#JobSearch #WebDevelopment #Motivation
Hey there, fellow web enthusiasts! I’m reaching out because I’ve been on the job hunt for quite some time now, and honestly, I’m feeling a bit lost. 🙁
Let me give you a quick background: I’m a junior web developer from Belgium with a professional diploma in web dev. I even dabbled in computer science for a couple of years, but life took me on a different path. After graduation, I took a role as an IT technician in an administrative setting. It wasn’t exactly thrilling, mostly handling project management tasks, especially after my more experienced colleague left. Eventually, I was laid off—something I had been anticipating because the role was draining my enthusiasm.
Now, fast forward a year later, and I’m feeling pretty demotivated. Too many months have passed, and I feel like I’ve lost touch with my skills. Rather than diving into projects, I’ve found myself frozen in place, unable to start anything substantial. Here are my main pain points:
- Lack of Motivation: Days pass, and I find it hard to get excited about coding or building projects.
- Loss of Skills: I struggle to remember how to tackle even basic programming tasks.
- Self-Sabotage: I dismiss generic projects because they seem beneath my potential, yet that’s where I need to start.
- Fear of the Full-Stack Requirement: Most job postings expect full-stack abilities, but I doubt my proficiency, especially in PHP and Symfony.
I’ve toyed with the idea of building a WordPress theme for my sports club, where I’ve completed most of the HTML/CSS/JS—but I hit a wall with the WordPress side because I didn’t know certain plugins well enough beforehand.
So, how do I move past this rut? Any tips for someone unsure of what to pursue next? Here’s what I’m hoping to improve:
- Enhancing my skills in PHP and Symfony.
- Brushing up on React and JavaScript, which I haven’t tackled in a while.
It feels discouraging, but maybe it’s just the mental block talking, right? 🤔
I’d love to hear your thoughts! How have you tackled similar challenges in your career journey? Share your experiences or any tips you have—I’m all ears!
Cheers,
You never loose your skills. You just need to refresh. Muscle memory my friend. Youll get back up to speed way faster than the first time .
I have this exact same problem! Studied everything in a 1-year course, couldn’t find interviews for over a year, worried that I’ve forgotten everything.
At no time in history has it been easier to learn coding if you understand how it works/have done it previously in a different language or rusty.
Chatgpt is basically a private free tutor, that can interactively answer questions, or debug tricky issues, or build commonly used skeletons of programs.
While it’s not great at “make this whole program” its excellent at basic knowledge/explaining concepts in an interactive way.
I work in embedded, and I’m pretty sure I could make something reasonably quick in webdev full stack from working with chatgpt.
That never used to be possible.