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Career advice needed please

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 1:11 pm
by georgeoc
Hi.

I wonder if you might have any advice for me regarding my career development. I've been a freelance classical musician for about 10 years, based in London, UK, and over that time my 'hobby' of web design/development has become more and more interesting, time-consuming and financially rewarding. Although I'm not yet ready to give up on music, I feel that I have a lot of time and energy to invest, and that my web development sideline could become more of a job.

I've built up a pretty solid skill-set as a PHP developer: I'm happy with OOP and Design Patterns, and very keen on Test-Driven Development, which I've employed on a number of Open-Source community projects. I've used Zend Framework to quite an advanced level for most of my recent projects, and Doctrine ORM for database work. I use Subversion, FTP, SSH, have some familiarity with UNIX servers and the command line, .htaccess and various Apache config settings, SQL, etc. On top of the back-end knowledge, I'm happy working in Photoshop & Illustrator, pretty reasonable in CSS and have written some complex JavaScript UI applications using jQuery. I'm a keen advocate of web standards and accessibility, and I even comment my own code most of the time!

Very nearly all of my work so far has been as solo developer/designer from a home office. A couple of times I've worked with a designer friend, and I instantly found that in working as part of a team, I was far more productive, constructive and focussed in my approach, and with better results.

I've likened this to my work as a musician - rather than wanting to be a soloist, my preferred work was as a valued member of an orchestra. So, what I'm looking for is an equivalent in the web development sphere. My perfect job would not be Mon-Fri, 9-5, but flexible in some way - either a mixture of remote/office work, or flexible days per week or hours per month. But to get out of the house and work with a talented team who share my interests is what I'm looking for.

I'd love some advice on whether such a company would be interested in me, how to start looking for that kind of work, what kind of payment to expect (or indeed ask for), whether my CV is anything like good enough to get any work, and various questions like that. Any mailing lists, agencies or suggestions for contacts I could make in London would also be interesting.

I am of course looking for a solid financial return in the long run, however in the short term I would be happy to work for a reduced rate if it gave me the valuable experience I'd need to get into the workplace. The must important thing really is that I'd no longer be the sole developer/designer, but that I'd be working with a team of designers, developers, UX experts, project managers, etc. and could share with, and learn from, my colleagues.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Cheers,


_________________

George

Re: Career advice needed please

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:57 am
by oldgeezer
I am looking for a developer at present for a new company and would like you to contact me please. please leave a message with contact details. Based about 90 miles from London. will involve home working and some office visits we have one worker based very close to south london .
Rgds

Re: Career advice needed please

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:27 am
by WazEarth
Good morning,

We are looking for several developer profiles (Web Developer (LAMP) / Mobile app developer (iOS, Android) / Flash Developer /...) to create our new development team to develop a new project in London, if you still interested in what you described or know someone who could be interested, please contact us by MP or mail : contact@wazearth.com we'll give you more information.

Best regards.