What they don't tell you: the cities with the tech jobs are disproportionately expensive.
For example, cost of living in San Francisco is anywhere from 60-100% higher than most other parts of the US. Same goes for New York, Seattle and Boston. Even Boulder is fairly expensive.
Jobs in San Francisco, in particular, are not cost-effective. Sure, you get paid more, but the differential is rarely enough to make up for the increase in the cost of living. A $100k job in San Francisco (where rent on a one-bedroom apartment is easily $1500/month) is roughly equivalent to a $60k job in Seattle.
That said, San Francisco is gorgeous. It's probably worth a hit to your earning power to live there...at least while you're young and single.
If your developing web applications its completely possible to be self-taught and produce high quality applications.
I was always into technology and was doing PHP + MySQL professionally before I left high school. I still decided to go to college for business. So I learn a lot of valuable business insight I would of normally overlooked.
The one thing I regret is that I didn't have the chance to be surrounded by intelligent tech-savvy people; instead its mostly just kids who belong in high-school who will fit well into their boring corporate jobs.
On the other hand, if people go into the profession solely because the pay prospects are good then there will be a huge influx of mediocre developers. That's no good for anybody.
What's killing me right now is the geographical bias of the whole thing. I'm in St. Louis currently and the job market seems pretty stagnant. What jobs are available tend to be with the megacorporates like A.G. Edwards, CitiGroup, and MasterCard. There are a minority of consulting gigs available.
SliceHost is the one major exception I know of for St. Louis.
> If your developing web applications its completely possible to be self-taught and produce high quality applications.
it's all ones and zeros, how hard can it be ?
i, just press the right key at the right time, and the program practically writes itself (with apologies to beethoven).
I graduated with a BS in Finance a year ago and have been working as a financial analyst with a Fortune 500 company this past year. The pay is certainly good but the work is totally unfulfilling for me. The one positive takeaway is that I've learned a bit about the inner workings of Corporate America.
Can anyone offer any advice on making the leap to becoming a web developer (with a background in a different field)? I've coded as a hobby since before I was a teenager (I'm 22), and I've worked on a number of freelance web projects as of late. I figure the best way to go is to build up a strong portfolio of my own projects before applying for a gig that I want at a web company. I would also consider searching out a junior position in order to gain experience.
Quickly building up a portfolio and applying for gigs worked well for me. One thing I noticed was that small companies and startups are impressed if you've built one or two cool apps whereas larger companies are more interested in the size and breadth of your portfolio; after creating one fairly complex site I was able to get offers as the lead designer or developer at tons of startups, but I couldn't get hired as even a junior developer at more established firms -- the usual response was "Can you show us what else you've done?" and I had nothing to show them.
Create a righteously awesome blog that really shows your spirit. All serious employers are going to hit it up and that's what they want to see: is this dude going to be a blast to work with or a freaking nutjob?
Definately get to work on the portfolio, but you don't need two dozen pieces. Two great pieces are plenty.
For example, cost of living in San Francisco is anywhere from 60-100% higher than most other parts of the US. Same goes for New York, Seattle and Boston. Even Boulder is fairly expensive.
Jobs in San Francisco, in particular, are not cost-effective. Sure, you get paid more, but the differential is rarely enough to make up for the increase in the cost of living. A $100k job in San Francisco (where rent on a one-bedroom apartment is easily $1500/month) is roughly equivalent to a $60k job in Seattle.
That said, San Francisco is gorgeous. It's probably worth a hit to your earning power to live there...at least while you're young and single.