Thinking About Going into Web Development

the_Grinch

I've always been interested in web development and completed a few courses in the subject. But my courses were geared more towards having a general understanding of it so if you were in charge of a web development team you'd understand what they were talking about. With things really gearing up to move to the web, my general interest in web application programming, and a bit of a pet project at work I am thinking I might move in that direction. I also figure that with a solid developing background I could eventually move into the web security side of the house.

In searching, I've seen that the job market seems a bit more open as well. Also, it's pretty easy to do it at home to learn and play with then some other jobs. Anyone make the switch from helpdesk/field tech to web developer and enjoy it? I am looking more towards the programming side then the design side (I was never very artistic).

Thanks!

Plantwiz

the_Grinch wrote: »

I've always been interested in web development and completed a few courses in the subject. But my courses were geared more towards having a general understanding of it so if you were in charge of a web development team you'd understand what they were talking about. With things really gearing up to move to the web, my general interest in web application programming, and a bit of a pet project at work I am thinking I might move in that direction. I also figure that with a solid developing background I could eventually move into the web security side of the house.

In searching, I've seen that the job market seems a bit more open as well. Also, it's pretty easy to do it at home to learn and play with then some other jobs. Anyone make the switch from helpdesk/field tech to web developer and enjoy it? I am looking more towards the programming side then the design side (I was never very artistic).

Thanks!

If you are still in a school (college) program, perhaps you could sit with one of the advisors there and have them help you sort out 'what-I-want-to-do-when-I-grow-up"?

And...that isn't meant to be a slam at you. I'm serious. I've know many (and even myself) who thought that the only options that existed for employment were 'A' or 'B' or 'C'. And worse...if I wanted to get to 'D" that it first required I complete 'A' and 'B' and 'C'...however, that is just not how things work out.

Long way about saying, you need to find what you REALLY want to invest your time doing for the better part of your life. It most likely will involve several of your skills, but the title of such employment won't be as clear-cut as 'developer' or 'designer' etc... You may need to work in a small organization or work for yourself. You may need to bury yourself inside a larger global corporation or maybe a non-profit.

There will likely be more flexibility to do what you enjoy, but first you'll need to qualify WHAT you enjoy and where your talents reside.

Dan Miller's book '48 Days to the work you love" may help.
"What color is your Parachute" ??author - Many recommend this one, I found it not as good as I had expected, but nevertheless, worth the time reading.
"Guerilla Marketing" ?? author??


Take your time, don't settle and keep updating your goals as your work through the smaller ones.

I only caution as what I take from your post is that you are jumping (and it may be what you need to do for now)...long-term, realize that there are ways to match your talents to an occupation.

dynamik

Web app security is hot and is only going to become hotter. If you're interested in web development and security, that would be the ideal way to go.

I'd say avoid it otherwise. I did that for awhile, and working within the customer constraints and other things like that made it less-than-enjoyable.

the_Grinch

Thanks guys. I'd have to agree that I don't know with 100% certainty that I know what I want to do. Seems like each job that I have had has only lead me to things that I don't want to do. I am at the point where I can no longer stand doing end user support. If I was able to concentrate on one product, that might be a different story. But right now I spend my entire day fixing problems that 90% of the time is because a user did something wrong. "My printer doesn't work" - it's out of paper. "This e-mail took 3 minutes to get here" - there's a huge attachment. When I was hired on with my current company it was with the conditions that I would be doing no end user support, interfacing with our network company, interfacing with the phone company, and helping to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

A week into my arrival they fired the company that was doing the end user support and field tech work. They brought in a new company (who makes more than I do) and told me I would be doing all the end user support. Specifically, that I was suppose to look at a problem before sending it to the support company. They phone systems wasn't implemented correctly and since I was the "interface" that basically means I get yelled at when it doesn't work. Helping to deploy and implement Dynamics AX turned into learn what the sales people do and then train remote sales people on who to do it (when clearly the person who is a sales person and was trained before anyone else should be doing this). Finally, the tech at one of our offices 3 hours away moved on and it is now my job to do all the support/field tech work at that location. Which will require me to drive up there at least twice a month. Up until about a month ago I was putting in 10 hour days and not getting any overtime because I am salaried. Only to learn that a sales person put in a couple of hours on a weekend and was getting the overtime pay for that (even though the work she did was incorrect and one of the other people in the IT department had to do it all over again anyway).

