Hi all,
Glad to be in this community.
I’m a Web Developer, Technical Lead. Please feel free to ask me anything.
Cheers.
[AMA] I’m a Web Developer, ask me anything.
Lreactvue on 22/07/2018 - 11:36
closed Comments
Hi OP, I’m also interested in your response to this question.
ThanksI think the majority of Uni will only teach you programming in a generic way such as an all purpose language like Java, maybe 1 or 2 courses will be specific to Web Development. General Assembly could work for you, I've seen many people landing jobs without a degree coming from GA. Remember, these will only get your foot in the door. Most things you will learn will be on the job as well.
Couple of other ways to learn for free are:
- Start a project, actually build something and if you're really stuck on a problem, google it or ask on Stackoverflow
- Attend relevant meetups, they often host talks every month and you can meet great people there to ask questions and learn from. They also do workshops.
Hope these will help.
Thanks a lot for your reply, I'll look into those suggestions.
What were your steps to becoming a Web Developer? I’m very interested in the field and I am fresh out of uni, any tips?
What did you study at Uni?
You need to put in some more effort besides having a degree in my honest opinion. I can write a step by step of how I came to be, but it might not work for everybody.
- Before going to uni, learn on your own from tutorial sites etc.
- Once you have enough foundation through trial and error on small scripts, start a project on something that really interests you.
- Either go to a dedicated course like General Assembly or Uni, depends on your lifestyle. Both will get your foot in the door.
- Use LinkedIn to connect with recruiters, friends, students, teachers and colleagues. Build your connections, this is very important.
- Practise interviews, do up your resume properly and show them the projects you have done.
- Land your first job, stick with it for at least a year even if you don't like it. Your first job doesn't have to be your dream job.
- Only move on if you have secured another job, it is very normal to jump ships.
Thanks for that, I studied a double degree at the University of Western Australia majoring in Computer Science and Data Science, although web development has always had me the most interested since I did a few units on it. I am currently doing some casual work for the School of Earth Sciences at UWA continuing to develop a website that we did over the last semester that they really liked and wanted us (ended up just being me) to continue development. While this is fine I may take your advice and start up another project, as it would surely be another great addition to the resume. Thanks for your insight!
Yep that first job is your golden ticket, and it (can and likely will) suck hard, that's fine. I think the salary on my first web dev job was 25k including super.
I left after a year, because after a year, you can usually do work that doesn't have to be completely redone by a senior dev, and so they will pay you a lot more. If you work hard, keep learning, and look at job ads every few months, your salary can go up a lot, and you can work in a company that's genuinely enjoyable to work for. Mine doubled twice in the first 5 years, and most of my career has been in interesting work with great colleagues and bosses (zero office drama, flexible hours, etc).
Why do you use Node.js? (I hate javascript with a passion :D and still don't understand why it's so popular though I don't do any web programming anymore)
I do understand why you hate it but the language has grown a long way since back then. Now with the new ES6 standard, it is finally taking shape as a "real" programming language.
Do you use typescript in your projects?
Only for declarations
Right it starts having to have some real data structure :D
There are two type of devs, one understands Javascript and one doesn’t.
Dude I don’t know what’s wrong with you to have hated Javascript with a passion?
Javascript is one of the best language to learn and can be practiced without freaking installing any extra stuff. Just open the browser and voila.
It has dynamic typing, functional programming, callbacks, single thread.
If you’re bad at data structure using a statically typed language wouldnt help you get better.
Without Javascript the web is a freaking boring place.
Are you even a programmer???
Are you a web developer that understands DNS, or a web developer I'm likely to get into an argument with after they screw up my clients MX records.
In all seriousness though, there is such a large range of web developers. Some are great, I'm sure you are. Whilst the vast majority are point and click monkeys with no understanding of the technical aspects of what they're doing. I can't count the number of times I have had developers migrate sites and I'm left to pick up the pieces because they haven't factored in MX records etc.
A typical web developer won't be experts with things like DNS as that is more on the Sysadmin domain. Having said that I've worked at many startups which requires you to wear different hats and DNS was one of them. I'm no super expert, but I know my ways around it. Besides MX records for email servers, you will also need to take care of SPF text records and DKIM authentication also to make sure your emails are signed properly and won't be triggered as spam.
Yeah I understand not understanding the ins and outs of DKIM and SPF that's fair enough. Just a general understanding of the implications of not just allowing cpanel to rewrite everything when they move hosts without regard for mail flow is all I ask!
You sound like you'd be good to work with.
I had an issue the other week where the web developers I recommend work to had an intern migrate a site between hosts, directing mail to their web host instead of G Suite.
