair bit about XML and Powershell.

I feel like I've a bit of experience in a lot of things but I'm not really very good at anything. I feel like I can get most things done with a lot of googling rather than thinking my own way through problems.

I'm on quite a good salary (I think? It's between 30-40k) for the work I do here which is pretty basic stuff. I want to get out of where I am as I feel like I'm not developing any new skills. I would happily move into a position that would reduce my salary at the moment but would provide better learning opportunities so I can develop my skillset more.

I have looked into going back and doing a part time masters to get some formal education in Computer Science which would help me get into a programming role. Would this be necessary? I like frontend development but I think I would like something more backend or native with Java/PHP.


My current skillset would be as follows:

HTML - very good
CSS - very good
Javascript/JQuery - can get by with googling

PHP - alright, can get by with googling
Java - alright, I've developed apps to QA our site, mainly link sweeping tools and webscrapers with their own swing GUI. I've never worked with maven or spring or the likes.

MySQL - alright, can get by with googling. Developed a few websites with databases. I imagine I'm fairly basic as I don't know much about scaling, normalising etc.

XML - good. Not much to this unless I'm mistaken?
Powershell - good as long as I can google

Linux - used it in college and use a VM of Ubuntu for developing on at home. No real knowledge but I can get around on the command line, install packages and troubleshoot minor issue.

I'm looking for some general career advice if you were to take all the above into account. Mostly I'd like to know what level I'm at, I feel at most I would be a Junior Developer? Maybe more as a frontend web developer? And I would also like to know where should I look for jobs and should I seek out a recuitment agency?

Sorry for the long post, I hope someone can help me out here. Thanks

Mr. Loverman

What do you want to do?

Peck3277

Well I think my skill set is currently suited towards front end web dev and as I want to move job fairly soon I think that's what I'm best of pursuing. Long term I want to move towards web/app backend dev. I think Java/Spring is my best avenue for this but I'm just looking for a bit of advice as to how to go about this. What front end jobs should I look for with this skill set that would possibly expose me to a bit of back end or other learning opportunities?

awec

When you say your HTML / CSS is very good do you mean you know them well or that you are good at design? I mean are you creating beautiful things?

Peck3277

My eye for design isn't good at all, I can replicate designs in photoshop but I'm not a designer. I'm more on the technical side. Implementing design's provided to me by PSD or by discussion with a client isn't really difficult. I work day to day with HTML/CSS so I don't really have too many issues with it.