JABedford

Hello!
 
My name is James, I'm 26 and from Berkshire in the UK. I have a somewhat peculiar road into web development/design so I shall explain.
I made my first website when I was 13.. I was a familiar face in the gaming scene and made a bit of a name for myself creating signatures for forums (don't see them so much these days!). I made websites for gaming teams with a buddy.. I did the designing and he did the coding and we sold a few.
I went on to actually study Computer Science with the idea of becoming a Game designer, however that never came to light and instead I got a decent job working for a manufacturing company essentially spending my days playing with PCB boards and components and getting everything to work right.
Fast forward ten years (where does the time go?) and I am an Operations Manager for a construction company. I do a bit of design work on the side because I enjoy it, but its usually just Squarespace/Wix (!!!) and some basic illustrator stuff. I decided mid 2017 to change career path and get back into web dev and design which was something I loved all those years ago.
Its not necessarily been an easy road so far, but it is a road that I am enjoying every step of the way. Still employed at the construction company, but looking to getting myself into a new role by the end of the year, something that allows me to develop as well as design.

I'm 26 as well and changing my career.. still young really!
 
My old man always tells me he never touched a computer until he was 26. He did a masters in Information Systems Engineering and has worked as a university lecturer and is now a Technical Author and has worked for some well known companies.
 
Hard Work + Determination > Age.

It does happen a lot, I am not exactly sure why!
 
Depending on where you live, the job market is pretty good. I am from Berkshire, UK and in my local town there are constantly jobs popping up. I have an interview with a large digital agency 5 minutes down the road who are working with some big companies and only four people applied for the position which is crazy! Head into London however and it is a different matter!
One of my biggest tips to yourself would be to try and get some work with small local businesses during your learning process. I have ongoing design work with a childrens clothing company, as well as development work with a fishing company nearby. Both of these came through DM's on Instagram suprisingly enough and whilst I am not living off of the money made by them they are a good showcase of what I can do and that I can work with a company.

Anybody that writes off front-end as easy has never really done proper front-end engineering.  It's every bit as complex as the backend on a modern large scale web application.  A LOT of the logic that was formerly executed in the backend is now done in the client, in many cases the backend is just a set of microservices doing a few very specific tasks that make more sense to be done on the server - typically data persistance.

On the front-end we have to worry about performance, accessibility the DOM API / some framework that abstracts that.  We write unit tests - which again are arguably more difficult than the server side.  Unit testing UI in a sane manner is hard to get right.  We have to ensure our software works and looks good on a huge array of devices with varying capabilities, add to that multiple operating systems and web browsers - it's a hostile environment to develop in.  Compare that to a server where the program only needs to run in one place.

This is not to say SS isn't complex, it most certainly can be.  But the myth that server-side is where the real engineering happens is not at all true in modern web application development (We're not talking about WordPress sites with a bit of jQuery here...)

A lot of landing a job is about your attitude, and to be honest mate your attitude is not great.
 
I am still working in Construction, and am partly responsible for finding new people to employ. In an interview, I would 100% take the person who was enthusiastic, yet didnt have the experience over the more experienced person who came across unenthusiastic and thought the work was "easy".
I had a phonecall with a recruiter for a junior job the other day, a small team of 5 developers who where located in my town and worked for a company located in the States. They wanted a new developer who they could train. The recruiter said they had a guy in there the week before, and they didnt employ him and their only reason back to the recruiter was "he was too cocky and we didn't like him".
 
You write off the whole of front-end work as too easy. That will sink down like a lead balloon in an interview situation. If I were you I would have a rethink as to what you actually wanted to concentrate on. You dont need to focus on front-end to get involved with back-end bits. There is a whole world of programming out there for different things that might interest/challenge you more.
 

