I'm not sure I fit into any of these definitions and i'm not sure what to do about it. I'm 41, married, 3 kids, and i've coded since I was 10. Between 10 and 18 I would consider myself a rookie. I made games and tools in Pascal, Basic and Assembler. After This I graduated to Apprentice but I didn't take my study beyond A level(I'm in the UK). When I left college I got a job in retail and spent the next 15 years in various retail jobs. During this time I taught myself OOP, C, C++, x86 assembler, dark basic, open gl, PHP, Asp, Asp.net(VB, not c#) and continued my learning until about 6 years ago when I decided to enter a competition called ModJam.
This competition challenged coders to build minecraft mod's in a weekend. I had never touched Java but REALLY wanted to create something so during the weekend in question I tasked myself with learning enough Java to create a minecraft mod. This was a very steep learning curve but it paid off. I created a mod that actually ranked. Fast forward a couple more years and I returned to Java to create several more mods. I was more confident now and spent a lot of time getting to know the language. I probably invested somewhere in the region of 500 hours in development and learning time. As of today those mods have had over 3 million downloads. I don't really get much for them but with a limited portfolio, they feature heavily in my job interviews.
Finally 2 years ago I went back to school and as of this year I now have a degree in computing. This would move me into the Junior position?
Now my problem is I have no focus in the technology I use. I've build wordpress sites. I've imported flat file databases from one application to another without knowing the internal format of the database. I've written the odd game here and there. I've modded minecraft. I've dabbled with Android Studio, I've got a raspberry pi running nginx set up to replicate live streams to 2 different platforms. I've build apps in electron and laravel. I've run an online shop with my wife. I've played with react and three.js.
I get phone calls from recruiters several times a week and they all ask me the same question. What level of developer am I. What am I worth, and if i'm completely honest. I have no idea. If I hang the imposter syndrome at the door then I feel like I could be a VERY good fit for the right company, but i've yet to find the right company.
If anyone has any suggestions i'm open to them.
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I'm not sure I fit into any of these definitions and i'm not sure what to do about it. I'm 41, married, 3 kids, and i've coded since I was 10. Between 10 and 18 I would consider myself a rookie. I made games and tools in Pascal, Basic and Assembler. After This I graduated to Apprentice but I didn't take my study beyond A level(I'm in the UK). When I left college I got a job in retail and spent the next 15 years in various retail jobs. During this time I taught myself OOP, C, C++, x86 assembler, dark basic, open gl, PHP, Asp, Asp.net(VB, not c#) and continued my learning until about 6 years ago when I decided to enter a competition called ModJam.
This competition challenged coders to build minecraft mod's in a weekend. I had never touched Java but REALLY wanted to create something so during the weekend in question I tasked myself with learning enough Java to create a minecraft mod. This was a very steep learning curve but it paid off. I created a mod that actually ranked. Fast forward a couple more years and I returned to Java to create several more mods. I was more confident now and spent a lot of time getting to know the language. I probably invested somewhere in the region of 500 hours in development and learning time. As of today those mods have had over 3 million downloads. I don't really get much for them but with a limited portfolio, they feature heavily in my job interviews.
Finally 2 years ago I went back to school and as of this year I now have a degree in computing. This would move me into the Junior position?
Now my problem is I have no focus in the technology I use. I've build wordpress sites. I've imported flat file databases from one application to another without knowing the internal format of the database. I've written the odd game here and there. I've modded minecraft. I've dabbled with Android Studio, I've got a raspberry pi running nginx set up to replicate live streams to 2 different platforms. I've build apps in electron and laravel. I've run an online shop with my wife. I've played with react and three.js.
I get phone calls from recruiters several times a week and they all ask me the same question. What level of developer am I. What am I worth, and if i'm completely honest. I have no idea. If I hang the imposter syndrome at the door then I feel like I could be a VERY good fit for the right company, but i've yet to find the right company.
If anyone has any suggestions i'm open to them.