Is it time for me to quit my job?

If you feel confident, then yes, I would say now would be the time to take the plunge as a junior developer. You will obviously have to learn a lot on the job, but selling yourself on your positives is a key.

Technical skill alone isn't enough, though, because there's thousands of people out there with the same alphabet soup of certifications. What I would do is continue to learn and continue to take on small projects for the experience (paid - unless it's a nonprofit, ALWAYS charge a reasonable rate, we all need to eat).

A very useful exercise a mentor of mine shared with me is to create a quadrant chart, positive at top, negative at bottom, rational on the left, emotional on the right. With a trusted friend, list out words or attributes you'd use to describe yourself (flaws and all). When you're done, take the stuff in the positive category, and when writing a description of yourself for CVs or job search sites, focus on those.

Next steps would be:

• Get involved with local tech Meetup groups - startups, WordPress, PHP, GirlDevelopIt, hack nights, whatever aligns with your interests.
• Put together a talk to give to an organization or Meetup group, or to mentor beginning coders. Talk about something you learned, or a new web technology that excites you.
• Maybe put together a simple web app with some friends, maybe something that serves your city's information needs, as a demo project.
• Or contribute to an open-source project, like a WordPress plugin or theme.
• If you're more of a coder than a designer, find a designer meetup (or department at a local college) and see if you can find a designer partner to work on things together.
• Get a portfolio site together. Showcase some projects with screenshots and brief descriptions. Describe what you, specifically, did for each of them, Did you lead, did you participate, did you do the bulk of the coding, the design, etc. Put your CV and certifications there, in HTML format, with a PDF or .docx for download.
• Establish a presence everywhere people might find you. GitHub, LinkedIn, AuthenticPros, etc.
• Research what kind of companies or organizations you'd like to work for, and where. Sites like Glassdoor.com provide anonymous reviews of many companies - you can take individual ones with a grain of salt, but you can get a general picture of a place's good and bad points and judge for yourself.
• Research cities with a vibrant tech employment scene; this will give you more options, particularly if you start out with contract jobs. You're in Chicago, which has a pretty good and growing tech scene and a big financial-services sector, great meetups and design pedigree. But also look at other hubs like Seattle, NYC, the area surrounding Washington DC, the Research Triangle area in North Carolina, Atlanta, etc. If you can legally work outside of the US, Vancouver and Toronto are good candidate cities.
• You may need to start with a rotation in customer support to get a feeling for what the users need, for instance. That's a good thing! (Basecamp does this with all new hires, for instance.)

All that being said - the absolute best way to get a job is through a personal reference. This is why networking is key, working with people, meeting people. You never know when someone you helped on a small thing years ago will recommend you when a friend of theirs is looking for talent. I have found, unfortunately, that a lot of so-called "professional" recruiters just spam you with jobs that have nothing to do with your skills, and job search sites can be a bit iffy. Going directly to the company you want - meeting people there, getting introduced, etc, is a better way into the biz.

just quit dude, be an indamapendent black woman