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john larson
16,594 Pointsabout employment
does anyone know about how far into the front end development course I have to go to become even minimally employable?
john larson
16,594 PointsThank you Catherine. I guess I was asking what skills do i need to be competent in, to start working in development. Is html, css enough? do I need java script to be employable? jquerry? sass? I love what I'm learning so far. And I see no reason that I would want to stop learning. But I would love to have an idea of what I need for entry level kind of work...if there is such a thing.
8 Answers
Thien Nguyen
20,555 PointsThe top 10 students' personal sites look horrible! There are no minimal point for employment. Your best bet is to launch a good portfolio website that win online award with at least 3 other websites at experience and at least 10 good github codes. BTW build the website from scratch, don't use Wordpress, maybe for blog only.
It would be nice if treehouse has a page to display students websites and we can rank them or criticize. This will surely improve UX. I just learned about UX =P
Jonthue Michel
1,462 PointsYou say "maybe for blog". Soooo are you saying that we are better off building our own CMS? is it as easy to build a blog without a commonly used cms? How much work would that entail if so?
Marcin Tobala
1,805 PointsThien Nguyen Can you provide some more info where I can learn more about working with github here on Treehouse? Thank you
amadeo brands
15,375 PointsMy goal is to be a web and business developer. See my portfolio here. http://ab-isolutions.nl/
Just done with business school now going deeper into frontend dev. I think best is to position yourself with a good skill and take on some projects complete them and then you are ready ... I took on some projects and now starting with the basic stuff again because I was out of development for some time now due to my university focus on business and research.
Frontend dev in my opinion is about doing it every day after day and don't stop.
Courtney King
1,803 PointsSuper late but your website and work is beautiful!
Cuong Hoang
1,769 PointsWhat people never really tell you besides "go learn javascript" .. is that to be a competent Front end developers you really really really have to know about data structures and algorithm. This is what separates you from the crowd. Sadly learning only just HTML and CSS will not land you a job, anywhere. It doesn't matter if you're a HTML/CSS ninja, that's not necessary with the many frameworks available. Keep learning man, Javascript is where you want to focus on the most.
Kevin Mulhern
20,374 PointsThis is bad advice, you most definitely do not need to know about data structures and algorithms to be a frontend developer. A frontend developer is not going to be expected to implement anything to overly complicated code efficiency wise. In saying that learning about data structures and algorithms will make you a better coder in the long run but it is not needed to get started.
Nathan Brazil
Courses Plus Student 2,756 PointsI passed a data structures and algorithm class in college and that is a whole different ballpark from front end web coding. You're talking queues, linked list, search trees, learning efficient search algorithms, etc. all have to do with data collection, retrieval and storage which I imagine is important when you have a large functioning site with many subscribers but you can always employ a third party to do that for you and if you are focused on front end development advanced data collection would not be in your job description so I do not see why the heck you would need such knowledge.
Graeme Oxley
8,931 PointsThis is completely incorrect. I am currently employed full-time as a front-end designer by one of the world's leading web-design providers in the automotive dealer industry. All I know is HTML and CSS, with a microscopic understanding of javascript (hence why I just started on Treehouse).
Knowing "more" is always going to be recommended, but by no means do you need to know a lot in order to be employable. I make enough for my wife to be a stay-at-home-mom, and that is with a very minimal amount of knowledge.
More than anything you just need to be clever, trainable, and dependable. The knowledge can come in it's own time.
john larson
16,594 PointsThank you kevin. That database stuff sounded like back end to me...but I dont know much :D
rajbee
6,657 PointsFor those who doubt the importance of DS and Algorithms in any kind of serious programming, please post your doubt in stack overflow, quora etc. You'll probably get better answers there.
Kevin Mulhern
20,374 PointsNo body doubts the importance of DS and algorithms, but the fact remains that they are not required to be a "front end developer".
Carolyn Brade
2,614 PointsI looked at your website and noticed you listed two different countries for the shaving project. Since you know more than one language and appear to be pretty fluent, why not sell it. Some sites will list the language choice with the spelling in the way the native people spell it and others will use flags for the prominent language (with the use of flags English spelling differences for United States/Canada/British/... can be personalized and slang common in some countries but not others can be separated). I am only fluent in one language, so you have more options to explore than I would.
Good Luck on your business venture(s).
Hungry Monkey
2,200 PointsHTML and CSS is indeed not enough especially without any significant experience
CHETAN MALIK
4,346 PointsVery helpful discussion. I just started learning Html and CSS for the first time. Hope this course with my own practice lands me a job.
Catherine Gracey
11,521 PointsCatherine Gracey
11,521 PointsDefine minimally :) If you want to be employable, use everything in the course that you have learned so far to build a portfolio of projects. If you're struggling to code the basic things you want to do, you haven't studied enough. If you can create a portfolio of projects that look nice and behave as intended it will help your chances enormously.