I have a degree in computer science and been studying web dev separately in my spare time for a year and a half. I focused on WordPress as I wanted to get into freelancing and be able to make websites for clients in a good environment.
Ive had my eye on a job for most of this time. It is for a Web Agency that makes websites in WordPress. Ive just never had a job like this, anything other than a usual job like retail or cafe work and Im worried I wont be good enough.
I have really good HTML and CSS skills. I have basic PHP and JS skills, I can understand them but not a lot of experience using them. I know the theory of WordPress core and directory and functions but I havent used them a lot only practice exercises. Ive made 2/3 websites with Oxygen for clients and also made a website (old) with Elementor previously. I know how to keep a site updated, do basic security using a plugin, backups etc.
Yet I feel like because I dont know how to make a fully custom PHP website I wont be good enough for this agency… That my design skills or coding skills wont be good enough… or that my social skills will fail me and Ill burn out…
I know that maybe this is a hard question to answer without more info but Im just looking for a reference point.
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As a hiring manager, not with development I must admit though. A lot of junior roles require you to train them on the job. What you’re looking for is a good attitude, proven interest in the field in following it in your own time, and basically that they’re a nice person.
Sounds like you’d be an asset, don’t stress everyone has feelings of imposter syndrome. Those that don’t are the ones to worry about.
2 things.
1) Junior dev positions are for people who don’t know everything yet. There is expectation that you will come up against work outside your current knowledge base, that you know enough to understand your knowledge gaps, and that you will seek answers to these problems from the senior devs or other means. It’s a position where you learn. It’s the next step for you.
2) There are so many idiots out there doing this work. If they can, you can.
Just apply for the job. Try and talk to the agency, even better, line up a face to face meeting. You never know.
You have a degree in CS, AND you’ve been studying web dev!?
You could get a position as a fully fleged designer.
I didn’t do a degree in CS. I got my experience in web design on the job and freelance.
But I’m not a PHP programmer. I don’t even know JS.
But I’ve had jobs as a web designer (senior role or sole position in the company).
It’s more about project management than anything, if you can go there and tell them how you got shit done on your degree and you know how to manage a project, putting together a website is going to be easy for you and frankly plenty of companies would be lucky to have a degree student, with web dev skills as a junior or higher.
> “Companies like hiring people with a degree because then they know that person has spent 4 years working hard and can produce consistent results and turn up every day” ~ Silvester Stalone – some film
Also have a look at salaries for the area.
Don’t accept less than what everyone else is getting just because you’re new. If you have more skills than they are asking for, but you know you will use those skills, and are good at that. Either tell them or explain that you have them.
Assume they know nothing and ensure they are aware if you have all of (and any other) skills they are looking for.
But don’t BORE them, use the STAR method and give examples, ones from uni or from other jobs are fine, as long as the Result shows you are capable.
I’ve heard of people being given web design and web dev roles after a short online courses or even just watching YouTube. Sure, some of them probably got fired, but…
As long as you can _sell_ yourself, you will stand above the others even if they have more of the skills needed, because you can explain how you will get them results through time management and hard work (which is how you got your degree).
No one wants to hear that an interviewee can do something without an realstic explanation of the skills because they’re not interviewing for a bullshitter, they’re (probably) interviewing for a hard worker who can learn, which as your degree suggests, you can.
I think you should assume that you are more qualified than at least 75% of people applying for that or any similar low-level web dev job, simply because you can organise yourself and I assume you can understand more or less any WordPress plugin (or what it’s doing).
That will go a long way when considering people who are self taught and have nothing to show or have only worked for themselves (of course there are exceptions).
Having said that, maybe build a few websites if you can. Or better, build a plugin that does something everyone can understand, like automated content from ChatGPT and focus the example on the industry (digital agency) you’re applying for.
Or even use WP as a backed and show them a custom UI linked to the WP REST API or a mobile app.
> Or fuck it, start your own agency lol. Just remember, content is king!
Good luck!
What are they paying you?
If you’ve got a solid understanding of web development fundamentals you’ll be fine. Nobody expects you to know how to do all things at that level, but with a CS degree you’ll be able to learn and advance rapidly.
If you want to make websites for a career, you should definitely spend some time focusing your efforts on mastering the fundamentals of programming, especially in the context of one you’d actually be using building websites. So, I’d say find some really good tutorials, courses, or general docs and reference material based on JS and/or PHP.
Sidenote to above: the web dev ecosystem has had a major hard-on for everything-should-be-Javascript and so there’s been much more vocal shitting on PHP and WordPress. Don’t even pay attention to it. Not every site is best as a full JS stack with React and not every site is best done through WP. Same with programming paradigms (functional, object oriented, imperative, etc).
