Career path tips for a laravel developer.

I would say also learn the parent language well. After all laravel is written in PHP by @taylorotwell he did not use laravel to write laravel, he used php.

Apply at companies using PHP. Perhaps continue working there, or it will be good experience for a resume. You can always use laravel if allowed, but remember not every company using php is using laravel.

In other words dwell on the language first, a framework second. Just my opinion.

Also most medium to large companies use several technologies, keep that in mind.

@jlrdw Yes I totally agree to it. But what I am asking is that what should I do as a freelancer to make good money? How I should prepare myself? I want to be an independent developer, work as a freelancer or take up a project based job. I know PHP and right now I am learning bunch of technologies that are used in web development apart from the frameworks.

That would basically be the career path learn all you can, but don't try to learn too fast actually learn it well and practice as you go.

It's easier in today's world back in the late eighties you didn't even have online to look things up you had to buy a book or go to the library. Let sites like stackoverflow be your friend.

@ravish There’s no one, set way to becoming Successful™. Different countries have different costs of living, which account for the different salaries. So, 8,000 USD in your currency may be a “good” wage, but 8,000 USD will not last you a year in the USA because things there cost much more (rent, utility bills, groceries, etc). Even here in the UK, for me 80,000 USD would be an enviable wage but it’s much higher than the average where I live despite the UK being a “developed” country.

If you want to be a freelancer, then you’ll find a successful freelance business is based on making connections, not what technologies you know. I lost a job in 2011 and put out on Twitter that I was available for freelance projects. I received lots of enquires because people in the region (and outside of the region) knew of me through things like GitHub, blogged, Twitter, etc. They didn’t get in touch because I’d spent five years working with PHP and magically knew about it.

So freelancing is much more about getting your name out there, your work out there, raising your project, rather than going, “I have X years experience with technology Y. Please pay me Z.” Then, if you get to a point where you’re sought after and working with “western” clients (such as Europe and America) then you’ll be able to charge rates they’re used to paying, but will go further if you remain based in India.

@martinbean Absolutely. Every single thing you said make sense.

I understand that you cannot compare salaries of different countries without considering factors like the living cost in those countries etc. but still I did because living standards a developer can achieve being an average developer is very low here. You need to be in a bigger league and have good networks to get an better income than the average people. Normal middle class living standards are easy to achieve for us in more developed countries with the same skillsets. My own friends and siblings are working in various countries and I can see the difference. We can think about buying a house on rent in australia/canada/us/uk like countries and pay the loan while doing a job. It is just impossible to do here. I lost my entire business because of the pandemic, so I decided to become an independent developer and re-establish everything. I purchased laracasts account to be a part of the community and learn from the experts like you and contribute my knowledge to whom I can...

Right now what I am doing is sharping up my skills. Trying to make a public profile, working on some commercials to build the resume.

Just one more question I would like to ask is, pardon me if its a lame question to ask, Do I need to worry too much about the technology's future scope? Do I need to spend time in questioning myself whether PHP will last longer in future? Will there be a new technology that will replace PHP and I will have to start over? Should I do something like data science which has good salary in my country's market? (i do not want to switch tho... I love web dev.)

Thanks for your time. Really appreciate it.

@ravish I wouldn't worry about the future of PHP. Modern programming languages share many similarities so if you get to understand OOP (for example) then this is an interchangeable skill. For me the important things to learn to be a better developer include

• understanding how to test code (the differences between TDD / BDD/ Unit testing and user acceptance testing)
• understanding how to deploy the code - (deployment pipelines / Jenkins / CI)

I don't think you should jump ship quite yet - there's plenty of life left in PHP.