Breaking into Web Development: How Long Does it Take to Land Your First Job?

The real question is how much time will it take YOU to land the first job.

Well if you’ve landed on this article I will assume you’re just starting out, and most likely you’ve taken the self-teaching route.

First of all congratulations, starting to learn to code is a great decision and if you pay the price, you will reap the generous benefits.

The short answer is 1 year.

Here’s the long one, I am a business major and I started learning in my last year of university, so coding was a second priority at that time, my key to success was consistency as opose to speadning 8 hours a day learning.

My learning goal was simple: “Every day I would spent at least 15 minutes coding after coming home”, and guess what? I didn’t miss a day of it, well maybe I did, but it was so rare that I’ve forgotten.

Because my daily goal was so easy to acheive I was able to keep up with it, and usually after spening 15 minutes, I would want to do more, so in the end my daily workload was about 1 - 3 hours. It could happen that I only had 15 minutes but I did it nontheless.

Doing it this way made it a habit, that I still carry with me to this day.

This depends on many factors:

For me it was basic understanding of programming.

For me it was 1 - 2 hours

For me it was not wanting to do what my univeristy degree would allow me to.

I wasn’t really, but the easy goal kind of made me a disciplined person.

I was not at all, but I did learn to become more patient, thing is when coding if something doesn’t work out, and this will happen a lot in the beginning, try to be patient, give it time, walk away from your desk, and that thing will be solved.

For most people it should take about 6 months to a year, I’ve read of people doing it in 3 months, some take more than a year. It’s different for everybody, the main thing that differentiates success from failiure is consistency.

Don’t try to start with a goal like I will do 5 hours per day 6 days a week, and get a job in 1 month. You will fail miserably, not only that but there is a bigger chance you will quit and not come back.

Weather you’ve decided or you still haven’t made the jump and started learning, the time frame to land your first job doesn’t really matter, what matters is that you learn the right tools and aquire a problem solving mindset.

And no, once you get your job your learning won’t stop, it never does, currently I have 5 years of experience and there is so much stuff I still don’t know how to do. The struggle doesn’t stop it just gets easier.