No, no, no. Don't work for free. Apprentices don't work for free in any other industry. Why should you work for free?

Go out and get a job that trains you to be "production ready." You will get to to work on bigger projects, "code, refactor", and do "grunt work". Plus you will get paid.

Nothing wrong with seeking an apprenticeship. I just don't understand why you would think that "free" is a good idea.

Good advice, I know. It just feels doubly hard for me to get coding work now, because my day-job is in writing and not very technical. I suppose I envisioned it being paid eventually, when I got to the point where I was productive, but you're right: I have to value my work first before other people will, right?

This. All these companies running "apprenticeships" (nice marketing, bros) are no better than the jerk off corporations running internships without pay. If you want to work for free, do it for yourself and create some side projects, at least you will own those at the end of the day.

Go to github.com, find 1 project that fancies you (any project it doesn't matter which one). Find 1 way to improve that project and publish your fix either as a pull request or a plain issue on their tracker. Doesn't matter if it's just a spelling error or something trivial. Just DO IT!

Don't think you can do it? Well, try and try hard! Think you can do it, but think the exercise is to menial? Think again!

Definitely don't think it's too menial, but you're right about setting that first bar low - even spelling errors are good finds!

Thanks for the advice.

I'm building up a team to address this exact issue.

Most of the folks have that 'beginner' experience, but they just lack the real experience (think of this as the "next step" after learning basic stuff on Codecademy or Codeschool).

All the projects will (ideally) be open sourced and there's no charge to join either. I have about 40+ signups so far.

I will be posting a Show HN soon.

Maybe find an open source project to contribute to that interests you? I'm not active in the open source community myself, so I don't have any great suggestions - but maybe someone on here can suggest some projects with a good community that could use someone w/ your skillset?

If you provide a way to contact you, or I can provide a way to contact me, I am willing to offer some of that career guidance, as well as some paid intern work.

Lets get in touch, we can discuss some specifics, and my background so that you know what I bring to the table.

Thank you! I didn't expect but certainly hoped for a positive reaction from the community.

My email is joseph.charles.marshall@gmail.com and you can see more links and read a little more about me at joecmarshall.com

Your profile has an email field, but that is not shown to the world.

Put an email address in your profile in the about field and people can see it. (Although it's probably preferable to put your email in the post)

How can I get in touch with you? :)

Also, is there something you are particularly interested in? Frontend? Backend? Databases? Specific technologies or programming languages? Specific industries?

Front-end, with an emphasis on Javascript, jQuery, and JS MVCs. I audited a course recently on PHP and SQL, but I'm mostly interested in that only as far as I need to know it for front-end stuff.

My email is joseph.charles.marshall@gmail.com. I'd love to chat more.

Thanks so much y'all for the response: I really value all of your input! My email, for those interested, is:

joseph.charles.marshall@gmail.com

And my portfolio site can be found at joecmarshall.com

Why not get an internship..? Get paid, get involved in the industry, learn, and create. Plenty of them.

If not, go to some local industry meet ups and I bet you can find one quickly.

Sent you a jobvite for Whitehat Security scrap the whole free idea get paid to work at a really fun place and actually "hack".

Hey sprkyco,

I have java development experience and would like to get in security domain. My full time job ended in May. I live in San Diego and the job market here is not as great as in northern CA. I would be in interested in the entry level positions advertized in the Whitehat Security career site. where should I start? Since I do not have any security experience submitting my resume may not be an effective option. Thanks, Tad

Whitehat is not really looking for extensive security backgrounds for some of their positions. The best way to get in is to show how and why your interested in security. There are many sources to do this. Damn Vulnerable Web App, WebGoat, and Guyere are some available options to see if your really interested in security. I highly reccomend applying for the static code analysis position as a Java programming background would be instrumental in identifying vulnerabilities.

Go to hackathons, join a team, and build something. That's the fastest way to paid work.