Though I’ve been experimenting with web technologies for over 10 years now, my career as a professional web developer began just three years ago when I decided to close my home computer repair business and apply for a job as a search engine optimization engineer. Despite my lack of experience as a web developer and the fact that I had no portfolio to speak of, I was able to prove a basic understanding of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and that was enough.
The job was meant to be simple HTML manipulation; add alt tags here, meta tags there, externalize javascript, etc. After one day of training as an SEO engineer, the director of engineering informed me that a PHP developer was leaving the company and having boasted about my experience with PHP during my interview, he asked if I would be interested in taking the position. At the time, my “experience” with PHP actually didn’t amount to much more than the use of the include() function, but being an overly-ambitious twenty-something, I proudly accepted the offer.
The months that followed became an exercise in caffeine-fueled sleep deprived autodidacticism. I learned to work with user authentication, sessions, content management, and more. My six months with this company had rapidly expanded my knowledge of PHP, dynamic web development, and search engine optimization, but I had yet to explore web standards, CSS, or JavaScript in depth and was just starting to wrap my brain around table-less layouts.
The time to move on came when my wife-to-be accepted a promotion that would move her three hours out of town. I left my job to follow her, not sure if I would be continuing my career as a web developer, or starting one flipping burgers. Despite the uncertainty, it seemed the universe was looking out for me. The day we moved to town, I came across a newspaper ad for a web developer at one of the two creative agencies in the county.
At the time I thought I was taking another job manipulating HTML, but this new company would come to serve as an incubator for my web development abilities. They gave me the freedom to explore web technologies and to implement cutting edge features and functionality in client work. I began reading .net magazine, following the blogs of many great designers and developers, and digging through documentation on PHP libraries, JavaScript frameworks, and emerging technologies. In this former print and video design agency turned web studio, I quickly became an authority on web technology. The skills I learned during this time truly prepared me for a career a as a web developer.
When my fiance’s contract for her new position expired, we decided to move back to San Diego, and this meant another change for me. After taking several brief jobs with at small startups and spending a few months freelancing, I attended my first web conference, SXSW. I ended up meeting a couple of guys from a company in San Diego that happened to be in need of a web developer. Upon returning to San Diego, interviews were scheduled and executed leading me into my current position as a user interface engineer.
So far it’s been an interesting three years and I look forward to seeing what the future has in store.