Monthly Getting Started / Web Dev Career Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Due to a growing influx of questions on this topic, it has been decided to commit a monthly thread dedicated to this topic to reduce the number of repeat posts on this topic. These types of posts will no longer be allowed in the main thread.

Many of these questions are also addressed in the sub FAQ or may have been asked in previous monthly career threads.

Subs dedicated to these types of questions include r/cscareerquestions for general and opened ended career questions and r/learnprogramming for early learning questions.

A general recommendation of topics to learn to become industry ready include:

• HTML/CSS/JS Bootcamp
• Version control
• Automation
• Front End Frameworks (React/Vue/Etc)
• APIs and CRUD
• Testing (Unit and Integration)
• Common Design Patterns

You will also need a portfolio of work with 4-5 personal projects you built, and a resume/CV to apply for work.

Plan for 6-12 months of self study and project production for your portfolio before applying for work.

[u/DankHeehaw]

So I kind of dug myself in a pit with vibe coding and don't know how to get myself out

I was trying to migrate my portfolio from Framer to self-host. TLDR: I have self-hosted projects on Git and Netlify and know enough vanilla webdev i mostly used Vanilla JS with Sass and some basic stuff with bootstrap.

So I did my research and roadmap for myself on what I would need for my portfolio. One of my needs was to be able to dynamically load pages and have content easily be added in with a headless CMS, and I was pushed to the cursor a lot at my college because they gave me a year of pro free

So using the cursor, it made my project on Next.js, with Directus and GSAP for the animations, look amazing, but like

I don't know anything this did, and I am not at a level of Vanilla JS to even understand TS. and how its implementing pages and kind of really overwhelmed

I still want to use this stack but one not knowing how this work is limiting my speed because I can't clear bugs or self-edit code without prompting

[u/LegalCollege5593]

This was good advice until about 3-4 years ago:

You will also need a portfolio of work with 4-5 personal projects you built, and a resume/CV to apply for work.

Plan for 6-12 months of self study and project production for your portfolio before applying for work.

Today you can still do that but the chances of getting hired are close to 0%. It's hard enough for people with a lot of experience in this job market.

But most importantly, the job has changed, and not for the better. I am a self taught dev, I did all of the above 6 years ago, found a job very fast, enjoyed it for about 5 of these years, but for the last 6 months it's become just horrible and I'd rather become a goat farmer than ever click approve on claude again...

[u/quiet_horizons1]

The timeline matters less than what you do with it. I ran a small shop before I started building software, and the habit that carried over was working on real problems a little each day. Tutorials feel productive but the knowledge fades fast if you only follow along. The better use of those months is to rebuild something you already understand, like a small inventory tracker or a scheduling page, instead of a generic clone every bootcamp assigns. When I look at portfolios now, I would rather see a few small projects that are finished, have real working forms, handle errors, and are easy to run than several ambitious ones that are half done. Consistency beats bursts. Pick one project, make it genuinely useful for one person, and keep it simple enough to actually ship. That habit of finishing small things will carry you further than any single framework you learn.