Any advice
Hey! Im 22 years old about to finish college and been applying to Web dev jobs since last summer. I have been very unlucky and not gotten a single interview only rejections. Do anyone who has been in same situation have any advice!
I would appreciate any advice, starting to lose hope but, trying to stay strong!!
Take care!
9 Replies
Have you tried applying to other roles like backend?
I'm 21 y/o with a bachelors degree in applied computer science and am a lead frontend dev at a company. I applied for just 2 jobs, and got approved for both. I asked both of them why they chose me. They said 2 things.
1. I showed massive amounts of passion. Not just in IT, but especially in frontend technologies (thanks to Theo 😅)
2. I have created many projects in the past. Projects that do run in production for many years. Not just a random todo app. My biggest side project has 1.4 million users. And that just at 21 y/o.
And of course the obvious, be prepared, do research on the company you apply to. I never even did stuff like leetcode.
When asking these 2 topics to friends that have graduated and still don't have a job. I've seen that they don't have at least 1 of these 2 things.
Thanks!
Well i dont have any massive projects with many users or any projects that are "published" as its own thing like you talked about. what kind of projects would be good for this?
I have even tho its not my strong side im more on the front-end side!!
but damn 1.4 million users MASSIVE RESPECT dude!
@Siebe any tip on how to build a great product like you?
You don't need many users. If you have 5-10 real users that use your product daily that's also enough. It also doesn't need to be a specific project, just solve a pain you have or something really funny. But stay away from the next todo app. For frontend, make the design great, care about responsiveness and don't forget the WCAG rules (for the EU), ...
During my school time (~3 years) I've finished around than 15 side projects. I've also wasted time on 20+ more projects that I never finished. Always launch your project. If you have the money, buy a domain for each one, otherwise, just buy one domain (for a few dollars) and host them there.
I'm no expert, I'm just 21 y/o so there will be people that are more qualified than me to talk about these things. This is just my opinion on this matter.
Building a good product -> solve a real pain users have
Building a great product -> become great at marketing
As a software developer I always want to ship new features, but to build a great product you need more than just 'new' features. You need to market your product, find product market fit, listen to your users, ...
Like I said in my previous message, I've shipped 15+ products. Only 3 of them made me money, 1 of them has had real success. And that's the only one where I spent a lot of time doing marketing.
I'm now building a real company, aside from my dayjob and it's brutal. I've come to the realisation that marketing/sales might be even more important than the development itself.
Thanks for the detailed insight man. I appreciate it
But what if your product has a lot of users, but none of them stick around? Marketing can get people past a certain activation energy to check out the product, download it once out of curiosity, but then they stop using because the product is shit. Should I then focus on marketing more or development more?
And how do you know when to keep pushing and when to give up and move on to the next thing?
Sorry for this dumpster of questions I'm fresh out of grad and I'm building sth so I just keep thinking about these every day
Focus on product market fit. If you're building something your users don't need they leave. There are enough videos on youtube to know what product market fit is but finding it is a unique journey.
That, I don't have a answer for. I don't know myself. I am working on my own real company and growth has been... well... non-existing. I still don't have real users (that use my product in production daily) but I've been marketing for 3ish months. It's B2B so I don't need many customers but still 0 isn't going to get me very far 😅
So should I quit, I don't know. I have the same issue as you. But for the moment I won't quit, I will keep on grinding and find new angles, learn new things, ...
That's fine, you can always hop into my DMs or ask your questions here. Again I'm no expert, not even close, but happy to help where I can.
I'm not that active on Discord so messages might take a while. I don't open my discord daily.
Got it thank you!
Thanks for the advice!