So through my rant I've learned a couple of things. 1. Done with broad tech support (if not done with tech support completely). 2. No longer going to undervalue my worth by salary (I truly feel I was taken advantage of)

I literally do not use my degree as it stands right now. I went into security and out of the general track thinking specializing would make me more attractive to companies. Little did I know that education isn't enough to even get your foot in the door to do security work (I dropped the ball on doing research for that, so that is my fault). 80% of my pay goes towards bills related to school (and foolish spending), I hate my job, and generally dislike my life. Looking back, I would have never gone to college because it has really done nothing for me. I could be doing the job I have now without it and while yes I'd probably make less money, I wouldn't need as much since I wouldn't have the student loans to deal with.

Since I spiraled off topic, I will be taking a stab at web development and web app security. Of course in that order, since I don't believe you can secure a web app without knowing how to write one

Thanks again guys!

dynamik

You need to persevere and get whatever you can out of your current situation. You may not get more technical skills, but maybe you can work on soft skills or something else that will be useful and complimentary.

I can relate to the disappointment in life, doubting the usefulness of a degree, and having a less-than-ideal amount of debt. That was the last 5-6 years for me, and I'm still three classes away from finishing my degree. I make decent money, but the debt from the recent divorce, school, and poor spending habits leave me with next to nothing between paychecks. It's stressful, and it's going to take about six months before things will start turning around.

Just try to keep things in perspective and don't give up. While the experiences you've had may not seem fantastic and beneficial, they've likely helped you build character and grow personally. While you could certainly do your work without a degree, you likely got much more out of your college experience than just a piece of paper. It will also open up more doors for you in the future, and you'll have the opportunity to go on to graduate studies if you decide you want to later on. You may never do that, but it would be more unfortunate to want to but not be able to put that amount of time and money into an undergraduate degree later on in life.

Patience is another key to the equation. If you expect your dream job to simply fall into your lap tomorrow, you're going to be disappointed. You should set goals for one, three, five, etc. years into the future and come up with a realistic path that you want to move along. Then break those goals into smaller goals and take things one step up at a time. You should also create and adhere to a budget. You'll feel like you're more in control of your life and you'll feel like you're making progress as you start seeing your small goals through.

joey74055

I am sorry to hear about your current situation. I know what you mean though. When you sign up for an IT degree in college they tell you about all of the jobs and careers that you can have except..........they never mention helpdesk. However, this is where most of us has/had to start. My advice for you is to start looking for a junior level sys admin postion or an sys admin postion to get out of helpdesk and continue taking the classes for the job you want. You might also like the sys admin type job too in the meantime while you are waiting on finishing school. The degree can help more than you think. It will get your foot in the door and later on down the road when you have more exp it usually is a req for that higher end/higher paying job.

RobertKaucher

My evaluation of a job boils down to one single thing:

How many "Mental Health" days do I need to take so that I don't go insane?

Anything else is secondary to this. I don't care how the technology is, what I am doing, etc... If I have to take a day off every few months because the job is just too much and I need to decompress, there is probably an issue.

So if you find yourself not wanting to go into work on regular basis or calling in "sick" every few months, find something new. My current job pays very under market value. But there are other compensations that I am getting. I'm working with SQL Server and SharePoint, I get to write workflows, SQL queries and do some .Net. My previous gig I was making nearly $10K more per year. But I hated it. I hated the people I worked for a variety of reasons and I am so happy I left there. $10K a year is not worth what they would have put me through.

I see this job as a stepping stone on the way to correcting my career path from the mistake I made last November when I switched to Evil, Inc. I hated that job so much I also wanted to get out of the support area. I hated getting calls from that company because everything was always broken. Water leaking out of improperly run network cables causing connections to go down. And it's my fault. I said, "How is it my fault?" And I was told IT was my department and it was working fine before I got there. I know it is my responsibility to fix it, but that doesn't make it "my fault."

My point is this job isn't perfect. It's not exactly what I want, but it's a good job. I don't feel taken advantage of and I like what I'm doing. I don’t mind getting support calls on weekends from this job because things are at a reasonable level so that fixing something is relatively quick and the people are understanding and considerate.

If you really cannot stand what you are doing, get out and find something that is good. Like Dynamik said, it does not have to be perfect. But you should not hate what you are doing for the majority of your day.