I've been into web design since I was 13 (I'm 29 later this year) and completely self taught, I went from just messing about with HTML and CSS as a teenager to learning PHP and MySQL in my late teens and in the past few years teaching myself Javascript, and OOP PHP, but until just a couple of months ago, I didn't actually have a job in the field I love.
After I left college in 2009 I got a job in marketing, but got made redundant just under a year later and struggled to get another job, I was wanting to turn my hobby of web design into a career, after a couple of years of suffering depression, applying for jobs and never hearing back, boredom after leaving college, I eventually lost touch with web design and when I finally came back into it a couple of years later in 2013 I was miles behind, I didn't know a thing about responsiveness, mobile first, the methods I'd always used were out of date, software no longer seen as industry standard, so I spent a few months learning to get back in the game, taught myself responsiveness and mobile first even if it seemed backwards to start with, I started looking for work around my local area, but due to lack of experience and not being able to drive most of the jobs were a good hour to an hour and a half away on public transport, and despite getting a few interviews, I never got a job.
In the end, after encouragement from my family and partner I decided to go self employed, and I learned loads even if in the end it didn't pay off, over the course of 2 and half years I had about 10 customers, sure on pay day it was more money then I'd ever seen before, but in between that I was living on tax credits from the government, fortunately I still lived at home at this point or with my future in-laws.
Fast forward to this past November, me and my fiancee were talking about how we want to get our own place, but one of us would need a full time job, and logically it made sense for me to look for work, as from both of our self employment ventures, I was more likely to get into work, and my business learnt less than hers.
After spending a week or so putting a brand new up to date CV together, and making a portfolio website showcasing my work I started applying for jobs, in the first week I applied for a dozen around where I'm living now plus a couple further afield, and heard back from one, a market leading company based in Manchester, its actually one I didn't expect to hear from, but I had a telephone interview, followed by a Skype interview, then a face to face interview was arranged for the week before Christmas, unfortunately due to an accident on the M6 I never got there, but fortunately they rearranged it for the first week of 2018.
I went to the interview, and it went well, but a week later I got an email saying I was unsuccessful, and after talking to them over the phone it was lack of experience that let me down.
Later that day I applied for half a dozen more jobs, and that afternoon I got a telephone from one of the recruitment agencies I applied for just over an hour before asking for more information, and he arranged an interview with the company the following week.
I went to the interview, and I should add I applied for a front end role, and it went really well, and they were very impressed with the work I'd done through self employment, after getting home I contacted the recruitment agency about my thoughts on the interview and how well it seemed to go, and he said the feedback he'd recieved and been the same, they were very impressed, and they'd asked if I'd be open to a PHP developer role rather than front end, it'd be for more money, I said I only applied for front end as I wasn't sure my PHP would be up to spec, but I'd be open for it.
I had an interview with the PHP team leader the week after (now about 10 days after I first applied for the job), which went really well, and by the time I'd got back home I'd been offered the job, this was a Thursday, and I would be starting the  coming Monday.
I've now been here just under 2 months, earning more money than I've ever seen before, I've learnt so much (More OOP, Gulp, Automatic deployment to name a few which I've put into practice on the website I made for my fiancee's business) and wouldn't change a thing for the world.
Bit of a long post, but I hope it helps, even for someone who has always loved web design I originally found getting my foot in the hard till I went self employed and started doing work commercially and learning more, rather than random short lived projects for myself.
The job I applied for in Manchester might have been more money than I'm getting now, but honestly I feel better here, its a lot closer to home than Manchester, its only a 20 minute train ride (Its right near the station) rather than an hour or more on the M6 in rush hour traffic, and I've already started saving for when me and my fiancee can get our own place, I loved self employment, but I loved being employed, doing something I love every day, even more.

Hello!
 
My name is James, I'm 26 and from Berkshire in the UK. I have a somewhat peculiar road into web development/design so I shall explain.
I made my first website when I was 13.. I was a familiar face in the gaming scene and made a bit of a name for myself creating signatures for forums (don't see them so much these days!). I made websites for gaming teams with a buddy.. I did the designing and he did the coding and we sold a few.
I went on to actually study Computer Science with the idea of becoming a Game designer, however that never came to light and instead I got a decent job working for a manufacturing company essentially spending my days playing with PCB boards and components and getting everything to work right.
Fast forward ten years (where does the time go?) and I am an Operations Manager for a construction company. I do a bit of design work on the side because I enjoy it, but its usually just Squarespace/Wix (!!!) and some basic illustrator stuff. I decided mid 2017 to change career path and get back into web dev and design which was something I loved all those years ago.
Its not necessarily been an easy road so far, but it is a road that I am enjoying every step of the way. Still employed at the construction company, but looking to getting myself into a new role by the end of the year, something that allows me to develop as well as design.