I’m netting < $10 an hour doing part-time full stack dev at an ultra-small organization for a few years post-BSCS.
Fear of resume gaps and the current job market have me afraid to renegotiate. In fact, they’re going to cut my hours soon, which makes it seem like they can only afford ~$150 a week.
I’m getting worse at programming and there’s no one to learn from.
What do you think I should do?
Either just leave and find another job altogether, or see if you can find a bunch of ultra small organizations and go into business for yourself doing a bit of work for a bunch of companies.
If you have other work then it becomes easier to negotiate, but there may just not be any more money in the company in which case it’s time to do a capitalism and find more money yourself.
Start applying. Apply everywhere, experienced full stack devs are still in demand. Don’t negotiate with a tiny company that can’t even give you full time hours.
I’ve done a lot of low rate or entirely volunteer work for small, often non-profit organizations in the past, and don’t fall into the trap. It can be thankless and it can be soul sucking.
However, obviously if you want to eat and if this is your only income right now you’ll have to stick it out a bit. So I hope we are talking like you are virtually working no hours for that rate, leaving you time to expand your resume on your own.
I have often been asked in the past by friends or acquaintances how you get a good career in programming, and the answer typically is either luck, or a lot of your own hard work.
I don’t know what the job market is like these days, but historically your papers mean very little to getting a job. A link to your Github goes a long way to demonstrate your abilities and provides a much higher degree of confidence you know what you are doing because they can actually look at your work, and if you are contributing to other projects, that you are a team player. As one speaker said at a Google Q&A I watched when asked if a PhD would increase their chance of getting hired: “well, we won’t hold having a PhD against you”.
There is also a lot of free course material out there to various degrees of difficulty.
Programming is becoming more and more competitive, and the ones that succeed have made it their passion, which does mean a lot of unpaid work. So either find projects you are happy to provide your time to to sharpen your skill, or start your own project that you can get satisfaction in building. Actually programming something is always the fastest way to improve your skill.
Yeah I totally agree, I have mixed feelings about the competition part (which is obviously true especially when looking into the valley). Being passionate really counts (in the form of (not just) trying to achieve high quality open source software).
But if it’s just about getting a good pay-check I think it’s not too difficult to get a relatively well-paid job if it’s not in the “hot” zone (i.e. boring jobs are ok).
Either start applying, it’s not that seniors aren’t in demand.
Or (additionally) what I personally have found interest in, is just diving more and more into open source. I think this actually improves my abilities (and fun/interest) most (writing and exploring open source). I kinda “feel” that in my workplace as often my opinion is asked and I have something new/innovative to offer (that I’ve learned from a good open source codebase), that ends up being adapted.
Start applying! You say your hours may be cut, be applying to places in the hours you would’ve been working. Even if you’re not try to apply to at least one place per day after work. LinkedIn is a good place to get recruiters come to you. I think you should be making quite a bit more with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. It sounds like you’re being taken advantage of or you don’t know your worth.