Turgon

the_Grinch wrote: »

Thanks guys. I'd have to agree that I don't know with 100% certainty that I know what I want to do. Seems like each job that I have had has only lead me to things that I don't want to do. I am at the point where I can no longer stand doing end user support. If I was able to concentrate on one product, that might be a different story. But right now I spend my entire day fixing problems that 90% of the time is because a user did something wrong. "My printer doesn't work" - it's out of paper. "This e-mail took 3 minutes to get here" - there's a huge attachment. When I was hired on with my current company it was with the conditions that I would be doing no end user support, interfacing with our network company, interfacing with the phone company, and helping to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

A week into my arrival they fired the company that was doing the end user support and field tech work. They brought in a new company (who makes more than I do) and told me I would be doing all the end user support. Specifically, that I was suppose to look at a problem before sending it to the support company. They phone systems wasn't implemented correctly and since I was the "interface" that basically means I get yelled at when it doesn't work. Helping to deploy and implement Dynamics AX turned into learn what the sales people do and then train remote sales people on who to do it (when clearly the person who is a sales person and was trained before anyone else should be doing this). Finally, the tech at one of our offices 3 hours away moved on and it is now my job to do all the support/field tech work at that location. Which will require me to drive up there at least twice a month. Up until about a month ago I was putting in 10 hour days and not getting any overtime because I am salaried. Only to learn that a sales person put in a couple of hours on a weekend and was getting the overtime pay for that (even though the work she did was incorrect and one of the other people in the IT department had to do it all over again anyway).

So through my rant I've learned a couple of things. 1. Done with broad tech support (if not done with tech support completely). 2. No longer going to undervalue my worth by salary (I truly feel I was taken advantage of)

I literally do not use my degree as it stands right now. I went into security and out of the general track thinking specializing would make me more attractive to companies. Little did I know that education isn't enough to even get your foot in the door to do security work (I dropped the ball on doing research for that, so that is my fault). 80% of my pay goes towards bills related to school (and foolish spending), I hate my job, and generally dislike my life. Looking back, I would have never gone to college because it has really done nothing for me. I could be doing the job I have now without it and while yes I'd probably make less money, I wouldn't need as much since I wouldn't have the student loans to deal with.

Since I spiraled off topic, I will be taking a stab at web development and web app security. Of course in that order, since I don't believe you can secure a web app without knowing how to write one

Thanks again guys!

Ah the trials of support work. Been there done that. Im sorry to hear things are sucky, I think a lot of people in support can relate to that. You have some ideas so give them a shot, as dynamik said you want to be looking at a 1 - 3 plan of things you *will* do to take yourself forward. Try and look at becoming something other than you are now by that time.

If you are to stay in support, look at moving along into the higher tiers in a larger company i.e 3rd or 4th line. If you wish to manage people then you need some supervisory experience. If you wish to move out of support into the IT design space then look at either big companies that have a design team or service providers/integrators that design things for clients. Whatever you decide remain flexible. For my part my CCIE plans have dragged on to the point I may have to decide soon if I should mothball them and instead start to concentrate in other areas I need to get a taste of such as ASA/PIX, Juniper, Voice, SAN, VMWare, et al. Always assess where you are and what is in your best interests 6 months down the line. A CCIE pass would be great but if Im still struggling to get the hours together 12 months from now well perhaps I could have better invested that time to get a handle on a range of things that the market is increasingly throwing up. You never know I may get one of those 'train to CCIE' jobs..now when have I heard that before?

the_Grinch

Thanks again guys! I know I tend to whine on here, so I appreciate that you guys listen and give very thoughtful responses. I do believe I will be continuing on a web development track. Part of my issue (I think anyway) is that when I get home, it's like being at work. Family ask me questions all the time and friends are always calling to have me come over and take a look at whatever it might be. You guys know how it is and somedays you want to just get home and not touch a computer for anything other then enjoyment. So if I could at least be doing something different, I might feel better.

So I made a bit of a plan. I'll continue learning and use some side projects at work to make a portfolio. I can build sites on my linux box and if I have to get some hosting space (I believe I get some for free through FiOS). From there I can start doing some side jobs and perhaps contract work to continue to build the portfolio. Continue expanding the skills and possibly find another position. Though I dislike my job most of the time, I'd like to complete a year so that I have a solid two years of support work behind me. If nothing else, it might help with pay at a future company!

Thanks again guys! Just confirms that sometimes my problem aren't the worst and that I am not alone out there with issues!

Pash

dynamik wrote: »

You should set goals for one, three, five, etc. years into the future and come up with a realistic path that you want to move along. Then break those goals into smaller goals and take things one step up at a time. You should also create and adhere to a budget. You'll feel like you're more in control of your life and you'll feel like you're making progress as you start seeing your small goals through.

That is awesome advice right there, I am guilty of not doing things this way and in hindsight I really do wish I could adopt this mindset. That said, I am improving with this now, smaller goals in life really do equate to larger things.

