Starting up on a career in web design/development

[Shicky]

Was previously warned off this by friends with more wisdom when I was 17, they basically told me its difficult to get a decent wage in this field. I listened to this advice despite feeling like I have a bit of flair for web development and definitely enjoy it.

I think uni is just trying to carve me into a software dev monkey, which judging from the internships i've done, I would not enjoy as a fulltime career.

So if I am looking towards preparing myself for a career in web development, how should I prepare myself, considering im going into final year of a comp science degree.

Right now i've got some photoshop tutorials downloaded, as I have never really used it much. Also going to start learning php/mysql as it seems to be recommended here a lot. Essentially am I best making projects and therefore websites that I can use as a 'porfolio' as such? Im going to a summer internship position where it seems they want you to make a website, they mention coding it so it hits well on search engines, is this quite advanced?

Also by which stage should I consider myself ready to take small freelance jobs?

Finally im sure we have some professional web designers/devs on board, would they recommend it as a career?

 

[Shicky]

Can I ask the range of programming languages you find yourself using in daily life? Or I assume its mainly whatever is the best option for the project at hand?

Without prying to much would you consider your wage competitive to say a software developer working in the finance sector? Ignore of course if thats getting a bit personal

 

[Shicky]

Imy from TAA?

 

[Shicky]

And thats the reason i quit a computer science degree after year 1

The money might be good, but the work is soul destroyingly, catastrophically dull.

This is my biggest fear going into IT. I am not exactly the typical computer science student. I love to travel, I do a ridiculous amount of training/sport, I seem to socialise a great deal more than people I have met in IT. I have done a few internships and frankly found them dull, I had bugger all work to do and the people were hard to relate to. As i said im more social than the average but building a rapport took a lot of effort and didnt seem to come much from their side. (obviously this doesnt apply to everybody in IT)

I think I could easily have success in any field I go into in IT. But I want to ENJOY my career, not be massively wealthy, though obviously both would be ideal. At the moment im looking into hybrid business/IT roles like business analyst, project management and even teaching ICT.

May I ask what you do now, how you came to do it?

 

[Shicky]

Hey Shicky, you should be able to relate to this.

Guess what my final year uni project was... Remember UKCSL?

Haha I remember you telling me that actually! Remember you seemed to be getting buggered for time with the freelance job on top. Not a position i would be overly keen to get myself into.

Can I ask what your full time role is? Or is it technically as a web developer, you just have a lot more responsibility ( as you mentioned networking etc )

The thing that made me do a U-Turn on the web development was in my last internship in a networking dept. I had contact with their web dev who was a girl in her 20s who they seemed to think was amazing....I saw her work and wasnt overly impressed. She was getting 25k a year and was soon to leave because she had been given a better offer elsewhere. From chatting to yourself and others, I didn't really think this was a sustainable career a few years ago and you would only survive if you were the best of the best as such. I say this as any average joe can develop his/her website, large companies will go to large IT companies, so it only leaves small-medium business as potential clients, with a huge amount of developers going for the contracts.

Thank you for all your advice in the thread, you seem to say things I had previously had in my head for the correct way to go about things. Hope you're well mate!