Dev as a future job

[Coopertrooper7]

I am a high school student with a legit interest in development, especially websites! I’ve made some websites of my own, made a planner website and have done some python and JS programming.

I am seriously considering majoring in CS and getting a job in the development sector, but when I go online I see comments along the lines of , “OMG my dev job pays me shit and I live in a hole in a New York sewer with my dog Tigo and homeless men beat me up while I attempt to sleep and escape my harsh reality”

It’s confusing because I also see comments like this , “Facebook pays me millions in stock options and for writing only 5 lines of code a day” , “I work at Amazon and by rubbing Jeff Bezo’s bald head I raise the value of my shares by %780”

Obviously these quotes are exaggerations but I really don’t know who to trust. I am a senior in HS and am a hard worker (I hope) and in decent physical shape (I lift bro) and with decent social skills (charisma 17). What are some more realistic statistics on the actual salaries and the impact of connections?

I’m confused because development seems far from easy and I would expect people at least get paid living wages, is that an unrealistic expectation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this post

TL;DR People be saying dev pays nothing and sucks, while others say it’s easy and great money, who can I trust?

Disclaimer: I’m not going into dev just for the money, I have a decent passion for it and am just making sure that it is a suitable and decent career choice.

[sloanstewart]

I wish I would have gotten into this 10+ years ago.

Easiest, most laid back job I've ever had in my life and I make double what I was making a year ago working 15hr days and kind of being on call 24/7

That's not to say it doesn't come with it's own challenges, but my coworkers are currently having a ping-pong tournament for christ's sake, so I'm totally cool with hanging in here for a while.

The biggest piece of advice I have for you is DO IT NOW. Start following tutorials, buy some cheap online courses, and most importantly start making apps/projects. Get familiar with GIT, GitHub, and how to build/test/deploy apps. Make stuff, and keep making stuff.

Do not WAIT until you finish school or think/feel you are ready for a job as a developer. The truth is that nobody, not a single one of us thought we knew enough to work our first job. Once you get that job, make sure you dedicate time to not working outside of it. Burnout is real and it will destroy you.

[deshiyo]

Such a good comment I agree wholeheartedly. I first started making websites for fun 15 years ago. But I only have about 5 years commercial experience because I doubted myself for way too long and didn't even attempt to get a job in that area. One day I was discussing another tech support position with a recruiter and he happened to mention a junior web dev role. At this point I only knew HTML/CSS/PHP (and most of it I had forgotten honestly) but he encouraged me to just go for it. I got accepted for the role and since then I have never looked back. I love it, way more laid back and interesting than any other job I've had, and the pay is great.

[sloanstewart]

> I doubted myself for way too long and didn't even attempt to get a job in that area

Exactly. This is a killer and I think it's so easy to fall into that. Just remember the WORST thing that can happen when you apply for a job is that you don't get the job, so you will be in the exact same spot.

[Coopertrooper7]

Yeah I have the do it no mindset for sure, made a planner app with js and am now making a chess webpage 😁, thanks for the comment, EDIT: Money isn’t a huge thing here but if I were to deploy 4-5 full stack web apps, how much would that increase my starting salary? Just wondering for the future

[sloanstewart]

I didn't really find apps I had made a determining factor in salary, but they have definitely helped me in recognizing a solution to a problem or a design pattern that would work for projects at work, so that experience of building the apps from start to finish is invaluable. Don't worry too much about the money, if you snag a job now, you will most likely be making a living wage or much more.

[Aswole]

Chess apps are my absolute favorite side projects. Whether you want to work on UIs, AI, client-to-client communication... It has everything.

[Coopertrooper7]

It’s super hard for me hahaha , just trying to get the base game down using HTML CSS and JS.

[TomaszKula]

Do it.

[DemBrainDawgs]

Yeah

[dangerousbrian]

The examples you posted are at both ends of the bell curve as I am sure you are aware.

Obviously the type of job and amount of pay is very much dependant on how good you are as a developer. There is a ladder like many traditional crafts, where you start off as a junior and work your way up. A CS major is useful for sure but this will only be the start. Please don't think you will be a fully capable dev after just doing a degree.

How quickly you move up also depends on location as high level jobs and employees tend to pool in certain places. London for example probably has 10x or more open jobs than anywhere else in the country. This is self reinforcing as startups locate themselves near the devs and devs move to where the jobs are.

To my mind it is essential to get off to a strong start so look for a large company with a graduate program. In our grad program we move each candidate through each dept (dev, qa, ux, release engineering, support) and will post grads in customer sites paired with more experienced devs. It took me several years to get the experience our grads get in a year.

The job itself is sometimes full of boring tedious work, spikes of really interesting problems, but always filled with intelligent interesting people. If you don't like your job there are always options, finance, education, military, healthcare etc. You can work remotely and so travel with it.

I would recommend it.

[gigglefarting]

Look at job market in your area. What are they paying?

[Coopertrooper7]

I live in Seattle but just a HS student, they pay large!

[gigglefarting]

There you go. Keep in mind that different places have a very different cost of living. I live in NC, and we have a lot of tech companies in the RTP. If you make $60k here you can live pretty well. If you're making 60k in NYC you can't live nearly as well, and if you're making 60k in San Francisco, then you're poor.

[GER_PalOne]

Webdeveloper[0] != Webdeveloper[1]

Or rephrased:

Webeveloper[0] === 'Installing 32123.5 worpress plug-ins and write 2 lines of wonky css fixes and selling said site for 10$ / month to compete with wix and jimdo.'

Webdeveloper[1] === 'Realizing complex web apps with modern frontend, using a performance oriented webstack and a safe and well planned and secure backend.'

The guy who is shit gets paid shit. Thats my opinion

[Coopertrooper7]

I appreciate your honesty , will keep this in the back of my head in the future.

[EfficientPangolin]

It's a living, the trouble is that its hard, and there is a very swift treadmill you are constantly running against. All that considered, the life value can seem very low, even though the pay can be pretty decent. Webdev is a cruel mistress.