I'm finishing an associate degree in web development and have started wondering whether I should pursue a different career. I don't dislike programming itself—the learning, debugging, problem-solving, and building small projects are all genuinely fun for me. What's discouraging me is the competition for internships and junior roles. Applications seem to attract thousands of candidates, including people with bachelor's and master's degrees, and I often receive a rejection almost immediately.
I feel like I could become a good web developer if I had discovered programming earlier, but the current job market makes getting that first opportunity seem nearly impossible. I've also considered data analytics and data engineering because I know Python, Excel, and SQL, but I don't enjoy spending my day building dashboards or analyzing spreadsheets. I've tried making dashboards and found myself completely uninterested, even when the work wasn't especially difficult.
I'm now tempted to start a business just to create a job for myself, although I'm not sure it would make money. Should I keep pursuing web development, continue toward a bachelor's degree, look for practical experience another way, or seriously consider changing careers?
4 Answers
The entry-level programming market is unusually difficult right now, and web development is one of the most crowded areas. You’d be competing with graduates who have more formal education and sometimes professional experience. That doesn’t mean you should quit, but it does mean you’ll need to stand out with deployed projects, freelance or volunteer work, strong fundamentals, and evidence that you can work with other people. Data analytics may not be a better fallback if you already know you dislike dashboard-heavy work.
An associate degree can make the first job harder to get, but it doesn’t mean your classes were wasted. Talk with an academic or career counselor about transferring credits into a bachelor’s program. You’ve already completed part of the path, and your college record may help if your earlier academic history wasn’t strong. Continuing your education could also give you access to internships, recruiting events, and a larger professional network.
The degree alone won’t guarantee a job, but finishing a bachelor’s may remove one screening filter and give you more opportunities to meet employers.
Try volunteering for a nonprofit, community group, or small business that needs a website. Even one real project can be much more valuable than another tutorial project. A local organization may give you a reference, and you’ll have a live site to discuss in interviews. You don’t necessarily need to beat everyone on credentials if you can show that you’ve solved real problems for real users.
That makes sense. A real client project and a reference would probably help me more than adding another personal project to my portfolio.
Look beyond generic junior web developer applications. Small companies, nonprofits, agencies, contract work, QA automation, support engineering, and internal tools can all provide a first step. You can also build projects around actual needs instead of making another basic portfolio app. The goal is to create proof that you can understand requirements, finish work, deploy it, and maintain it—not just prove that you completed coursework.
I’d be cautious about abandoning something you actually enjoy just because the hiring cycle is bad. Market conditions can change, while spending years in a field you dislike is a much harder problem to solve.