A flower shop received no Saturday orders as a result. A few thousand of revenue gone at the very least. Needless to say, I don't recommend their services anymore.
I understand your frustration, seems like things could have been much worser..
Migrating between hosts usually doesn't require much DNS changes not does it require a change in NS (Name Servers), changing NS is the last resort as it requires a maximum of 48 hours for all ISP around the world to propagate. A single A record or CNAME should have been sufficient. Seems like they switched the NS records.
There are couple of things you can do or look into that can prevent these problems in the future where a mistake in migration can be deadly. Look into implementing a CRM system, so your orders don't have a single point of failure. When mail server is down, you can still view them in your CRM system, when CRM is down your emails might still be working. Or even a simple entry in a database would suffice.
These aren't a managed client and unfortunately all hosting was taken care of by the web dev (hosting by them too).
You're exactly right, what they've done is manually migrated the wordpress site they were hosting onto a fresh whm server with all the defaults.
The ordering system isn't something I handle for this client either, they're too cheap for that. I do agree that their orders shouldn't be predicated on them receiving these emails though and they should go into an appropriate system.
From memory this is actually handled by interflora or one of the bigger chains, they shoot them emails and my client fulfills them.
… the vast majority are point and click monkeys…
"Around half of all web developers are below average" ;)
On the upside, nearly all web developers have an above average number of legs.
ROFL… so true…
How many years of experiences do you have as a web developer? What technologies do you use at work? Do you also do backend or frontend only?
I have over 14 years of experience in total, which 6 were before graduating (build and run SME websites and freelancing since year 10), and 8 after graduating uni.
We use mainly JavaScript, Node.js running in AWS at work.
I do everything including Frontend, Backend, Database, DevOps and Architecture.
how much you earn?~
Enough to be in the top tax bracket ;)
Not too shabby at all.
Cashed up start up then ;)
1) How much money can a web developer earn?
2) What is the career path of someone who is a web developer? Would you want to continue developing web apps when you are 40?
3) Do you think a career as a web developer is great in the long-run? e.g. what about outsourcing, new technologies that make it easier for people to build web apps, and so on.
1) I've had contracts that were $200K a year
2) You end up hitting a junction in your career; either keep being a code monkey or go up the team lead, manager etc positions. I have days when I don't want to continue and days that I do. I personally don't want to go the manager path, I prefer to come into work, crank some music on my headphones and pump out some JIRA tickets.
3) Heck yeah depending on which 'part' of web development you want to get into. Outsourcing has been out for years and in my opinion it has only made it hard to freelance. It's still hard to find good people.It’s quite bizarre for an experienced guy like you to refer to other devs other than team leads and manager as code monkeys…
I don't think of it being a derogatory term but more the nick name given to someone who writes code.
I don't think it's meant to be a negative term.
I was considered to be a code monkey back in the day. Moved away and in more of a managerial sort of role.
Funny i had this discussion a little while back, a few people embrace it, a few people loathe it :)'Developer churning out boring code as required by someone else' is too long.
What OS do you use for work? If linux, what distro?
inb4
"I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux."
Mainly OSX for work, my favourite Linux distro for Desktop would have to be ArchLinux and Void Linux. For server, don't really have a choice whatever the client is using, mainly Ubuntu or CentOS.
Why tools do you use for development with MacOS?
My current setup is WebStorm for IDE. Other tools includes iTerm2, Homebrew, VirtualBox etc. for Development.
Are you looking to change job? We are hiring!
Do you train/mentor junior/entry level developers?
We do and I guess most companies do too. However we just recruited a lot of junior devs so it’ll be a long time until we do it again.
Thats cool, we are hiring too! :)
Why did the web developer get fired?
Because he or she uses Firebase!
What's wrong with firebase?
It's a pun. 😆
Because she/he did Less every day!
Because even though it's 2018, SQL will still hose all your production data if you leave off a where clause
Do you have a degree or certification of some sort? If so, what is it and has it helped you with Web Development?
I do have a paper degree of Bachelors of IT, it helped with "something" in the resume in the beginning, but what they taught wasn't really relevant for what I do now. Most have been self taught or picked up on the job. If I could turn back time and General Assembly existed back then I would have taken that instead.
I've kept my mouth shut about some of the rest but that really is terrible advice. There are a lot of places you won't even get your foot in the door without a degree, never mind progress to a tech lead.
I was anwering the question literally.. to put it bluntly Uni didn’t teach me anything decent that I would consider that helped me with Web Development. It was purely experience. If a place rejected me just because I don’t have a degree, it is very old fashioned thinking and I wouldn’t want to work there anyway, elitist and think they are better than everyone else.. give me a break. Anyway by all means this was not a professional advice, I am only expressing my opinion.
