Web development is a big bright spot in the world of work. Web development jobs include graphic designers, visual designers, front-end software developers, back-end software developers, content developers, and user experience people. All of these jobs tend to be interesting and high-paying. Most important, they make up a large and fast-growing part of the economy.
Although web development represents a passel of new opportunities, getting a job in the web development area can be a nerve-wracking prospect. The web area is changing fast, and the web needs of organizations change rapidly too. Large companies hire scores or hundreds of people for a big project, then let most of them go when the project is over. Or they hire a web development company, which staffs up when times are good, and then downsizes the moment they get a little difficult.
Web development people are also quick to change jobs to pursue new opportunities and to keep their skills sharp. So, as a web developer, you’re likely to spend less time in each job than people in other kinds of careers, and to be looking for a job more of the time.
This book helps you get a web development job, keep a web development job, and then get your next web development job. It helps you understand what your immediate colleagues with the same or similar job title do for a living, and what your not-so-immediate colleagues who fill out all the related positions on a web development team do as well.
With this book, you can become more valued, more employable, better paid, and easier to hire.
Getting a Web Development Job For Dummies introduces you to the world of web development and to employment in web development. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn
After you decide you want a web development job — or, once you have one, and decide that you want to keep working in web development — how do you move forward?
That’s what this book is here for. It empowers you to understand the web development landscape and get the job you want, and then build the skills you need and the career you deserve.
The web development world is different from most other kinds of work: jobs, technologies, tools, and standards are changing all the time. This book is your guide to keeping up.
Many people got web development jobs — and some even kept them — without this book in hand. But, using this book as a reference, you can get jobs more easily, negotiate a better package for yourself, and build a career that you’re proud of.
Getting a Web Development Job For Dummies is written in a way that’s fully accessible for beginners, for people who don’t currently hold a web design job and are looking to get their first one. However, we do have to make a few assumptions in writing this book because we wouldn’t have enough space to help you with the key parts of getting a job if we had to explain what a web page is! Here are our assumptions:
If you’ve read other For Dummies books, you know that these books use icons in the margin to call attention to particularly important or useful ideas in the text. In this book, we use four such icons:
Like other For Dummies books, Getting a Web Development Job For Dummies is a reference. That means you can read it in any order that you wish. You can page through the book for hot topics or use the Table of Contents and the Index to hone in on what interests you.
You can also read the book in order. This is especially valuable in two quite different situations. If you’re new to the world of web development, reading the book through is a great way to pick up a lot of context about what web development people do, and how they work together.
Also, if you’re moving up into some kind of leadership or management role, it’s valuable to read the book all the way through at that time as well. You can use the book’s descriptions as an opportunity to think about how all the different kinds of professionals on a web team work together, as well as to reflect on what you can improve in your organization’s web development efforts.
If you’re considering moving into web development, either as your first career or from another area of work, read Part III. It talks about how to get a web-development education. If you have some other kind of education, or don’t have any higher education, you can use this Part to figure out what relevant background you do have, and how to fill in any gaps.
If you’re looking for a job and you have experience already, read Part IV. It tells you how to build a portfolio site, or how to improve one if you have it already, as well as how to carry out your job search.