[lacker]

If you enjoy being a “fairly competent” web developer, why not work on that and become a “very skilled” web developer? You can make more than 100k that way, and the world needs a whole lot of web developers. If you aren’t sure where to start, try picking some specific tools and contributing to the open source ecosystem. The world can still use cool new React libraries.

[needajobb]

Not sure I particularly enjoy being a web developer, it just seems to be where I have landed. I do love coding of all types though. There are definitely some open source libraries I am interested in though. I guess this leads to further questions, say I were to contribute heavily to a decent project, would this be sufficient to get a company's interest up (in your opinion) - or do you think it should just be one part of my strategy?

[stevekemp]

It's hard to say. Some employers will be pleased, impressed, and weigh in open-contributions. Others won't care in the slightest.

If nothing else I've found such things can come up in interviews, and be useful points of reference. It's better to say "Yes I've done XX, YY, ZZ and you can see examples in this project I published .." than to not have good examples.

[lacker]

The most important thing is for you to get better. If you really are becoming a better and better engineer over time, some companies will realize that and offer you more money. So find a project that challenges you enough that it will improve your skills to work on it.