You’re ready to enter the competitive realm of web development, yet question if you’ve had enough birthdays to be eligible. Turns out, you’re good. There is no age requirement for web development — all you have to do is show off your skills and desperate longing to learn more.
Web development is a high-demand industry right now. With business booming and legacy corporations needing young minds to spice things up, you could be the answer they need as a fresh perspective in the web development big leagues.
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
Young developers are questioning their worth because of imposter syndrome and nothing else. Tech is laden with older generations, and breaking that expectation seems daunting — but it’s actually kind of the coolest opportunity on the planet. Tech is not only one of the hottest, highest-paying and most flexible job sectors on the market, but it can be entirely self-motivated.
Tech is breaking traditional education expectations. With countless free, democratized learning resources online for STEM education, students of all backgrounds can practice web development without student debt. The information is out there for everyone to get their tech-savvy paws on. Gen-Z and younger have a particular advantage because technology surrounds their entire lives — which is an often underestimated and underappreciated advantage.
Young developers have a chance to alter the scope of the industry by walking in with confidence. No matter their learning source, tech drove them to STEM by practicing addressing real problems with innovation and tech. You have to recognize the value of your soft and hard skills and be willing to compensate for what you don’t have.
Reality-Checking Your Skills
Good for you — you’ve determined age doesn’t matter in web development. The real test of anyone’s worthiness is skill strength and tenacity. Passionate people are more likely to excel in web development than people who’ve circled the sun a few more times than you. First, take a hard look at your resume and a hard look at your hard skills. These are the top expertise web developers need to prove they’re legit, regardless of age:
● HTML/CSS
● PHP
● Database oversight
● From-scratch development frameworks
● SEO
● Python
● JavaScript
Now, what’s wild about web development is that tech is constantly changing. That’s where the soft skills come in. Web developers won’t make it if they learn HTML once and think that’ll carry them until retirement. Recommended developer languages change all the time, and new ones come out. Developers — young and old — have to be ready to get fluent.
The facts are this — web developers will constantly be learning, and if that’s not your style or you don’t think you’ll develop that mentality, then maybe you are too young to be in web development. But everyone can get there. All that’s different is perhaps you need to question your motivation for entering the industry and work on soft skills like willpower, creativity and teamwork.
Fresh Off the Block
Congratulations, you’re hired. Get used to the nagging paranoia because if you questioned before if you were too young to be a web developer, you’d probably keep asking it as you acclimate to the new workplace. There’s no need for overwhelm if you stay practical and focused.
First, you have to choose how aggressive you want to be. Do you want to be a project manager or team leader? Fund a startup? Would you rather be more creative and be part of a large team? Do you have what it takes to be a senior developer and be responsible for unscrambling problems? Answering these questions can guide your days at the desk because every action and move you make can be justified by that personal priority. When your web-developing decisions remain consistent, management will understand your strengths and goals as a worker.
Then, you’ll want to become so intimately familiar with the team’s tech stack and internal operations that you dream about it. Navigate software like it’s a second brain for writing the best clean code you can. There will undoubtedly be learning curves, but you comprehended web development in the first place — so, you got this. Practice with open-source work to hone your proficiencies.
Lastly, always remember to ask for help. Ask mentors for code reviews when possible. Whether it’s team members or superiors, everyone will be impressed and willing to bolster team morale and skill by distributing as much knowledge as possible. Have practical expectations that education and research can’t prepare you for everything a web developer job can throw at you. But you don’t need to know everything. You have to be willing to learn it over time and communicate that desire.
Nobody Is Too Young to Be in Web Development
Unless a company is irrational, web development work should never exclude any age. Curious minds want to build websites. Money-hungry businesses do too. There’s no shortage of work, but it requires driven individuals willing to juggle an ever-changing landscape.
Age has nothing to do with it unless you aren’t far along enough in your professional journey yet to understand what you want. If that’s the case, you can take time to reflect and assess your priorities, maturity, and adaptability. If that’s not the case, dive headfirst because few people are carding you for your age before hiring you.
