What does it take to change career direction?

Question

JavaScript

Given:
lvl 29, business analyst (me), sphere - setting up and adapting CRM systems to the needs of the customer (Bitrix24 as a rule)
On duty wrote various integrations (for example, amoCRM + Cloudpayments) for beautiful and elegant invoicing automatically), etc. .d. Those. mainly worked as a backend developer, namely data exchange via api. But I don’t have deep knowledge in development (OOP, yes, I use some of the patterns, but not so that everything would bounce off my teeth, I never used many things like generators and reflections in my life).
Basically, all code in the style of "receiving data -> processing an array of data -> enriching data depending on different conditions -> sending it to a third-party system"
I wrote everything in PHP, as usual.

I have some knowledge of JS, in general I am fond of computer science, but it's not that. I want to become a full-fledged developer and work directly with the code (as opposed to my current situation, when I deal with code for 10-15 percent of my time).

I searched on hh and other sites for requirements for a JS developer, and this is always something different.

Colleagues, tell me the answer to probably the most banal question on the Toaster :)

What do you need to be able to / know so that the employer can look at you as a potential employee and not send you to finish your studies?

I know\practice in js manipulation with DOM, work with event, objects and arrays and for fetch interaction. Different async \ await come in with a creak (after all, I'm old, callback is more clear to me so far)

Answer 1

There are 2 options: do what you like and what your soul lies in, or - choose what is in demand, a narrow specialization in any product and start pumping narrowly focused skills. You will be among the few, but your skills will be higher... Although HZ... I was a web designer, but became a car repair specialist lol

Answer 2

Given:

Just like a math problem

I know\practice in js manipulation with DOM, work with event, objects and arrays and for fetch interaction. Different async \ await come in with a creak (after all, I'm old, callback is more clear to me so far)

Add to this one more framework (react, vue, angular) I advise you not to touch the latter from the very beginning, work with the database (mainly mongo, redis), node js (be able to write an apishka, raise the server), seo. Additionally, it will be a huge plus: Docker, working with svg, assemblers (webpack, gulp), testing jest / enzyme.
And you can safely go to work and ask for at least 30k + more depending on the region.

Answer 3

I searched on hh and other sites for requirements for a JS developer, and this is always something different.

I don’t know what vacancies you looked at, that you saw different requirements everywhere. The requirements are pretty much the same:

• Knowledge of JavaScript (good knowledge, not superficial)
  
• Knowledge of OOP
  
• Knowledge of the framework (Angular / React / Vue - depending on what the company uses)
  
• Knowledge of basic things (knowledge of these is often overlooked, because the ability to work with git or the command line is taken for granted): command line, git, git flow, docker, npm, webpack, yarn, ide, html, css, dom
  
• Experience writing automated tests is usually a plus
  
• + anything else specific to a particular company and its tools
  
• Well, of course, commercial development experience - if you don’t have it - you can replace it with some kind of your pet project, with code demonstration on github
  

Answer 4

Firstly, it is worth deciding in which direction to develop.
Secondly, to start actively moving in this direction.
Books, articles, paid courses, free courses, presentation videos - everything will be useful.
I'm also 29, and the other day I changed my field (if changing programming to programming counts).
By the way, the experience of preparing for reports helps to deeply understand some things. I myself somehow volunteered to talk about databases at a local meetup, because I thought that I knew them very well. As a result, while preparing the presentation, I learned even more.
Then all these things come in handy in interviews.