Fellow software devs - am I being dumb?

[CREATIVE!11]

I'm looking for some advice from some of you long term developers who have more experience than me in the industry what I should do looking forward at my future career, i'll try keep it brief but bear with me.

So I started learning to code myself about 1.5 years before I landed my current job, which I got the end of August 2023. I focused on web development using the odin project https://www.theodinproject.com/ (for context). Following that I did a bootcamp feb to mary of 2023 (just to get a piece of paper thinking it may help). Struggled to get any interest locally in Bristol, had a few interviews but the roles honestly were kind of bad with odd tech stacks. One of them was a PHP based learning platform called moodle.

I was trying to look for a full-stack role, in the more typical tech stacks like react (or similar like vue), c#, ASP.NET etc etc. with the idea that I could grow into the role and future proof my skills.

However.... that never materialised, out of the few interviews I had, a company offered me a role doing mobile development using c# / .NET MAUI (cross platform mobile thing). I took it mainly to get industry experience with C# and at the time had nothing better coming my way, it seemed hopeless at the time so just made the decision to relocate and go for it.

I thought i'll stay in the role for a year or so, get some C# and coding experience on my CV and then try jump back into full-stack if possible again and move back to where friends/family are (it's been quite bad being here for my mental health but thats a different issue), I have a portfolio and I built quite a few web based projects and i've done a little back-end at my current job. I'm thinking of spinning up some much prettier projects for my portfolio like https://www.frontendmentor.io/challenges/personal-finance-app-JfjtZgyMt1 because they give you great designs to work from.

I'm just wondering, have I made a mistake / am I being dumb even worrying about this so early (the question in the title)? i'm applying to roles and still having very little luck, the worry I have (and why I asked if im being dumb) is i've painted myself into a bit of a corner. I've no real desire to continue with the mobile world, I really don't like it at all and it was always meant to be a stop gap just doing something as having zero dev experience on the old CV makes it damned hard to get anyone to give you a second glance.

How difficult is it going to be to try make the jump back into full-stack of which 95% of jobs seem to be? I always hear people say tech stacks aren't the be all end all and a lot of you seasoned devs have probably worked with lots. But I can't help feeling like i'm being overlooked due to lacking hard skills in those areas. I can try upsell more of my back-end and slight database work at my current role but i'd have to be creative.

I am comfortable with React / front-end for example and have good examples of that in terms of portfolio. I am considering teaching myself more ASP.NET but back-end REST API focused.

Thanks for reading if you got this far. If any of you guys have similar experience of switching lanes and advice that would be amazing. I'm obviously still trying to apply for entry level roles, and even if I end up with a paycut i'd be ok with it if I see it as pointing my career in a better direction. I guess part of the problem is the industry right now feels in really rough shape?

 

[throwaway4372]

I've been full stack .net for 20 years, looking for jobs for a few months and getting absolutely nowhere, seems like it's not happening this side of Xmas, so that part of it isn't just you.

If I was in your position I'd go pure front end, then you can work anywhere regardless of back end stack. The people with personality defects are all back end, if you can avoid them it'll reduce the amount of getting bullied out and quitting due misery.