If you want to send me an email with some more details about your experience, etc I'd be happy to reach out to some recruiters I know and see if anyone has anything going.
jaye at claruscomputers.com.au
It depends on where your skills already lie. If you do front end work you should learn one of the big frameworks. Love them or hate them, they're here to stay. You should check out some of the remote jobs boards and see what people are asking for. You may as well start applying now instead of waiting for a year, at the very least you'll get a more in-depth knowledge of what people are looking for.
Along the lines of build something you need, think about your life and the way in which it could be better. Do some research on your ideas, if a product exists then you’ve found a way to improve your life. If it doesn’t exist, you have an idea. Either way, you win.
In your about me section, rather than saying "experienced in all stages of web development", use industry terms such as "full stack development" as you do on your Linkedin Profile. What sort of jobs are you applying for?
If I were you I'd be trying to highlight project management experience that you have from your architecture career. Talk about the number of people you supervised, budgets you managed, etc. While this may not be relevant to a junior web development role, if you want to move up later on it will show you are able to manage effectively.
The only other suggestion I have would be to start blogging. You've built a blogging web app but you aren't using your own product.
I'm only new to management, but I try to be fairly hands off unless someone needs something from me. My reasoning for this is, I'm the one who hired this person and if I did my job correctly in hiring the best person, they shouldn't need to be micromanaged.
I go about it in a bit of a round-about way. I'm a pretty introverted guy, so I make a point to work on soft skills like communication or public speaking to do demos. I've found that by getting out in front of others, they'll inevitably have questions for you, some of which you can't answer. If you let them know you'll get back to them with the answer, you become the "go to" person and you have someone else find an area you can improve on. The more you do this, the more you'll learn and eventually everything kind of falls into place.
I'm a full stack developer with nine years experience and my long term ambition is to be a CTO/CIO. I've worked with a pretty broad variety of clients from small businesses to Government contracts. I'm looking open to either remote work or a freelance contract at the moment, preferably with some leadership responsibilities. I've taken on the role of lead developer on my current contract and have really enjoyed mentoring other developers.
Feel free to add me on Linkedin or shoot me an email.
I'm a full stack developer with nine years experience and my long term ambition is to be a CTO/CIO. I've worked with a pretty broad variety of clients from small businesses to Government contracts. I'm looking open to either remote work or a freelance contract at the moment, preferably with some leadership responsibilities. I've taken on the role of lead developer on my current contract and have really enjoyed mentoring other developers.
Feel free to add me on Linkedin or shoot me an email.
I don't know about human rights, but I've had this issue come up in the past. Went and saw a lawyer about it and the outcome was basically they can't stop you from working in your chosen field. It would be a different story though if you went to a rival company and took clients with you.
Have a look at job sites to see what a salaried position with your experience would get you. Use that to work out the hourly rate you would be paid and add 25-30% to cover your expenses for the time you spend on admin tasks or tasks that don't bring in any money. Multiply your new hourly rate by how long you think it will take you to complete a task. Over time you'll get better at estimating your time.
If you need to purchase something for the project I generally sell it to the client at cost and work the cost of the purchase into the overall price. Most clients would expect you to add a markup to purchases but they're pleasantly surprised when you don't. You still get your money and you get a happier client in the end. Everybody wins.
I think you should always try and network, you never know where your next opportunity will come from. Don't worry about people being resentful of your promotion, someone obviously thought you were good enough to do the job. Prove them right and you'll have nothing to worry about. The best way to move up the ladder is to probably get to know your manager's boss better since he's the one who promoted you in the first place.
I know a lot of people say that once you start managing people that you don't really do a lot of the technical work anymore. Personally, I love coding and if the technical side of things is something you enjoy then just make time for yourself to do it, even if you're only working on small things as part of your team. The other developers will see you in a better light as well if you're helping them with their day to day work.
Keep doing what you're doing and get case studies and testimonials from your clients to prove that you solved their problems. As others have said, clients want their problem solved, not someone to do xyz. Prove that you can solve problems and progressively apply for bigger gigs until you're in a position where you need to put someone on to help you complete the project. If you do great work and progressively take on bigger challenges then eventually an agency will fall into place.
At work we do 2 week sprints and have a checklist of things to achieve for each sprint. For side projects I like to be a little more explicit, but I guess that comes down to how I plan projects. I'll say I want to complete X controller or component rather than vague functionality.