Place of work for a student: how to make the right choice?

Question

PHP

Hello.
I'm 19, a 500k provincial town university student. Third course.
I began to engage in programming spontaneously - the whole school toiled with foolishness, studied poorly, was not interested in anything. At the very end of the 11th grade I tried Pascal and away we go. I could study new constructions, data structures for days on end, each unexplored topic aroused terrible interest. Having decided to study for a specialty related to information technologies, there are no problems with programming to this day.
Time passed, and now - I have a good basic knowledge of algorithms, C, C #, but most of all I like web development. I have a solid database of HTML+CSS(Bootstrap, SASS/SCSS, adaptive layout)+PHP+MySQL/MSSQL+JavaScript+jQuery.
But recently I realized that I had stopped in development. I don't know how to build large (even medium) projects in PHP using MVC, I have a hard time dealing with heavy frameworks, I don't know how to use git, and in general I'm not worth much in professional development.
Realizing this, I started looking for a job. The vast majority of vacancies for php developers required at least 1 year of experience. But I did find one. I was given 5 test problems, which I thought I successfully completed. After that, I got acquainted with the "department" of development - 2 people, one of whom is under 40. He showed me my mistakes, asked questions about technologies, what he worked with, what he did not. He said there was a lot to learn. And they accepted me. My tasks here are: studying a self-written framework (those who worked before), writing typical sites on it, and, in the future, more complex projects together with other programmers. The boss offered me a salary of 6k for a trial period and 7k after. 20 hours a week (half a day).
I was in doubt: like, I will learn a lot from these guys, because they do exactly what I wanted to learn: mvc, oop, * nix, git. But the salary is very small, the team is too, the office is unremarkable and not very modern.
But while the boss was making the final decision, I received a call from the personnel officer: they say, there is a vacancy for an HTML layout designer in one of the companies, an office in the city center. Arriving there, I was immediately given a test task: to make a layout using bootstrap and scss/sass. I managed, and it turned out that I was accepted in both places at the same time. But in the second they offered salary: 1 month - 6500, 2 months - 8500, 3rd and further - 10500. The conditions are the same: 20 hours a week. Team - 5 people, I'm the only one who will do the layout.
I doubted, thought about the solution. I was rocking from side to side, I did not know what to choose. And I leaned towards the second option: a much larger salary, a modern office, a good team, the opportunity to sometimes work from home. And the company itself is a level above.
And so I worked a week, that is, 20 hours. Bitrix24 is used, which I first encountered. Most of the tasks that you have to do are to correct the button on * site name *, while the payment is hourly, the amount of free time is considered in the system. Sometimes there will be normal tasks to "implement the layout", as, for example, happened on the last day. The rest of the editing is already finished. Programmers here pull the layout on Bitrix (only Bitrix is ​​used), write modules, and so on. Sitting ten meters from them and correcting the display of goods on the next site, I clearly had the thought "I'm not doing what I would like."
I thought: I have no one to ask for advice on how best to do this or that in layout. I hardly interact with programmers. With the designer too (he works remotely). What will I learn? Make up faster, I’ll build up some kind of portfolio (but apparently there won’t be so much work there, and you won’t add tasks for editing buttons to it).
There are no options for growth in this job - the layout designer is the end point. Where to go from them then - it is not clear.
At the same time, they are still waiting for me at the first one.
I haven't signed an employment contract yet... but I don't know what to do. Leave for the first job, risking losing a good salary (21k full time is higher than the average salary in our small town) and risking even worse conditions (who knows - maybe everything will be even more boring there?), or stay here , puffing on stupid tasks with clenched teeth and adding mock-ups to the portfolio in order to go somewhere later.
The most annoying thing in this situation is that I can't simultaneously develop in php on my own, for the reason that I described at the very beginning. And what scares me is that I run the risk of remaining a typesetter in the Nth number of years. But if you want to move to a bigger city, there will be much more chances to become a php developer with good knowledge of html + css than being a specialist in layout alone.
I do not want to shift the responsibility for the choice to you - by no means, but in making such a decision, I cannot ask the advice of any of my relatives, since here a professional look is needed, which I count on.
Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

