Work as a layout designer. A dead end in self-study. What to do and how best to build training and job search?

Question

Layout

Good day to all. I apologize in advance for a bunch of noob questions.
In general, we need a view from the people already working in the field. Having made a detour from working in support to an assistant project manager (three projects, one from scratch to launch) and a content manager with tasks from layout designers in one, it finally became clear that I wanted to develop first in the direction of layout designer, and then front-end.
In terms of work experience and skills in general, superficially:
- I had experience in hosting support. There is basic knowledge of php + mySQL (at the level of reading someone else's code, plus a couple of times writing simple form handlers). I have been cooking on the web for the last three years, but everything is somehow not there and not like that.
- the last two years of experience in supporting a large site of a mob operator (mostly working with bare html - entering content, rarely had to add something in styles. Even less often - editing js scripts at the content level). Any skills with customers, jira and project management are not in this piggy bank.
+ there are command line skills, just ideas about how everything works. General literacy, in general, in IT.
- on the topic of layout. There were courses from the St. Petersburg school on layout, but because of the work, the minimum time was allocated for training. But there was an idea about BEM, SASS, LESS. In general, unsystematized porridge with which you can work. All layout was on floats. jQuery just "know", because I had to attach galleries to my site.
Now I managed to arrange a vacation for a couple more months before looking for a job. Over the past couple of weeks:
- completed all the courses from htmlacademy on the site (paid incl.), laid out a couple of educational layouts of the academy using only HTML / CSS so far, but so far I’m doing it wildly uncertain (the grid was on floats, I’m slowly switching to flexbox ). But I didn’t give a review code, then FIG knows how adequately.
- I'm watching a webinar from the same academy, while Basic. Next up is advanced.
- refreshed knowledge of the command line and working with Git. I experimented with conflicts, with branches and just. At my last job, I worked with the git, but not much. I love the command line, I know how, I have been practicing since I worked in support.
There are several questions in the case.
1) How much time do you really need to spend on training in order to get the initial position of a layout designer? I understand that everything is individual, but still.
I'm trying to plan deadlines, but according to my feelings, it turns out that it takes at least another month to confidently master layout and at least acquaintance with a hat - this is bare html \ css, adaptive and cross-browser, look at css preprocessors, frameworks (?). Plus, you need to at least start pure js, I have a course and books from Kantor.
2) How to build a job search with the baggage of knowledge described above? That is, when there is really a great desire to work in this area. At what point can you start looking for a job at all? (it’s clear that at least from 0, but I’m talking about the situation so as not to be a burden on the employer and to be useful to both me and him) And what you really need to know at a confident level in order to start looking work and not become a "burden" to the employer?
I only have ideas: now make up a few templates (on floats, flexes, using sass / less) and post it all on your github account), a link to the profile on the academy.
3) A mundane question: what to ask for a salary? Given the almost zero start and willingness to work for food))) Interested in Peter. I do not plan to receive 100,500 million, but the variation in hh analysis is from 15 thousand to 40-50. Really stupor.
4) How is it better to build training further? I have some impasse. There is a theory from the html academy in my head and we need to put it into practice somehow. It is clear that practice-practice-practice, but...
5) As for the code review. Having crawled through the answers right there, I understand that you can not be shy about throwing a link to the github here and asking to see what happened?
Even in the answers there was a resource htmlforum.io
Many thanks to everyone in advance!

Answer 1

Answer to question 1:
You can learn by yourself, by reading only books and practicing on the knowledge gained from what you read, in about a year and a half and not only the front end, but also the back end + libraries (I'm not lying, I started doing this myself and there are a lot of friends, who are already working in another country). If front end, then maybe in half a year.
Why not spend money on courses?
Why pay someone to basically stupidly reread what is in the book?
Why pay 10 times and get less knowledge than in the book?
Now most people choose courses, this is called the search for dad syndrome, when a person is looking for someone to help him, because a person zealously believes that he himself will not be able to achieve anything (this does not apply to martial arts and a couple of other things).
Just understand that your tutors are essentially an audiobook that can answer questions (like google and a lot of forums)
Answer to question 2:
Freelancing is recommended. There is no binding to the office, etc. No hemorrhoids.
Look for a job after JS HTML and CSS, there are certainly offers, but the salary is small. It is better to learn frameworks (this is a matter of 2 weeks) and you can work like a good FRONT END developer.
Answer to question 3:
40-50 thousand is a rather modest salary for a good programmer (in the USA, in general, 400,000 rubles to 800,000 rubles per month! (you will understand what I mean next)). If I were you, if I were to work in Russia, which is not the best option, I would not ask for more than 160,000 (this is a rather high salary for a programmer in Russia), at the initial stage, at least 80,000 thousand.
Answer to question 4:
Learn BACK END, learn PHP libraries, etc. At the same time, learn design in order to make awesome and beautiful sites + freelance to make logos to order (you can earn another 20,000 per month)
Answer to question 5:
I didn’t quite understand
Advice:
1. Learn English (here it is desirable courses, for phonetics and Listening + practice)
2. Leave Russia

Answer 2

During the time that you spent on this cart, you could apply for 2 dozen vacancies.
You yourself answered your main question: everything is individual. And not only on the part of the employee, but also the employer. Someone calls a full-stack a coder and offers 30k, while someone is ready to take less knowledge than you.

Answer 3

firstly, you can’t learn in two months)
secondly, theory and practice, as an option, you can freelance. But ideally, to find a firm, to get there as a junior or an intern, for me there will be more practice and training than in free swimming.
in the third s / n look from the company. if the office is cool and ready to take you on an internship, then agree to any salary.

Answer 4

I can’t read so much, I ran diagonally:
1) 2 months if from scratch
2) Look for a job after two diverse layouts of responsive layouts (although I started after one non-responsive layout, but my mother is capable)
3) For Peter, probably 40+ ask, but this is for a junior front, if you do not disdain javascript, but then it will take a month and a half to study its basics. If you disdain - 20 thousand, but then it's better to freelance abroad and earn from $ 15 / hour.
4) Learn from new projects and follow specialized reddits, raise the level of projects
5) Read style guides from well-known companies, find best practices and do not need a code review.

Answer 5

On SASS LESS, etc. you can't waste time. It's like using haml instead of html, and coffescript instead of javascript, and some still manage to require bootstrap - in other words, for hipsters and knowledge of html, CSS and a minimum of jquery, the average layout designer is enough.
Make up 2-3 templates like this one . If you can make such a template in 1 week (ideally 1-2 days), then look for a job.
To start looking for a job as a layout designer, you need to make up only 2-3 templates - that's enough.
Call employers, send resumes. You will find a job quickly and there will be a lot of work.
To earn more on layout, you either need to be able to draw web design in Photoshop or have a good knowledge of javascript and, for example, vuejs as a framework, because it is the simplest and at the same time popular.

Answer 6

Only practice, the idea is good about github, you can also deploy a static site there. Pure JS is not worth it, it’s better that it compiles into it like coffeescript + look at frameworks, angular, etc. SASS, bootstrap to use. Any assemblers like gulp.
Instead of courses, look for good tutorials on this and file a project based on it.
In St. Petersburg it is now 35-50 thousand June.

Answer 7

What book should I start learning html5 and css3 from?