I spent like ten years in agencies and I was pretty much where you are now when I got my first job. I could make sense of basic programming structures like conditionals, loops, funcs and vars, but I couldn’t build an entire site on my own from scratch yet. The thing is, someone hiring for a junior dev position shouldn’t expect that you have senior level knowledge and skills… Because you’re a junior. If they do, run because it’s probably a shitty work environment.
But I hired a junior fresh out of college who had a CS degree and he was pretty much in the same spot as well. I didn’t expect him to be able to do what I could because he lacked experience so I made sure to get a sense of what skills and areas he had the most competency in and focus on leveling him up in the areas where he was weakest. Any time I was debugging something I or another dev wrote, I’d get him to sit with me and ask him to try debugging with me, especially getting him to vocalize his thoughts process as he went. It provided loads of teaching opportunities and for him to gain important debugging concepts, problem solving methodology and tactics, and general programming best practice and shit.
In a good agency you should expect that you’ll be partially on your own and partially working directly with a team mate. Leverage both contracts as fully as you can. When alone, get good at using a rubber ducky and searching for clues and guidance online. When with someone higher skilled, leverage their brains and experience; ask them why they do something a certain way and why they don’t do something. Caveat on last one is that most ultra logical brained programmers have lackluster people skills and aren’t always good at coming down to anyone else’s level to explain things in layman’s terms.
Anecdote to previous statement: I worked with a guy who’d been developing websites for twenty years (he was like 42 or so) and he had way more experience than me. However, when it came to talking to clients or people in the agency outside of the dev team, he had pretty much no ability to speak plain English and layman’s terms so coworkers outside dev, including project managers and clients, rarely actually understood what he was talking about or realized the implications of what he talked about because he could only speak in abstract dev jargon. He didn’t seem to care because he had major ego issues and I think it made him feel smarter than everyone else. If you end up stuck with someone like that, just be patient and compassionate. It isn’t you, they just aren’t good at realizing their own psychological projections externally and you need to realize that not everything they say is gospel—these types are often overly opinionated and have trouble thinking objectively about things.
Agencies are a great place to level up because you’re rarely doing the exact same thing for too long and you get exposed to lots of different problems to solve and projects to build. This gives you breadth and range, which is, I think, most important early on in any life or career. When you’ve just gotten out of school you haven’t had enough experience in life or your work to be able to judge whether something is right or best for you and others. So don’t be over eager to decide that you’re going to become an expert in any one thing. Get yourself exposed to many different things and projects and people so that after you’ve gained more callouses in the trenches, you have a much wider context from which to make personal choices.
The downside to agency work is that it can be frenetic and chaotic because you’re dealing with new clients and projects every few weeks. It can be high stress if the management doesn’t really have much technical background or if there’s not good communication across the various departments and teams. You have to figure out what your tolerance is for high stress and learn how and when to tell a project manager or your own boss that what they want just isn’t realistic or possible and that you’re going to need more time and support.
Also, if you often end up working closely with design, strategy, or any other department outside of dev, make an effort to educate yourself with their lingo and technical terms. You want as clear and accurate comms between disciplines as possible to make sure projects go smoothly and efficiently.
Also, you mentioned being worried about your design skills not being good enough. That’s what the design team is for. A decent agency has UI and graphic designers and the dev team is just responsible for building what they design. If the agency you work at is demanding that you, as a web dev and not a web designer, have to design and build everything yourself, run. Hiring someone for a combo web design and dev position is one thing but if the job description doesn’t include design, that’s not your problem day to day. If you have an interest in web design, then you can ask to get some exposure to that and spend a little time now and then shadowing the designers. If nothing else, when you get mockups for a site, ask the designer about why they did X or Y. If you see the design team handing off stuff that doesn’t make sense, say so. I worked very closely with the designers at all of my agencies and because half of them were classically trained print designers and not UI/UX designers, sometimes they’d design a component or page that just wasn’t possible or was not good for digital interfaces. I’d tell them that this or that thing wasn’t a good idea for whatever reason and give them the context and reasoning so that they learned more about user facing digital interfaces. I’ve spent years studying UI, UX, and traditional design so I had more vocabulary to work with and understanding of _why_ a design didn’t work, but obviously if you aren’t interested in design, you just need to educate yourself on UI/UX best practices at a basoc level so you can spot when there’s a design thats gping to frustrate or confuse users. The more you learn about the various fields that come together to make a high quality websites, the better you’ll be able to work with the various skills and people who have them in the agency which makes you incredibly valuable.
That was quite the ramble but I’m a rambler. Hope something in there was helpful.