You and I are the same age, I also turned 19 this year. At the moment I work as a middle php programmer and a little with a yii1 bias, I was lucky to find a job in a small web studio. I fix bugs on the site, bugs, add code, as for me, reading someone else's php code is like reading someone else's handwriting on paper. It is not always clear what exactly is written there. When all the sites were completed, they gave projects to pull a corporate site on yii1.
But recently I realized that I had stopped in development. I don't know how to build large (even medium) projects in PHP using MVC, I have a hard time dealing with heavy frameworks, I don't know how to use git, and in general I'm not worth much in professional development.
I devote all my free time to coding, not when I'm not standing still. Someone likes to play DotA in their free time, and someone like me enjoys coding. Learned more about git, learned how to merge, commit, push, etc. Now I'm writing my blog on yii-2. After that, I will go looking for a job as a Yii programmer (I have a goal, I silently go to it), I think it will not be easy during the crisis. For me, programming is not a job, but rather I don’t even know how to describe it. I associate work with fatigue and exhaustion. After work, I don’t come tired or exhausted, but rather cheerful and immediately sit down to saw my blog. And at the expense of the fact that it is difficult for you to learn the framework - learn English.

Answer 2

Guy, you are still studying at the university and your main task at the moment is studying, not making money. There is one good proverb - "everything has its time." Previously, you somehow lived without the big money that you get now, so now I think you will succeed. It's like in chess, give up a pawn to win the game. Give up your current salary and run to the side where you will be taught so that later you will not have to fight for work, but employers for you. Good luck to you, guy, the main thing is not to miss the chance and make a decision that you think is right

Answer 3

Go to Moscow and get five times more experience and five times the salary

Answer 4

You need to study first to earn a lot of money later.
Bitrix is ​​a dead end, you can't earn more than $2k a month there.
And if you develop, then in 7 years you will have $5k each.
The first vacancy is also not very good because of its own framework (which means you didn’t cope with strangers), but they can still teach you a lot.
Go to them, but keep an eye on other similar options.

Answer 5

The most normal way is freelancing. In your case, it is desirable to find remote work in the team. Make a bet of $ 5 per hour - you will be snapped up, you will find remote work without problems. They won’t teach you much there (because you will have to study most of it yourself), most importantly, you will gain experience in working in a team and with team tools (aka Jira, Git, Trello, etc.),
And at the same time you won’t have to move anywhere and work full -time, study and work through the Internet in your city calmly under your mother's wing.
And with a simple calculation, working 20 hours a week for 5 bucks an hour, we get 6,000 rubles a week or 25,000 rubles a month - let all employers with their ridiculous offers go through the forest:
1) 6000 per month to pay a developer, even for a part-time job - only rednecks and losers do this (successful companies can afford to pay normally, your cap), I would not work with such people
2) progressive salary, increasing every month by 2000 and reaching as much as 10 thousand in okontsovo - a naked humiliation. Loaders now get more and plumbers
3) 21,000 rubles for full time - that's $ 2 per hour. Unfortunate $ 2, for that kind of money, even Indians and Chinese do not work now. Let them go through the forest too
And by the way, advice to all young people - no one is obliged to teach you in the office what kind of naive pink dreams, men came to work and / or crack for life, only a few will shine with enthusiasm and train green people (who, having gained knowledge, eventually run away, as a rule, where more they pay, so no one takes on you, because there is no practical sense in this). In addition, in our age of google and stackoverflow, it is somehow considered zapadno to chew all the nuances of layout and programming live at the workplace, everything is in the electronic version - just learn how to use it.

Answer 6

Working for six months / a year for experience and food is a normal, working option. And layout is not programming, and frankly, a dead end branch.

