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General Discussion

Mason Barton
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Mason Barton
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 5,656 Points

Which TechDegree has the most potential for employment?

I've started on FEWD, but when I look up job opportunities it seems that most employers and jobs want skills in Photoshop, illustrator, and/or other backend languages.

I was thinking of switching to FSJS (I don't care much for Photoshop and the like), but I was wondering which TD would have a higher potential for employment?

If it helps, I live in Austin, TX.

5 Answers

justin s.
justin s.
1,009 Points

All of them. So follow what your are most passionate about.

Mason Barton
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Mason Barton
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 5,656 Points

I was doing a bit more research and thinking it over again, I feel I would like to do both FEWD and FSJS, but go with FEWD first and learn photoshop and whatever else would benefit it, starting learning FSJS after all that, hopefully finding work with FEWD. What do you think of this idea?

Another perk I was considering were freelance opportunities.

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,735 Points

I took the FEWD techdegree. This may be grass-is-greener thinking, but I wish I'd done FSJS. There are parts of learning full stack that I found challenging on my own (servers, databases, authentication, deploying). It helps to have a community and mentorship to work through that stuff (I did later when I did a 5-week bootcamp). Front End has a lot of quirks, but I think it's easier to learn that stuff with just tutorial videos and code challenges (and Treehouse's are excellent). I was also under the false impression that mastering front end was kind of a prerequisite for full stack. You need to know some basic knowledge of front end, but full-stack devs are more generalists rather than specialists, and FEWD is more of a deep dive into front end. There are all sorts of jobs for different combinations of skill sets, but it's not uncommon for there to be some overlap between front end specialists and design skills. So if you're really averse to design, it might be a factor..

I haven't done any freelancing. I knew from my experience in a previous career that I don't want to work remote or solo, so I really targeted getting an entry level role on site with a team. (I was willing to relocate and it took a while.) But some people do really well with the freelance work.

I live in Austin, Texas as well and finished a coding bootcamp over MERN Stack development. Even though that stack is in fairly high demand, it still took me about 6 months to find a job related to coding. My biggest setback was a lack of work experience and a lack of polished projects to show off on my resume. I would recommend building your portfolio up as much as possible and lead with your strongest, easiest to show off projects. Sometimes you will find a company who is willing to train you in a different program/coding language than what you studied as long as they see you have the ability and drive to learn new things. Best of luck to you!

justin s.
justin s.
1,009 Points

I'm a big fan of specialization so I always ask people what they like better coding or design. If design, treehouse has a fantastic new ux techdegree. If coding, I then start asking these questions.

Web or mobile?

If web, front or backend?

The best advice I'll give is to niche down as soon as possible. With so much to learn, it's hard to master EVERYTHING tech related, so pick what you feel you would be best at.

Rob Allessi
Rob Allessi
8,600 Points

Dylan Glover Depending on which Techdegree, you'll be challenged to build 9-12 real-world projects, making for a pretty diverse portfolio as you wrap up the final exam. You can check out the details surrounding each Techdegree at teamtreehouse.com/techdegree/