At a salary of $11/hour, no overtime, is a junior web developer with no previous experience and no personal project undervalued?

Is this with or without a degree?

@compSci without.

My first dev job paid shit. But I took it anyway because I REALLY wanted the career change and this was an opportunity to get my foot in the door. 8 months later I moved and got a 100% pay increase.

@burswag it worked for me and I'm glad I took the chance. Without previous work exp you basically know nothing, unless you've been working with others on something like open source projects

I don't know. Depends on what you have to offer and what country you're in (with taxes and stuff).

I'm from the Netherlands, I finished school 8-9 year ago, and now I make somewhere between €22 and €23 / hour. With tax deducted that's a little above €15 hourly.

When I started 9 years ago I made exactly half (€10-€11 hourly), but that wasn't taxed equally. (dutch taxes: you earn more, you pay more)

@xroad that's true. But what I get out of this place is little to none. Googling stuff is something I can do at home. I was expecting to learn how a team works and does projects. Instead, I was thrown into this project and pretty much was on my own, frantically Googling for whatever I need.

So I'm looking for a new job, and at the same time I'm planning to go to a bootcamp, to have some proper learning structure.

@burswag in my humble opinion work experience is almost always better than courses. If you've been there a while and you think you're in a position to move on, go for it.

What will scare potential employers though is if you've only been there for a couple of months and you're already looking to move.

@xroad I've been here for almost a year. I want out.

You need to get a degree. Most places won't give you a second look without one no matter the experience.

Typically off the bat if you have a degree you're paid more.
However work experience is more important than said degree.
If possible, I'd hold out on your job get what you can, get a good reference abuse the fact that you'll be offered chances to go on courses and what not.

my first dev job was $10 an hour (no degree) - that was in 2008.... i was a junior selenium test writer (essentially). i worked my way up.

and if i can do it, anyone can.

@Woosh there was a mishap in my school and I got the wrong degree (I actually ranted about it here too). Don't know if I wanna bother to get it sorted out, most likely they'll say I haven't taken all the classes yet. The CS program in that school is shit. So I'm planning to go to a bootcamp instead.

@mattwebdev don't wanna work my way up though. There is no "up" in this place as it's a very small startup. I have nothing else to get out of this place.

I mean, if @mattwebdev can do it...

@burswag I don't think he meant climbing up within his company. I think he meant up the career path.

@burswag and yes 1 year is a reasonable time. If I were you I'd float my resume around and see if anything bites.

@burswag get some experience then leave. but you wont get anything better till you get some experience.

@burswag the only problem is most larger companies use a secretary or headhunter for filtering applicants. they usually provide at least 2 major requirements: BS degree and X years of work experience. These non technical people won't care how much experience you got if you're missing the other requirement they were told because there's probably someone else with those requirements also look for a job.

If you luck out and find a small company where the guy hiring actually reviews the resume then you got a much better shot, but it's difficult to transition to other companies or negotiate your salary.

Software degrees as requirements are really new so you have guys walking around with 20 years of development and no degrees who can't change jobs because corporate policy usually indicates a salaried employee to have a degree.

The fact that you have a BS with certain CS courses sounds like you got a strong case for your degree being related to what a company would require anyway.

@Woosh oh no no, sorry if I didn't clarify correctly, but I was supposed, or at least expecting, an associates degree in computer science. But they gave me a liberal arts degree instead.

@burswag Did you graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences? I went to University of Alabama and they have two CS degrees. One is from the Arts and Science department and the other is from the College of Engineering. They're identical with the exception of how much math was required. Weird stuff.

@Woosh nope, I'm in LA.

You better get that experience! I started off as a part time junior front-end developer getting paid $8 an hour. 10 years later, I am doing backend work at one of the largest development corporations... I know several different languages... I can now build Web, mobile, and desktop apps... on top of that I own my own company in Philadelphia that is about to release something very exciting for developers.

You have to start somewhere.

@fyroc did you learn well while you were in there?

@burswag being self taught, learning is up to you. The way it works in the dev world is that you get "credit" for the jobs you do but you mostly learn from yourself and your own personal projects.

@fyroc hmm. Other devs I've talked to said I should find another job because a place where you learn the wrong things, or where you stagnate, isn't a right place to be in, and that I'm doing a disservice to other devs by letting my boss think he can pay a developer this low.

@burswag make it work now to get the expiernce but then always ask questions elsewhere to get the "correct" knowledge, just as I said above. You just need to go in understanding that it's not best practice and it's up to you to learn best practices. Any other job will want a developer with expiernce even for junior positions. Expiernce first to get your foot in the door, then best practices later.