| The industry needs more people like you, passionate and eager to learn. Start networking. You never know who you might meet. You have a better chance at landing your first job through an acquaintance as opposed to answering a help wanted ad. Start attending meetups, now. My top recommendation would be OpenHack http://openhack.github.io/new_york/ While you don't have a portfolio of projects on a website, you most likely still have them on your computer. OpenHack may be good place to showcase what you're working on if someone shows interest. Those projects also come in handy for when you start landing interviews. I always took a computer to job interviews to showcase what I was working on and even did some live coding. There's also another advantage to doing it this way: You are in control of the interview and I feel it's a much better approach than sitting through a Q & A with a hiring team. It says, "I came prepared." For your first job, don't undercut yourself on salary. At least make enough to live. Even if you find a company is horrible, you can still leave yourself open to other options. You might even land your next job, doubling your salary, through someone you worked with and recently left said horrible company. It may take your 2-3 employers to get to your desired salary. I landed my first job through a random conversation with a neighbor (before that I was college dropout and an office temp for two months trying to land said job). It paid $28k and half of my month's pay went to cover rent for a studio apartment. I ate PB&J and an apple every day for lunch. The job was copying text from Word documents and PDFs, marking them up with HTML. At the time, the company was building a hosting subsidiary. 2-3 nights a week, I spent 3-4 hours volunteering my time with that effort, through which I picked up Linux. I landed my second job through a previous co-worker. Every job offer I've ever taken started with an acquaintance. My recommendation is to pick an area/skill set and focus on building that out. Looking at what you listed, I'd most likely recommend JavaScript for you. Take a look at a front end JS framework like Angular, Backbone, Knockout, or React. Maybe even try all of them out. Eventually, you might have questions. As you do, Open Hack might be a great place to get help and pick up a few pointers. As you become familiar with JavaScript, look to expand your horizons with a JS backend technology like NodeJS and look at exploring frameworks/platforms like Meteor, DerbyJS, or Express. If you do decide to go the JavaScript route, here are some resources to get you started. http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/1st_edition/contents.html http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/ http://www.addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpattern... JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford Secrets of the JavaScript Ninga by John Resig JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov As a side note, some of the most brilliant people I've worked with didn't have CS degrees (Music, History, English, etc). Their key strength was that they were passionate about what they were doing and were constantly learning. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates |
I really do have to focus, i'm making simple apps in phonegap to chrome extension to web layout in PS to apis in nodejs.