Introduction

This lesson contains an activity that you should complete.

Taking the skills you’ve learned in your studies and moving into the workplace can be daunting. This course will give you insights into what to expect from web development and how best to get a job in the industry.

Work environment

There are three main environments that you’re likely to work in as a front-end developer:

  • An agency with multiple clients and projects, all at different stages of development. You would work in a team with graphic designers, copywriters, other developers etc. The agency would be hired on a contract basis, with a number of different projects, timelines and scales.

  • In-house jobs are where you would work for a single organisation. Development is not the organisation’s primary focus, but it is important enough for them to maintain their own team to work on their projects. An example might be an e-commerce site with their own development team.

  • A freelancer works for themselves and finds their own projects and clients.

Working as a freelancer offers a lot of flexibility to choose your own schedule and take on projects that interest you. The negative is that you don’t have a set salary, so income can vary from month-to-month.

If you want variety, then an agency is a good place to go. You’ll get to work with many different clients and briefs. Agencies tend to have fixed deadlines, and traffic managers ensure that each project is moving through the organisation speedily and that work isn’t bottlenecking with anyone.

In-house teams offer more stability and room to grow and develop, but there is less variety as you work for one company. Depending on the size of the company, you might work on a range of tasks within the organisation and would need to learn a wider range of skills. Because you’d be working in-house, they are likely to have more formal procedures for career advancement.

Job titles

As you are studying Front-end Development, most of you will be looking to move into this role. But some of you might have found other areas of web development more interesting, like UX design, for example.

Here is a list of common jobs in the web development industry:

Front-end developer

A developer who works with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Some jobs may have specific names, like JavaScript Developer or React Developer, and show how that will be the position’s main focus.

Back-end developer

A back-end developer focuses on server/databases. They use specific languages suited to this, including Ruby, PHP, C#, Python etc.

Full stack developer

A full stack developer is someone with an understanding of both the front-end and the back-end. In reality, most good front-end developers will know some back-end, and vice versa. And with tools like MongoDB, developers writing JavaScript are finding it easier to bridge this gap.

UI designer

A User Interface designer focuses specifically on the design that the user sees. They are less concerned about how something is developed and, compared to a UX designer, are less concerned about why the design is chosen.

UX designer

A User Experience designer focusses on why a site is designed the way it is. They focus on user testing and researching to ensure the final product is correct. For anyone interested, this is Noroff’s UX Design course.

Information architect

An information architect works to create a logical structure for the website. They might also be called Content Strategists and find the best way of communicating with the user.

Quality Assurance Engineer

A Quality Assurance Engineer is someone who tests the site to ensure it works as expected. This might include manual or automated testing for visual, functional or security issues.

What makes a good front-end developer

Front-end development is an ever-changing field, and that is what makes it so exciting. To be a good front-end developer, you should be adaptable and constantly learning and trying new things. You should be curious and interested in improving yourself and the code that you write.

It’s good to have a wide variety of interests and knowledge but to still specialise in only a few areas and technologies. That gives you the ability to be very proficient in one area but able to understand how it will impact other areas in a project.

Another common trait amongst developers is their enjoyment of problem-solving, and much of your time as a front-end developer will be spent wrestling problems. Running into problems shouldn’t be seen as a failure but as an opportunity to learn something new and further your skills.

Front-end developers should also be good at working in teams. If you get a job in an organisation with a development team, you will need to get used to sharing your work with others and having them share their work with you. You might have code reviews where people will look over the code you’ve written. This might be awkward at first, but it’s there to improve your code and save you time in the long run. Sometimes an issue you’ve been struggling with is easily spotted by another person’s perspective.

Activity

📖 READ

Job Titles in the Web Industry, CSS Tricks.

Lesson task

Goal

To familiarise yourself with the job opportunities available to you and prepare yourself for entering the job market.

Level 1

  • Choose a few popular job sites where you can search for potential work opportunities.

  • Find out what is on offer, what the salaries are likely to be, and what technology they expect you to have mastered. This then gives you some good ideas of what to focus on learning more about.

Tags: