All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Some questions regarding Webdevelopers/Webdesigners hiring/certifications - what do you expect?
Hey there,
Today I have come with some questions and also would like you to tell me what qualifications/certifications you (would) look out for when hiring a webdesigner or webdeveloper? The reason why I am asking this is, that I have finished school, been half a year abroad (Australia & New Zealand) and am now looking towards what I am gonna do in the future. As I've been messing with websites, cms and all that sorta stuff since a couple of years out of fun I'd like to acctually like working in that field.
The problem is, that here in Germany there aren't many Universities offering a webdesigner/webdeveloper course with Bachelor or Master and those who do are private and too expensive. Thus Ive been looking around and found a "distance teaching" Uni which offers webdesigner/webdeveloper diploma (acknowledged by the state) at a reasonable price at an est. time of 15-18 months.
Now I am not exactly sure how the diploma I get compares to a Bachelor or Master degree, but I would be getting a ISO 9001, PAS 1037 and ISO 29990 certified diploma which apparently is accredited internationally aswell. According to them with these certificates I'd be able to start working as a webdev/webdesigner in Germany but also internationally right away.
Given the fact, that the diploma I make in webdev/webdesign would only take 15-18 months and probably won't require as much effort as a full time Uni course, I thought about either using my free time do internships at like Rocket Internet or other Startup like companies, OR attending a fitting Bachelor/Master course in the communicative/media branch alongside to add to my diploma so that in the end I wont only have that ISO cert but also a Bachelor/Master degree.
I would be glad if some people could help me out there as it is kinda hard deciding it all.
I know I definitly wanna go down that webdev/webdesign road but not entirely sure how just yet.
Kind regards,
Ympker
Comments
I have no experience or expertise in this field at all, but I would think what would be more important is your portfolio.
I do not read the article so much. sorry. @Ympker
That's also something I thought. That ISO would be some sort of qualification but what I always thought really matters in that branch is that you have a good portfolio, some showoff work, internships etc... Hence I am not sure wheter I should use the free time I'd have during that "distance teaching" to attend Uni and get a Bachelor/Master degree on a supportive course or do internships and gather as much "work experience" as possible.
Either way I also need to consider that I will need social contacts and at a "distance Uni" it will all be online so no classmates from Uni I could meet/exchange with or talk to. Sure they have a chatroom, but that's not a "real person" I can look in the face and talk to.
Though I guess through internships I'd also get some contacts. Some guy I know is with Deloitte Digital and worked with T Systems and might get me an internship there which also sounds quite tempting.
Oke
Yep. Thing is: How many licensed guys do you know that actually have success? We got 3 programmers, one of them has a master, another one is licensed and at last but least, a younger programmer doing Uni too. None of our clients have asked for specific certifications, they don't even know their certifications. I know many programmers and I can tell you that, basically, each one fits a specific work e.g. specific framework and such.
There are many programmers, while not many do a great job. I've previously hired freelancers that wouldnt do stuff right and their code was a mess. Nowadays our programmers reside in the same city as we often do meetings for large projects. While I'm not a programmer, I know how to read and understand the logic of the code, I'm a DevOp, Infrastructure Manager, Team Leader and I manage coding projects to, that allowed me to easily understand that you don't necessarily need a certification, you do need to be skilled, organized and dedicated to your job. That makes you a great programmer. Don't do like many do, many refuse to learn new frameworks and technologies and that's a mistake. Sometimes they completely stall and only work on minor projects. These will end up with a 10USD hourly fee while others do 120USD per hour.
Thanks for your reply mate
I acctually was hoping you'd be replying to this^^
Well I can see where you are coming from but naturally I would like to have some sort of certification I could show which is also acknowledged (for which the ISO might be just sufficient according to your statement). Sure I could also go and learn everything by myself with sites like Udemy/StackSkills, Eduonix.. but I'd rather have a somewhat "solid" foundation. I've talked with multiple webdevs I know from other communities wheter to go for a full stack dev or decide on Front- or Backend. What's your view on this?
You're welcome.
Different paths. In our case we dedicate a programmer for backend and another one for frontend. There's also Webdesigner and programmer, don't forget that hehe. It's different. Just try it all and you'll eventually make a decision
Haha yeah, the online courses from that diploma would also be either Webdeveloper or Webdesigner... or Webcontent Manager, but I am going for either of the first two :P
I watched this video from the YouTube Account from the instructor of one of my udemy courses and found it quite on point regarding that Front/Backendsplit:
It's worth to try and there's always opportunities for programmers. So start learning and you'll be a great programmer. There are many forums about coding and you could signup for a few as well.
You could check out full sail university, I believe they have what you would want on distance learning.
As for what I personally look for, in almost all walks of life where a qualification is not 'needed' I look at past work over everything else.
The problem is the company I used to work for would take on University Graduates all the time, 9/10 times they were useless compared to someone who has already been working there for 18 months - 2 years already who started at the bottom with zero knowledge.
So for web dev/design, to me, your qualifications mean nothing, examples of your work and experience are everything.
Can you send me some via Skype or PM?
Much appreciated I almost only found "dead" ones^^ The most active coding community I am part of is a few Discord Servers and HF.
That's it. Well okay Stack&Git ofc also.
And yeah I will definitly keep learning&improving and aim to broaden my knowledge. Ive probably already enough courses to have ALOT covered but always aiming for more :P
@AnthonySmith Good to hear that sort of insight aswell
So if I had some sort of qualification certifcate (just take that ISO for example now), at best some internships+work experience and a good portfolio consisting of interesting self made projects and self aquired knowledge I would not instantly be out of the game just because I'm not a University Bachelor/Master graduate?
How good is your past work? What stuff do you love to do? What side projects are you involved in? How well will you get along with the other boys and girls?
I like to see a small portfolio (at least 2 or 3 relevant projects to the type of work we need), an interest in specific technologies/types of work, some sort of open source project work or a fun side project you work on in your spare time, and someone who can hold a conversation/has a personality/can get along and work with a team.
A certification tells me none of the things I care about.
Thanks for your feedback aswell
Much appreciated!
@GCat probably knows much more than me in regards to those forums. I don't frequent any of those :P
I wouldn't really consider anyone on HF a "coder" -- more a leecher, I remember one program this guy made, he called it something stupid like an easy setup botnet, coded in C# for the bot loader, had so many bugs and overflows, you could shutdown any botnet within 20 seconds and cause the entire computer it run on to crash.
Well I was mostly referring to a community branch which dedicated themselves to the topics of coding but yea it's not what youd expect your avg coding forum to look like.
Well, I always prefer professional qualifications over University degree's as a degree is quite general where as professional qualifications are quite specific to the topic.
Example (going back 10 years), if someone had 5 years hands on windows server experience and no MCSE they would get an interview, if someone had an MCSE and 3 years at university and no experience to speak of, they would not get an interview.
My perspective is probably fairly unique though but was shaped by first hand experience of this.
If you have a qualification and some experience then you get through the door every time I guess.
Aight
Well once I get my diploma I will have that + my Portfolio which will Most likely consist of some own Projects, and internships I wouldve accomplished during those 2 years I was attending the online course. Obviously I couldnt offer smth like 5 years of work experience in a company. 2 years is also unrealistic as I wouldnt have a job in the field for the whold 2 years in which Im also still learning. So probably internships and perhaps some Jobs + my diploma and Portfolio would be with what Id be starting Off in the end.
For what it's worth, not a single of my software development / tutoring clients has ever asked about either certificates or any other kind of formal education (other than during idle chit-chat after a deal had already been closed). My public work seems to be sufficient.
Although it is a bit more expensive and I will need to look into some financial aid programm for youngsters, I found this also available in the cities around where I live and it looks really interesting
The course I would study there focuses 2/3 on the practical part of things (hands on experience) + includes a Diploma + Bachelor upon completion.
What do you guys think about this one?
BA/BSC (HONS) WEB DEVELOPMENT
http://www.sae.edu/gbr/babsc-hons-web-development
The Bachelor title is awarded by the Middlesex University in London.
Also what do you think about the modules they offer? From what I can see they cover most important parts when it comes to webdev.
Taggin @MrGeneral
Hm. Looking through the module list, there's a few red flags I see:
MVC and Modular Programming
Introduction to Frameworks (like Angular JS) for front-end development
HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript
.htaccess, mod-re-write and URL manipulation
OOP
Those are just a few topics I picked out from the various trimesters. The problems I see with them:
The conclusion I'd draw from this would be: it's probably fairly complete topic-wise, but it's going to teach you bad habits, and you're probably not going to be a competent developer when you finish it.
^ This!
Certifications don't count for shit if your theoretical knowledge is incongruent with your ability to apply concepts that you have learnt, while developing real world applications.
So, I'd recommend that you concentrate on building a portfolio and then expose yourself to new tools, scripting languages etc over a period of time, as you get confident about your increasing knowledge base.
Thats indeed interesting to hear
Will keep this in mind.. also didnt read about bootstrap anywhere :O
It looks a great course, definitely a great way to start with.
While you may not like AngularJS for your projects, one of my programmers loves it and I kinda love it too. Doesn't look like a terrible choice for us.
Angular is popular primarily because of its marketing (which, logically, leads to people "loving" it). Angular 1 is an architectural/usability nightmare (seriously - there are things you just outright can't do with it, because it constrains your application too much!), and Angular 2 doesn't have the ecosystem to compete with React and such, nor does it really do anything particularly better than the alternatives.
From a technical perspective, Angular is just objectively worse than the other options that are available to you, and I have yet to see a single usecase where Angular (either version) is objectively the optimal choice to make.
We've worked in projects where AngularJS worked just fine. While you may not like it, others do. Same applies to programming languages... Just see Cobol.. Still in top for most wanted programmers
"Liking" has nothing to do with it, I'm making a technical assessment here. And that something can be used for something doesn't mean it's the right choice. As for "most wanted programmers", that has nothing to do with appropriateness of solutions at all, and usually finds its roots in legacy software (and the decisions that led to it, often marketing-fueled).
Sure, if you want a steady supply of highly-paid legacy application maintenance work in a few years, then Angular 1 is the thing to learn. But that doesn't make it a good technical solution to anything.
solution to anything.
That's not it. That is merely your opinion and opinions differ.
>
That's not a technical argument.
Not a programmer myself. But I do have my programmers and they definitely do know their arguments
Not going to battle it though. It's not worth it.