In all seriousness, after couple of years of experience and have proven myself, most of the places I’ve been to they don’t even care what I studied. It might be abit tougher landing the first job but you are sure to land the right one because they will care for being passionate rather than what the paper degree say.
Yeah he said it helped to have it on his resume, just that it didn't teach him that much in terms of becoming a good developer.
Sounds about right to me (B. Comp. Sci, 15 years experience).
I clearly had a better experience with my Comp Sci degree than you did. I had 1 year developing under my belt before I started but I still found both the technical aspects and the teamwork very useful. Particularly in getting the job done while dealing with people who either weren't motivated or had strong views.
Some of the electives were absolutely awesome too. I learnt a lot more about compilers than I'd likely have bothered to learn on my own for example. And I understood the complexity of building a decent one so that I wasn't tempted to just say yes to throwing something together quickly when asked to by someone less technically competent.
And it doesn't just "help" to have on your resume. It's a requirement for working at many places, and a requirement for advancement at many more. I have no idea where OP is working that they don't care if he has a degree. I'd be surprised if they were hiring many non-grads at Aus Post. No idea how Carsales runs their business. It is easy for OP to say he can afford to be elitist and discount employers who require a degree when OP actually has one.
I've mostly worked for large banks, insurers and consultancies, and I've been involved in recruitment. A lot of doors are closed without that degree, no matter how Oz bargainers vote on this thread. It has died down a little now but there was a lot of talk a few years ago about requiring software develops to be licensed like other professions. Many places want to see evidence of ongoing learning and some require industry certificates too.
@syousef: It's easy to spot those that didn't go to university and those that did.
He didn't, he still tells people that HTML is kind of a programming language.
And if you ask anything else remotely specific it'll be an answer like "well I saw on the web that this is popular". haha
Hard to tell if he's being sloppy and dumming it down or just doesn't understand.
Having the Red Dragon Book thrown at me in an elective was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I wish I had paid more attention.
@syousef: You don't dumb it down to the point your answer is "maybe".
You can dumb it down without losing the answer.
I didn't say he did a good job of it. I'm just saying being sloppy/wrong doesn't mean he didn't go to uni. Most Ozbargainers wouldn't know the difference between markup and programming languages.
@syousef: Yes. So when they ask, why would you confuse them more?
If you don't know how to answer a question, you shouldn't offer to. That's just my belief though.
I completely agree with you. You shouldn't sacrifice accuracy where you can avoid it. I wouldn't choose to do it. I only said you could go to uni and still do a bad job of explaining.
@syousef: You could go to Uni and learn nothing! I believe it's a great boost to anyone's career though. :) But of course, there are always horses who won't drink.
How do people usually run a marketing campaign for their website?
How much is the budget roughly to promote a website from noteless?This really depends on the industry, if it's a lucrative one like Insurance it would be crazy expensive in Google AdWords. I would say the best long term marketing campaign is to invest in the brand, opt for SEO which can be free or hire an expert.
As a web developer, where does one go these days to ask an "opinion-based" question, like what stack/framework/database/toolset/hosting/cloud to use for a specific project, compare available options, etc? Besides StackOverflow I mean, which can be quite hostile to that kind of questions. Speaking of StackOverflow, are you're active there yourself answering questions? What's your rep level there?
Those kind of questions would normally end in a religious war, there's always that fanboy will defend their honour. In all seriousness I'm not really sure myself.. I would suggest you do your own research first to find your own answer, after all they are opinions. Here is a pretty good list to get your started https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
P.S. Not really a regular on SO, I go in the github directly and ask from the maintainers themselves.
Why do you think python is not dead yet. It seems it pops up again in top 5 every 2 years or so.
Python seems to have a really long release cycle, i.e. migrating from Python 2 to Python 3 is a very big deal and it takes years to get everyone to upgrade. I think that may be the reason.
Python is love, python is lyfe :P. I like python quite a bit for personal projects. It is versitile language with some great libaries especially around data and machine learning. If you still have people do data, python will still be around. Python can be a pain with large project because of the nature of dynamic language. Though python 3.6 does help a bit with type hinting.
Yeah it wont be dead, i am surpised that php rails are still out there.
- How many dev in your team ? In the company ?
Monolith or micro service or both ?
How is the market for full stack dev ? Easy to find a job ?
- What would be a good salary for someone with ~10 years full stack experience ? Let's say low / average / max salary.
Thanks OP
- Only a small startup right now, 7 or so developers. Doing mass hiring right now, maybe 25+ in the company.
- Not really keen on labelling the architecture as such, it's more of abstraction or no abstraction. To me it's just finding the right balance.
