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Ask HN: How do I get my first Good Dev job? 50k?
I've spent the better part of my life earning < $30k, in 2011 I took a job in SEO / Wordpress development @ $10.50/hr. I got my employer ranked #1 for "final expense" and #5 for "medicare plans" both highly competitive terms.
I integrated all lead capture pages with SugarCRM, collecting 50-100 leads per day - 40% adwords 60% seo.
I also lowered price per click by $2.75 to $1.50 by creating dynamic landing pages that match searched keyword.
In my off time I did Codeschool, CodeAcademy, RubyKoans, CodeEval, etc..
In June 2013, I took a job w/ a Textbook Buyback company @ $15 an hour - a huge pay bump in my eyes.
I built a CRM for textbook buybacks with following features :
Search for books via isbn - pulling book info form Amazon product api..
Users can add books to cart, when ready to checkout they login or register, redirect back to checkout, complete checkout, get pdf with UPS label via UPS shipping api.
The admin is built w/ a lot of AngularJS cooked in for sorting/filtering, and DropZone.js for file uploads. The entire site built with twitter bootstrap for design.
Currently working on small projects in Express(Mean stack) and Rails.
I've been doing css/html since 2000, php since 2003, wordpress since 2007, blogging since 2007, I've installed hundreds of different php scripts including : PhpNuke, SEODashboard, Piwik, Xoops, Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, SugarCRM. I also deploy my code on debian, using redis for cache, mysql for db, local git repository w/ hooks pushing content live, nginx + apc + varnish - so have some sys-admin experience as well.
Past 2 years replaced spaghetti coding with OO and best practices, frameworks I've used: Expressjs, Meteor, Rails, Laravel, AngularJS, Twitter Bootstrap.
Now, how do I get 50k + - I know I'm worth at least 50-60k. Maybe as much as $70k, but willing to take less for experience.
- Bahamut 13y agoWord of advice - you should try to avoid taking less than you're worth unless you really feel like you need to accept. If you find that you learn quickly, you will want more $ & become dissatisfied that your salary doesn't match your capability. You probably should be able to get a position for more than $50k I think. You have much more experience than I did it sounds like when I started, and I started at $51k. It may be worthwhile to find a recruiter to help guide you in your first job search. They can help you navigate your way to a first position.
- gremlinsinc 13y agoAny advice on where to find a good recruiter? I'm willing to relocate to Utah, Washington State, Oregon, Austin/San Antonio, Colorado, Nevada.
- rhc2104 13y agoTry using AngelList, and filter to jobs in those locations. You can filter further by searching for node.js and Rails jobs.
- gremlinsinc 13y agoI did that today showed interest in a bunch of startups - I'd relocate to SF if cost of living weren't so high and I'm married looking for a family home < $200k. P.S. If you know anyone interested send them to my resume : http://resume.patrickcurl.com http://resume.patrickcurl.com
- rhc2104 13y agoDid you show interest in the startups willing to hire remote? A pretty large number of startups (in absolute terms, but not a large percentage) are willing to do that.