[schwartzworld]

I live in the US, so my experience may or may not be useful, but I transitioned to web development from massage therapy. I can't speak to your PHP experience, but JavaScript developers are in huge demand. Someone who is good at ReactJS can basically write their own check.

> I'm lacking in skill and knowledge, but I hope to remedy that.

If you want to level up your skills, learn some modern JS. Looking at your RLC repo, I see a lot of ES5, which is valid and even preferred in many jobs, but it looks very different from the code I write day to day. Start using ES6/7/8/Next features today, because docs are written using them. const, arrow functions, fetch / promises. Nobody at my job would approve a PR that uses `var` to declare a variable.

From there, I'd learn a framework. React if you want to work in the US, but Vue and Angular are valid choices too.

> Crank through job-boards and applications?

This is the name of the game. I have never seen a listing for a junior dev. If I'd waited for one, I'd still be giving massages for a living. Instead I kept practicing and studying until I was good enough to hire for a mid-level position. Keep studying, keep applying.

[aaron5]

What an encouraging comment - and thank you so much for looking at that RLC repo! It's riddled with mistakes, to be honest. I took it on as a learning project, speaking of which...

> Instead I kept practicing and studying until I was good enough to hire for a mid-level position.

May I ask how you demonstrated how good you were to the hirer? I mean, when you were studying were you producing side-projects, contributing to github repos, going through a course that gave you grades? I hope this question isn't rude. I'm not sure how to jump over the junior dev role without my resume being auto-filtered out because of lack of experience, if that makes sense.

Anyways, congratulations! I hope you're liking your work in web development, because your story is really encouraging.

[schwartzworld]

> May I ask how you demonstrated how good you were to the hirer?

I had done some small personal projects and two websites, which I highlighted on my resume. I also had spoken at a few Meetups, so I had an "Appearances" section on my resume as well.

Ultimately, the place that hired me was one of 4 actual interview I went on (with maybe 75 applications sent). They assigned me a takehome assignment. I later found out I was the only candidate who successfully completed it.

> I hope you're liking your work in web development

Yeah! It's fun using my brain to make a living, and most importantly, I work a lot less than I had to before, for a lot more money.

They gave me a take home assignment and I did it. I later found out I was the only applicant who successfully completed it.

[aaron5]

Got it!

What's that old quote? "Half the work is showing up" or something like that. You just did what they asked and - boom - got the job. Well done! I'm tucking that one away under "life insights".

Thank you for taking the time to answer that question.

> Yeah! It's fun using my brain to make a living, and most importantly, I work a lot less than I had to before, for a lot more money.

Congratulations, again!