- Very in demand, if you're good they will hunt you down and bribe you to jump ships
- I would say 10 years you will be in a at least a Senior, most likely a Lead position. Salary with super: 120k / 160k / 200k, if at a startup you might get share options also.
What are the chances of someone starting on the field in their early thirties? I have a friend who has great product management experience but is looking alternatives. As a hobby he built a Wordpress website and he sells in this website an app that help people with tax related matters.
I haven't seen a person changing career from a completely different field to become a Developer that turned out to be really good yet. There might be exceptions, or maybe they can be more of Engineering Managers than actual Developers / Tech Lead. Anyone can build an app these days, not trying to be all negative, just giving my honest opinion. But if that friend of yours is really enthusiastic about it, than I would say the chances of success are greatly higher.
The founder of the last company I worked for was an ex-IBM sales guy who didn't enjoy sales and always ended up tinkering with code. In his 40s he started a company building Internet Banking and Insurance software. Using Smalltalk of all things. One of the smartest coders I ever met. The thing is he had a passion for it.
Good on him, like I said there are exceptions. It is very rare so I haven’t seen one such unicorn myself. And I strongly agree if you have the passion and the right mindset, anything is possible.
It's not a question of unicorns. It's a question of passion for software development. If you have that passion chances are you found it and were doing it early. There's no need to discourage people by calling such people unicorns. A career change in mid life isn't unrealistic and I could give you other examples. Another guy I went to uni with works with startups these days but back in the day he gave up an electrical engineering degree and came back later to do comp sci. - his uni project was writing a small CORBA Orb (not an easy task). He could walk into almost any job as a dev.
I recently attended a talk by Nobel laureate Brian P. Schmidt. He led one of the two teams that discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The one answer he gave that received loud and sustained clapping was to a question on the struggles of academia. It turns out that at the point he did his ground breaking work he almost gave up being an academic. He said he was having trouble getting paid work and didn't want to make his wife (who has an established economics career) move yet again. So he was going to find a different job outside academia. And he said he was fine with that - he'd had his time and learnt excellent transferable skills as a scientist, and he knew that whatever he took on he would work hard at it and make it work for him. He advised the students there to be resilient and seize opportunities rather than seeing any deviation from their pre-planned path as a failure. He pointed out that the employment rate for astrophysics post docs at ANU (which he now heads) is about 95% (very very high).
Some of the advice you're giving here is good. Some of the other stuff is making me roll my eyes at you.
The best advice here is to ask yourself if you genuinely think you are capable and you really want it and if you do, really throw youreself into it and do your very best. It certainly isn't as unrealistic as wanting to be a sports star, movie star, rock star etc. No unicorns here.
@syousef: I did not disencourage anyone in any way. Perhaps my wording was not correct.. “unicorn” is a compliment, rare and very sought after. I don’t think it is a disrespecting term, I would be happy if someone called me such. And thank you for the story, it was a good read.
I am only saying what I have experienced, it may or may not be helpful. I’m sorry if my comment was distasteful to you. The question was about the chances, and I answered with what the probability is from my past experience. Other people may of experienced differently, like I said anything is possible.
How demanding/stressful is your job?
Do you like it?
Can you picture yourself working in the same industry for another ten years?
Just being curious because I don't think I will be working in my field of study after few years or soIt’s very demanding and I absolutely love it. It keeps my curious mind under control. I’ve explained before that gamers will enjoy gaming. As for myself I find enjoyment in programming, and getting paid to play games would be awesome right? Maybe another 10 years hopefully I can retire early and only work on my side peojects all day.
Good on you
Do you think that sites like Wix and WordPress can take away the job from the web developers (not talking about those who keep the platforms up and running) ?
Those services that helps you generate websites with drag and drop are good only for general purpose where it is mainly looking good with content and basic editing capabilities. If you want a fully customised features for a web applications, think mypost from auspost.com.au website. Custom registrations, accounts, inventory and personalisations. You will always need a professional (for the time being).
Is it possible to create an enviroment where you send a sms and it automatically get posted on a website
Sure, anything is possible. However SMS gateways will cost quite abit, I would recommend you have a look at Twilio.
Hi,
Hope this gets answered. Actually I'm a graduate and landed a job as a wordpress developer. So I'm pretty much just using backends for creating sites. Now I want to move on, even though I've learned PHP and Java , it was just a Uni thing with a very basic stuff. So how should I pursue my career now? I want to move into actual development either PHP or Java rather than using drag and drops.Thanks in advance… :)
If you're only starting out I would highly recommend you to explore more options, don't just limit yourself to a specific stack or technology just because you are familiar with it. From past experience the vast majority of PHP users are "low end", you will be competing with offshore developers and have a high chance of your job being outsourced and made redundant. The current market right now it is very hard to find good and talented Frontend developers offshore so most companies will stick with locals. Maybe explore more of JavaScript and Node.js which are high in demand especially startups. Java is also a good language to pursue, you will be working more at the enterprise level. Hope this helps.