I have done the opposite of you Grinchy. I used to do a fair amount of freelance website work especially for a friend of mine who used to own a very nice little hosting and web studio company, which he has since sold off (for a profit, if you can look at it like that) and moved onto insurance. I can honestly say from my heart, that this year has been a burn out of infrastructure for me, specifically desktop support. I really started to think that maybe I should of made more of an effort to move towards web design/programming, and to remedy that next year I will be enrolloing on a part time creative computing degree with a London University.

I think with your CEH and experience in security related subjects you will actually make the ideal web app programmer. Looking at your code from a security perspecitive and with regular updates from CVE's you will be a pure diamond in your respective role.

I have just started to get back into reading about new HTML5 standards etc and it looks like these are genuiley exciting times for web app developers. If you need advice with web hosting, sources, design stuff etc just post it up!

Ohh and sharing your views and experiences with like minded people isnt whining, far from it.

Best of luck dude.

dynamik

Standards mean nothing to IE. You guys are going to hate your lives in the near future. Just FYI.

Protip: Design for Firefox, Validate, hack for IE.

Also, check out the book Bulletproof Web Design. I would have killed to have that when I was starting out.

Pash

dynamik wrote: »

Standards mean nothing to IE. You guys are going to hate your lives in the near future. Just FYI.

Protip: Design for Firefox, Validate, hack for IE.

Also, check out the book Bulletproof Web Design. I would have killed to have that when I was starting out.

Absolutely, the final draft for HTML5 has only just gone in this month. They say by 2020 we should have code that is supported in at least two browsers.

CSS 2.1 is only just supported in IE 8, XHTML2 has been scrapped, this just shows that standards have slow life cycles in web development or end up getting binned mid development because they are deemed not necessary/irrelevant.

I don't think it will be as drastic as us hating our lives because of this . At least I hope not!

Ohh and if you are referring to IE's non existent support for the new HTML5 API's, I am fairly sure there is a fix for this. Anyhow, no arguments here that Firefox 3.5 has the most boxes ticked for overall markup support.

the_Grinch

Thanks Pash! I've been formulating a plan for how to go about doing everything. Everyone thoughts would be appreciated.

Learn HTML (I know basic HTML, but I want to know HTML)
Learn Javascript
Learn AJAX
Learn PHP/MySQL
Possible look at Flash

From there I want to pick up on learning python and work on my linux skills. I'm looking at probably a year of reading and a couple of years implementing what I read. Can't happen over night and I'll probably sneak some certs in there just incase the web development idea crash and burns.

Pash

the_Grinch wrote: »

Thanks Pash! I've been formulating a plan for how to go about doing everything. Everyone thoughts would be appreciated.

Learn HTML (I know basic HTML, but I want to know HTML)
Learn Javascript
Learn AJAX
Learn PHP/MySQL
Possible look at Flash

From there I want to pick up on learning python and work on my linux skills. I'm looking at probably a year of reading and a couple of years implementing what I read. Can't happen over night and I'll probably sneak some certs in there just incase the web development idea crash and burns.

Sounds like a plan dude. I am not sure of the magazine equivalents in the states but linuxformat and .net magazine are my two regular subs. .Net is really good for keeping up to date with web programming/design stuff. And linux format is always handy coz it has good python tutorials and loads of other linux related stuff!

kalebksp

You should definitely add CSS to your list.

tiersten

kalebksp wrote: »

You should definitely add CSS to your list.

Mmm... CSS... Prepare to pull your hair out over the messed up implementations in the various browsers. IE6 will be the bane of your life

Pash

tiersten wrote: »

Mmm... CSS... Prepare to pull your hair out over the messed up implementations in the various browsers. IE6 will be the bane of your life

FUN TIMES!



Have a good weekend all!

kalebksp

tiersten wrote: »

Mmm... CSS... Prepare to pull your hair out over the messed up implementations in the various browsers. IE6 will be the bane of your life

You only think that because you misunderstand development. You're applications aren't supposed to conform to your users, your users are supposed conform to your applications.


Grinch, when you do get to debugging client side things like CSS and Javascript, Firefox w/ the Firebug and Web Developer extensions is a godsend.

the_Grinch

Thanks! I'll add a CSS book after HTML (my book on HTML touches on CSS, but there is a book devoted to it).

Thanks again!

Pash

Sorry to bring up an old thread but this might be of benefit for others who read it as well as Grinch.

I found:-

Designing with CSS for a Beautiful Web Voices That Matter: Amazon.co.uk: Andy Clarke: Books

To be of help picking up css again. As well as the css: The missing manual book, huge help. Half way through both and honestly making me consider doing all future design in the browser entirely. Photoshop mock-ups never give any sense of scale or usability, and this could be the difference between a well designed site with content in it, to a tacky site with content in it.

Enjoy!