'Sup! Hope everyone is having an awesome day.

**TLDR; I’m a disaster of a human, hoping to set up as self-employed doing webdev to avoid dealing with other humans/health issues. Still a baby dev and wondering if that’s just a selfish and dumbass idea.

So I’m currently finishing up on The Odin Project. I’ve been programming for about 4 years now, but avoided learning JS or anything close to that because I didn’t want to be forcibly shunted into WebDev. I managed to get accepted straight into 4th of a programming Bsc, and was doing great (70%+ on all assignments/projects) until a psychopath I used to live with smashed my computer with a mallet. Due to the financial cost of that, having to flee a country and set myself back up, my savings are fucking gonnnneee. That and I had to defer college for the year 'cause, well, no computer.

I have a litany of chronic health issues that’re only getting worse with time. I can’t even control whether or not I’ll wake up on any particular day - as a result, I’m unhireable due to unreliability. I can get projects done, but it means working odd hours whenever I’m capable. Also even before aforementioned incident, I was terrified of authority figures and fellow humans and the anxiety of dealing with bosses ups my stress levels enough to negatively impact my pathetically fragile health. I am a disaster of a human lmao.

Don’t get me wrong, IRL you’d never know it - I’m charismatic and good at talking to people. Before my health got worse I worked as a lead project manager after being promoted repeatedly due to my competence in problem solving and getting shit done. (Different industry, business management not programming)

So, I’m stuck in a room (lucky to have it). Teaching myself webdev, because anxiety/health wise I’m pretty sure I could manage to do cold calling to get webdev jobs. I also have a couple friends who will need someone to do some simple site jobs in the upcoming months, so that’s something.

What I’m worried I’m being unrealistic about, is that I’m still a baby dev. Sure, I can set up a django or apache server on AWS (Only starting the Node.js section for the Odin Project later this week). Sure I can make a shitty but technically working website. But I’ve got a long way to go. I still need to learn server load management, I’ve only got the basics of server hardening down, and I’m only just starting to build portfolio projects.

What if something goes wrong? I have no one to go to. I started on this path before reddit went down in flames and became another hellscape, and had thought that if I got stuck that maybe a nice senior dev on there would help me.

But I’ve realized I can’t expect other people to bail me out. But also I fucking need money and need to be able to work for myself while also increasing my programming skills. Uni starts back up in a few months, and I need to have shit at least part-way sorted by then because I’m going to have to learn a bunch of new stuff as they’ve updated the course. I don’t have the time or resources to relax. I don’t have the physical health to just go get some random job in the meantime. I don’t have the mental health to manage interpersonal work relations (admittedly, due to my own issues - which I’m working on, but fuck did I get re-traumatized and set back on that shit.)

The crux of the issue is, I can’t sell something I don’t believe in. Because I’m mostly self-taught and have no industry exp, I’m sure there’s gaps in my knowledge. I don’t want to fuck up and hurt someone’s business or anything.

Am I being unrealistic? Part of me wonders if I should just give up, tbh. I don’t want to be one of those dickhead n00bie coders that make people not want to hire other people if you get me.

Any advice or… anything really would be appreciated. Sorry for the wall of text.

  • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’ve met so called web devs who aren’t anywhere close to you in level. You still have much to learn obviously but for a start you’re not as junior as your think you are.

    For example, you don’t need to know how to do load balancing (it’s actually kind of easy) for websites that are for a company that only needs to hire a single webdev. These kinds of companies are small enough to be just fine behind cloud flare.

    Going freelance is definitely a shot in the dark. Life is all about safety nets. If you go freelance, you’ll find that your safety net is your savings, and if you don’t have any then one client that doesn’t pay you, pays you late or whatever else can make you homeless just like that. Therefore, you need another safety net. Is there a friend who can get you a bed to sleep in at least until you get paid? What happens if that takes a long time? I’m not trying to say that you have no chance, but please consider this scenario before you embark.

    Personally I’ve been working as a consultant. There are many recruiters out there who would be thrilled to hire you then subcontract you to clients who need a webdev but don’t want to go through the hiring process. While a lot of them would want you working 9-5 in an office, there exist many who want someone full remote to build a website before a deadline.

    I don’t have much else to offer you for advice, this sucks. Best of luck to you.