Need advice, about to finish tech-degree.

I am also in a TechDegree and so my advice won't be from personal experience but from things I have heard from some of my mentors. 1/2) It is not uncommon (apparently) for backend developers to work along side with front end developers like yourself. But because most backend developers have to learn front end in order to learn backend they can probably just do it on their own. Therefore it may be wise to learn a backend language. I am taking the JavaScript tech degree and it related it all back to HTML and CSS. Taking some basic JavaScript would be a great idea (or going more in depth with JavaScript of course). But this isn't necessary of course. Think about how many websites there are on the internet that are static. There are billions. People hire front end developers all the time, you don't need to know how to make web apps to get jobs. Don't feel pressure to learn backend because of employment, both backend and front end are necessary in the field of web development. Front end is needed with every website on the internet, backend is only necessary on a few.

3) Are you looking for an internship or a job? I really don't think either would be hard to get at all (especially since you will have a great portfolio), I personally don't know anyone who is 18 and gotten a job in the field but I also don't know anyone interested. I doubt you'll have trouble finding a job though, who would be willing to turn away your skill especially when you are able to prove you have it through your portfolio.

Good luck searching! Let us know how it goes!

Cody,

Now that you're approaching the finish line of the Techdegree, it makes sense that you're thinking about what comes after. First thing I would do as a graduate would be to go through my projects and find ones that I could improve since I started them. The Interactive video player is a good candidate for this, as is the web dashboard and the capstone project. Get as much as you can out of those.

Then I'd recommend taking Career Foundations, putting together a resume, and start applying places. If you can find tech meetups in your area, I highly recommend going to them and making connections with people already working in the industry.

As for what you should learn next, my suggestion would be to learn a language that fascinates or interests you. If that's a struggle to come up with on your own, then start looking at front end positions in your area, decide which ones you want the most, and learn what they're looking for. But if you're interested in something already, do that first. Interest will be a lot easier to maintain if it's internal.

And remember to keep learning Front-end development. You're close to graduating the Techdegree, but you're no where close to knowing everything there is. I would start following some blogs and notable twitter handles for the daily front-end news. There's plenty of people that work strictly as front-end developers still, but often their job includes using other technologies like node for build tools, so that can be an introduction to the back-end in itself. I like to follow this email list for a broad take on front-end from week to week: http://frontenddevweekly.com/

As for the question of can an 18 year old with a solid portfolio and a GED get a job, I think the answer is a solid yes, but it's going to take some work, and it often won't be overnight. You're going to get some rejections. I would start applying right now, almost strictly as practice. If you're not hired, ask why in a really relaxed manner and see if you can get some information to help you the next time. I remember I had a interview early in my job search where I actually impressed the interviewer, but they weren't quite ready on that project to take on a junior.

Also, don't wait for junior dev positions to be posted. Look at the companies you want to work for, find out what department or manager handles their hiring, and send them an email to see if they need a position filled.

I hope some of this helped give you an idea of some strategies for moving forward. Happy coding!

Nic

I am also about to finish front-end techdegree and going to take full stack JS after that. it is good to know at least one backend i suppose. once you know one stack, lot of the skills are transferrable to another stack if you need to learn. for example, HTTP protocol and the way request/response works, APIs, caching strategy, storage principles, security, authentication etc remain the same. we just code it differently in different environments.