Answer 7

why can't you develop in PHP yourself?
can't you read Russian?
https://phalconphp.com/ru/
https://laravel.ru/
Nowhere to install OpenServer?
especially oh No;% but it sounds like "support for a self-written framework", you
can't run from the word "legacy code" in PHP, develop in Python)))
look - now you go to Frontend for half a year or a year, you leave from there with knowledge of Angular, Bootstrap and JQuery, you can choose another instead of Angular, unfortunately I can’t evaluate which one is better, but supposedly Angular is heavy
on the frontend frameworks and on your home computer with Laravel, you learn PHP
and in a year - when you are more than a junior in the frontend - with your head in Python

Answer 8

In the first place, you will gain more experience, since you will most likely be doing everything there from layout, continuing with PHP, and ending with the deployment of web servers.
In the second place, as you ruled the buttons, you will continue to edit until you get bored, because a promoted company = honed business processes = each screw has its place.
I suspect that in the second company you are an approved staff member for editing buttons, no one will teach you, no one will let you do anything else, simply because you are needed where you are - on editing minor flaws.
Of course, it is up to you to decide, and if the size of the salary is critical for you, then the choice is of course in favor of it, but you need to understand the pros and cons of both places. Actually you understand.

Answer 9

If even 7k is enough to live on, I would not trade an interesting job with professional growth for a dull routine (namely, this is how I see the second vacancy). If 7k is frankly not enough - look for a better job or go freelance.

Answer 10

If you don’t want to go far from layout, then learn modern javascript ( ECMAscript 6 ) and some kind of framework (angular or react - it doesn’t matter) and stay where you work.
angular or react learn pretty fast. In a couple of months, you'll be pretty good at fumbling.
And there you can already look for a job as a front-end developer. Perhaps even remotely. And work two jobs. Where you work now - edit buttons and work remotely as a front-end developer without leaving the same office. By the way, I advise you to improve your English, because as a front-end developer you can easily find work abroad.
For javascript, there is also node.js, which is also used in many places.

Answer 11

I don’t see anything remarkable there, go freelancing.
You have a good base, but there are no tasks for it either there or there.

Answer 12

first / second, the author did not specifically say anything about the first, except for a self-written framework, no one seemed to promise him interesting projects there. Perhaps there will be picking a clumsy framework and doing the same thing, current for less money
In general, it seems to me that you got carried away, if you started with pascal and pearl, then why was it on the web? There are c/c++/c#/java etc.

Answer 13

Almost all the acquaintances developed in this way. We started with the basics and worked for our uncles. Gained experience, knowledge and records in the labor. Then we looked for a better place and studied other and / or related areas. Now someone has gone completely into Java EE, others have begun to study Ruby On Rails and Python / Django. But they didn't stop learning something new...
Start where you get more experience and knowledge... The salary will come gradually according to your knowledge. And if there is a great desire to grow, then you can get much more than the average level ...

Answer 14

1) Go to your first job, work for a week and make sure that you will grow professionally there. Options for how to do this: a) You skip a week to study (imagine that you are sick) and go to both places for half a day. b) You don’t give up the second place yet, but you beg for a week break there. c) You leave the second place (in any case, you will need to do this, because you only sell your time there, which you do not need to sell, but invest in yourself.
2) Regarding salary: 1-2 tr. the difference is almost the same salary. If you like the job in the first place and everyone likes you, go up to the boss, tell about the second sentence, and if you behave correctly, the difference will be leveled.

Answer 15

If you know that you do not have enough knowledge and you want to get it, then adhere to the following criteria for choosing a job.
1. Forget about the salary comparison, you don't care. Sometimes they can pay more for a monotonous and monotonous action, this is not of interest to you at all.
2. Decide on the technologies you want to specialize in, then choose a job based on your preferences. In other words, at the initial stage, run away from self-written frameworks, because this knowledge is acceptable only in the 1st place, the quality of the code and logic can be an order of magnitude worse, you should not learn from other people's mistakes. On the other hand, the choice of technology will give you a development vector.
3. Select companies by team, it is important for you that you have a mentor, a curator who can correct your development. Naturally, he must have a lot of work experience.
4. Do not be afraid to regard companies at the start as a springboard for knowledge, and as you gain the knowledge you need, feel free to look for another place with new information. The main thing is not to get carried away too much and not become a jumper.
5. At one of the stages, try to get a job in a branch of a large company, those who always have formalized processes and there you can learn disciplined interaction in a team.
Summary: the difference in over 6 and 12 thousand is not significant, so forget about it and get knowledge that will give you a different level of income in the future.
Good luck.