Thank you @shirotech for the reply. Yes this will definitely help me a lot as a bit of market insight is always good. I will surely start on JS platform, and like you've said PHP even though I've got one year experience back from my country, I really couldn't find any jobs. By the way I saw your comment that your company is also hiring? Is there any Junior Dev's opening, if you could consider my resume that would be really great.
Thanks a lot for the information though. :) :) :)
What's the future direction going from here onwards? I'm a senior dev myself with around 6-8 years experience but I'm feeling that I wouldn't be able (want to) be a developer for the rest of my life. Do you sometime feel the same? What's the career transition that can happen from here?
Seems like at the pace you are going, maybe leaning more towards a Lead role? As a Technical Lead you will be doing less coding, and more on architecture and DevOps, also HR such as recruiting and mentoring. I only do 60% coding now, and thinking more of making it easier for your team to do their work rather than trying to finish Jira tasks, you will be assigning them.
Another path I can see is that you can try to co-found a startup, more riskier, but if it's your thing.
How long should you be developing for before its reasonable to push towards lead/dev manager/etc path? Hitting on my 5th year now, wondering how much more patience i need!
This can vary quite a lot depending on many factors. I would say if you play all your cards right, 6-7 years would be enough to start Leading a team. Normally these kind of skills you will eventually pick up during your Senior days, you might not even realised that you are Leading the team already by sheer knowledge and output. Your title does not make you a Lead, but your actions will and getting the Title has to be earned.
Which is the best way to change WordPress admin login address? Will that affect future update? How to make WordPress more secure? Thanks
Hi Qlseth,
I usually use iThemes Security Plugin for changing the admin Login URL. There is a feature called Hide Backend in this plugin it allows you to modify it into any slug.Hope this helps.
Thank you.
What is the oldest browser you develop/test for? How do you decide when to drop support for an older browser? I imagine it might be project specific?
We normally support the following browsers by default:
- IE 10+, Edge 14+
- iOS 8+, Android 4.3+
- Last 3 versions of Chrome and Firefox
On top of this we also support the following screen readers for accessibility users:
- Last 2 versions of JAWS and NVDA
- Last 3 versions of VoiceOver
Theres no process to officially drop browser support yet, ideally if it's < 0.2% usage I would probably drop it.
How many % of pay increases do you get every year? And how many % increases should be reasonable to you?
Would you consider exploring something in the AI field in the near future?
Do you think AI can take over your job and why?
I can't speak for OP experience. But from my experience, if you stay in a same company, between 0-15% (10-15% if you get a promotion or you are massively underpaid). Depending on field, i.e. if you are in Data related field and you are willing to switch job, you can expect up 20% for the same title. I haven't got a "promotion" to a new title in 2 years but my salary has increased by high double digit %. So it really depends on what you work on, which organisation you work for.
Regarding to AI, coding is probably the last place you can automate with AI. The whole AI thing is over-hyped anyway. At the moment, AI almost has no reasoning, it is basically statistics and certain optimisation problem on steroid put it that way. At this stage, AI can't work on "creative" aspect because it relies heavily on "historical knowledge". So if your job are repetitive, expect your job will expect to be replaced by AI to a certain extent.
- You should be getting at least 3% each year as a bare minimum to match the CPI and inflation, I would probably start looking if it's less than this, not worth being loyal to.
- If I didn't ask for a raise, I would expect at least 5-8% increase regardless. If I did ask for a raise it would have to be over 10%
- A promotion would have to be more than 15% or else don't take it as it's more work without good pay to compensate
- If you are being headhunted, needs to be more than 20% before I would even consider
These figures are what I see as reasonable, depending how much leverage you have.
I can't comment much on AI, it is still in it's infancy stage. AI and Machine Learning is now more of brute forcing rather and not true AI.
What improvements would you make to this site?
Hi, love your post. I've learnt a lot reading all the comments.
I am really interested in Web Development, and want to get into the industry. What path do you recommend for a newbie like myself to take in order to land a job? I've been studying by myself using sites like Lynda.com, Treehouse, and freeCodeCamp. But always felt like not getting anywhere. Should I study with institutes like General Assembly? Or do you recommend going to uni? I feel like programming is for me, but I just not getting anywhere on my own.
Thanks in advance.