Soliciting career advice

Quick background first: I have an unusual background for web work. Four years at a highly ranked liberal arts college, three years at a top rated law school, law review, good grades, all that.

Four years out of law school I realize I am sick and tired of practicing law. I also realize I have been spending all of my free time fooling around on the computer. I realize that in fooling around, I have learned not only the HTML/Javascript/CSS basics, but also PHP and mySQL. I realize I have created a handful of fully dynamic web sites using PHP and mySQL, implementing a homegrown content management system, coded from scratch, and am pretty damn proud, considering it's only a hobby.

So, here I am. I would like somehow to make that hobby into a career and transition into web development work. I am more than happy to start out at the grunt level doing basic HTML duties and work my way up. Hell, I wouldn't even mind interning for free if the opportunities for education and advancement are there.

Problem is, the market is crappy. So I figure, maybe I should go back to school. However, there don't seem to be any schools around that teach an aggressive web programming course of study, and I'm not sure that any employers will care - they all want experience, experience, which of course is the one thing I don't have. There don't seem to be any sufficiently respected certifications out there either.

I'm kind of at a loss. I don't want to practice law anymore, and I'm happy to start at the lowest end of the webdev totem pole. Do I keep looking for that elusive bottom rung of the ladder, is there a school out there somewhere I'm missing, or do I give up?

My record demonstrates I'm bright and professional, and I pick up things fast. This should be a lot easier.

I'm in Los Angeles, by the way. Thanks for all your thoughts and advice.

Hello Subcom,

That is great that you want to make your hobby a career. There is no shortage of opprotunities out there. With your background, you could possibly start your web career out by working with federal or local government or even start out as entry level developer for a media firm within your area.


You have been mislead there, as many others have been. The market is far from crappy or struggling. The market is as strong as you want it to be. In the media's eyes, the market is struggling as bad business practices and poor (very poor) business management has taken a toll on the current economy. We all hear excuses, excuses and excuses from companies on how they can't survive in the current market, but make no mistake, it has only been caused by inexperienced business mangement personel and corporate blunders, not the economy. 95% of all companies that have fell do to the so called struggling economy deserves to be where they are today, not in business.

Bottom line, you will have to make it happen. You can go as far as you want to go, in this economy or any economy.

As far as schooling goes, if I had the background as you appear to have, I would opt for schooling on both sides of the court (business management and some sort of application development).

jpenn is so right. You can get pretty much any Government job if you have a pulse and a will to work. We have some of the dumbest civilians working on this base, and they make 5 times the ammount that I get. I shake my head sometimes because they dont even know how to resolve their exchange server when Ive told them how to do it 50 times. Hell they cant even set up their printer without someone holding their hand. And its not like we havent shown them, because we have, we even put them through a brief training class...
Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying all civilians working for the Government are dumb, because weve got some near rocket scientists here. If I'm having a networking problem, the first person I call isnt someone in uniform, its a civvy, that knows everything about network. All I am trying to say, is that a government job is available easily, and that you can make some good cash doing so. Plus they pay for alot of training that you can use elsewhere.

Thanks for the advice guys. I guess one advantage of the current market is that when I do find a position, it will likely be safe for awhile because most of the posers have already been shaken out. That's fine by me; I'm less concerned about making a lot of money at this point than I am about getting up to speed on as many things as possible as fast as possible. That's hard to do by yourself.

I will keep on plugging!

There will be quite alot of "posers" when you work for the government. When you achieve some form of tenure, you become "unfireable". To fire a GS-12 it nearly takes an act of congress. Web designer for the USAF is a GS-9 I believe, which is pretty good pay, plus like I stated before, training.
A word of advice is, that if you do decide to get a government job, get to know your SA's. By "SA" I mean system administrator. If you know them you can get so much more done, and in a quicker ammount of time. It may be a lowly E-1, but if he has admin rights, he is your (for lack of a better adjective) sugar daddy.

Subcom,

Government is a good place to stick your foot in the door, but if you have a good amount of experience in the law field (I don't know what four years counts for in law), you certainly don't want to just leave it all behind you. One of the BIGGEST things that will help you land a web dev or programming job is specialised experience. Many times it's hard to find someone who can program or design from the perspective of the business. A lot of times, you may be able to muscle a better programmer or developer out of a job in the law field because you're more "in the know" from the business perspective even though they were more technically qualified. Don't dump your four years of experience, use it to help you land a job. You may need to start out doing dinky local law group sites or even just basic maintenance on an intranet at a firm, but that's where you need to push your technical skills up. You get the jobs based on your law experience, then you use those jobs to build your tech skills.

I started out as a Customer Service rep at a direct mail company. I was originally hired for my current position to do data entry on a CHM file that was to be created using Microsoft Word's "Save As HTML" option. Today, it's an intranet system that encompasses over 2000 pages of vital Customer Service information. A nearly totally paperless Training department has been achieved. I just finished programming a Database driven content delivery system for it and a customized boolean-aware search engine. Next, I will be developing a custom content managment system for the intranet that will allow us to free ourselves from creating HTML documents for people in the department. Instead, they will simply create their own files which we will convert to HTML using a templating system. The whole thing will be tracked and coordinated by email and database.

When I started I knew HTML and how to copy and paste Javascript...

If I an do that, there's absolutely no reason you can't push yourself into the field somewhere... it's all a matter of what you THINK you can do

Good luck

The C.V. is the most important piece here. If you're good enough you can turn all your past hobbie projects into experience, you have to convince them! The thing with governement agencies is that they have a lot of cash and equality programs of all sort.

You could also do web pages for ngo's or non-lucrative organizations too, real-world experience but you'll have to give up business hours.

Of course don't turn your C.V. into a portfolio but you probably know all the theory since you studied law. Literraly vomit C.V.s here there you can't not receive a call back at some point!

*vomits on riv for fun*

Yah, that's good advice from riv. Don't underestimate the power of the experience from some of your past projects. Sometimes when you're working on your own, the experience is more valuable because you have the freedom to work "under the hood" and touch virtually any system you want, make any modification you want. You get to learn the archictecture of the system and why things work the way they do, rathar than patching up peripheral problems and getting a cloudy view of the system you're working on. That's a unique perspective that you usually don't get during the day.

At your day job, you're normally restricted from using some systems due to politics or because it's simply not practical to mess with some on a mission critical level, specially when you have a few hundred users connected.