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Who would like a guide to landing their first web development job?

8 points by krogers ↗ HN
I'm in the process of creating a step by step guide that teaches people how to get their first web developer job, and am doing a bit of market research. I was hoping you guys could help me out and let me know if this is something you would be interested in.

The guide teaches you what level you need to be at technically, guides you through creating an online presence, a personal site, an awesome portfolio, and finally guides you through the process of talking to companies and ultimately landing your first web developer job.

The guide would include not only the concepts, but will also include a step by step action plan to take you from zero knowledge to landing your first full time web developer job.

If you would read this, what would you pay for it? I'm thinking of a price point of $5.99 for everything I just described above, and a premium version for $9.99 which would also include step by step guides for learning 4 major web development frameworks: Meteor, Ruby on Rails, Django, and Laravel, as well as a guide to teaching yourself any web development framework you choose.

Any and all input is appreciated, thanks so much!

15 comments

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aarohmankad
5.99 is a good price point for me, but what does it do better than the competition?
krogers
Hey thanks for the input. From what I have seen so far, guides to getting a web development job are either not very detailed, or are very vague in their advice, things like 'find a local business, non-profit, or church to volunteer your services to.' This advice is okay,but it isn't detailed and doesn't give step by step instructions on how to learn the technologies necessary, build up a great portfolio, and finally walk you through the process of leveraging all of that into a position as a web developer, including how to start the conversation with companies and interview tactics.

I got my first web development job completely through self-teaching and building up my portfolio, and I'd like to give people a guide that teaches them how to do the exact same thing, going through all of the detailed steps, so that it can be a job-seekers ultimate resource to go from knowing nothing, to getting a great job as a web developer.

What else have you seen missing from other guides to learning web development and using it to land your first job?

jtfairbank
Seems reasonable, though I wouldn't be a great target audience (CS major here). Perhaps you should ask people coming out of coding bootcamps? Maybe the bootcamp doesn't teach them about the interview process, finding freelance work, and other next steps?
walterbell2331
I would be interested in looking at this.
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subrat_rout
Currently I am going through Udacity front end web developer Nanodegree program where I am paying $200/month. Link: https://www.udacity.com/nanodegrees I have paid for last three months and will be paying few more months to complete the program.

In addition, I am also enrolled to Codecademy Labs (Recently introduced pilot program) where it plans to give us project based practices for 3 months. For this it is a one time payment of $250 which I think it worth after attending one on site class and completing 15 HTML, CSS based sites.

So my questions are:

What are your credentials? I mean why would I believe you have enough skills/expertise to take me from absolute beginner level to employable position? You have not mentioned anything about that in your post. So I assume you are just testing the water.

2. What is the timeline? How long it will take for you to guide a batch of students or an individual? Udacity is asking for 6-9 months of time (part time effort) and Codecademy Lab is around 3 months.

If I find you are skilled enough to guide me and land me a web developer job I would not mind shelling couple of thousand dollars for 2-3 months.

krogers
My credentials are simply that I've done this exact thing. I currently work as a web developer and got the job with no degree using only self-taught skills.

Timeline I'm not sure. This guide is going to be mostly a short guide to reach as many people as possible, depending on how it does, I may look into a more detailed, larger course and coaching.

subrat_rout
So basically it will be book/short guide on how to teach both coding and job search skills? As somebody on this thread has said I would doubt about the quality. However I would not mind trying a chapter to assess the quality of the product/service and then buy it.
krogers
Yep that's basically it. The main process of the book will be a guide to using existing resources to learn code and in what order, then how to leverage that knowledge into creating a strong portfolio and online presence, and finally using that to contact web development agencies and land a full time job.
subrat_rout
Then go for it. Send me a sample chapter as soon as you complete it. My email is in my profile. Good luck.
dyeje
At that price point, I would question the quality of the material.
krogers
That's also something I've been thinking about, I want to reach a large number of job seekers and make it accessible, but I don't want it to be associated with low quality products. In order to solve this problem, I was thinking about having a free chapter as a sample and also have the table of contents so people can get a preview before they buy.
dyeje
I mean, I would also explore the option of just charging more. The difference between $5 and $50 probably isn't much to someone who's looking to use this resource to completely change their life.
krogers
Also a good point. I'm trying to find the balance of somebody looking at it and saying, 'oh that's nothing I'll buy it' and relying on impulse buys without getting into the dangerous area of being viewed as cheap content
phantom_oracle
Give the guide away for free and try to monetize around it.

No doubt that you may get a couple 50-100 buyers over a period of time, but the whole concept of "free" is what all the beginners have been induced into and you could likely monetize a lot more around a free guide.

Maybe some side-project you have in mind can get big traffic from your guide.

This is just a suggestion, if you want to charge, by all means...