Thanks for the response. I'm working on an open source blog platform at the moment in Python using the Django framework and some JavaScript. Once I've got the blog done, I'd like to add some e-commerce features. I made it open source mainly so that I can put it on my CV but I've been programming for about eight years but never really did anything all that serious, so this is my attempt to show people what I can do.
Well that is cool, and it is no doubt useful for hiring managers to see some of your work. It will still likely be junior developer positions you'll be applying for if you have no experience aside from small single person projects in your spare time.
Your competition will be say grads who've been doing this stuff for say the past 3-4 years albeit with full time internships/summer placements gaining commercial experience and working on projects at uni with teams of people. (Obviously not all graduates are motivated individuals but the ones who are will be your competition for junior dev roles, the others will be the sort who don't land a grad job, turn up in support not knowing anything and are the people that some on here without degrees refer to when claiming that university isn't worthwhile).
I'd agree with Maccy re: pay. If you want to find specific data points for a particular company then glassdoor.co.uk might be useful, but again keep in mind that it is only a small sample of people and people may or may not have included bonuses etc..etc..
waffly bit (tl;dr)
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Things to keep in mind - if you're really motivated/keen then you might well have learned a lot during your time spent doing the hobby projects at home, you might well be really good in terms of your ability to solve problems etc... When you start working in a team you may well find there are other team members who earn 2 - 3 times more than you. You may also find that you're actually better than them (you're keen and have been doing this for fun in your spare time and so it is entirely possible). Your manager can't (usually) make your salary double in a yearly pay rise, all they can do is give you really good reviews and push to get you as big a raise as possible.
A note on some of the experienced devs - part of their pay might well reflect time served, it probably also reflects the fact there is a messy (sometimes really bad) code base and they know a lot about their particular area. When it comes to fixing an urgent production issue they probably have a bit of an edge. You may need to get used to looking at other people's code and first figuring out WTF they were actually thinking, before even trying to find a bug - this is the sort of thing you don't get to experience in hobby projects at home but it could be a large feature of your work. Don't get too upset if in two years time you're on say 40-50-something and you find out that the guy who perhaps knows a lot about the system you work on but writes horrible code is on more like 100k.
Do keep in mind that if you're good you can work at lots of places, on the other hand the guy who's value is mostly derived from having knowledge essentially only to that one employer isn't in that position. He's the sort of person that will complain that he's been programming for 10 years and it is ridiculous that an interviewer asked him to implement fizz buzz or solve an algorithms question on a white board... cos he just googles stuff/searches stack overflow for the answers and that's all developers do right?
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Sorry if that was too waffly but basically there are plenty of bad programmers out there who are paid well for reasons other than their core programming skills, but being a good programmer can still mean you're going to be starting at a junior level. You still need experience working with other people's code, working on big, big projects etc... there are plenty of issues you can get in big applications with many users that you won't have any experience of on a hobby project.
I'm not a dev tbw... I was previously BA now into research etc.. (I can program but I don't write production code) I've worked with devs for quite a few years and have certainly seen keen junior devs who are much better suited to and much more productive when working on new projects than (some) senior devs whose main value is knowledge of a specific system rather than ability and are best off being kept in a role maintaining that (legacy) system.
