How to get a .NET developer job

My story

I'm self-taught and got my first job in 2021 working for my state government in the department of transportation. My salary was 47k, but the state has since adjusted salaries for inflation and the position now pays 59k.

After my first year, I hopped for 100% remote and a place with higher software standards and practices. They were in the healthcare space.

Again, after a year, I hopped, this time purely for the salary increase, and now am sitting at 100k. My current company is in logistics (i.e. trucking).

I'm also 40 years old and entered the field in my late-30s. I know some people around this age worry about being too old.

My advice

The market has certainly changed in the past few years, and I can't say I'd recommend someone change careers to go the self-taught route right now. The vibe online is mostly one of discourgement. The market could change quickly though. We might one day talk about these years alongside 2000-2001 and 2008-2010.

I've worked with mostly smart, hardworking devs. But, I've also worked with those who surprised me with their lack of skill and output. And the code I've seen and systems that are running things can be mind-bogglingly bad. I think there's definitely room for, to use a loaded term, good devs.

So, I've had three jobs at what you might call "no-name companies". I suppose they are somewhat known in their local areas as employers. The big commonality between them all, though, that I think can be useful for those trying to get into software, is that they all use tech like C#, ASP.NET, MVC, and SQL.

MVC and SQL are the two I'd like to emphasize. A lot of people trying to break into the industry are probably learning the latest and greatest tech. Maybe reading up on the latest version of React, .NET, EF Core, maybe even Blazor, etc. And those things are all great and the skills learned can be applied to legacy code.

But, you will be working with legacy code at these types of companies. Sure, there are new projects, but when you join a stable company with consistent cash flow, they're going to have legacy code that needs bugs fixed and new functionality added. And almost all of these apps that I've seen use MVC and SQL.

I won't discuss the pros or cons of using MVC (as opposed to something like React) and SQL (as opposed to Entity Framework), but I will say it is my preferred tech stack.

My main point is just that being able to demonstrate that you know these two technologies could put you one step ahead of others. I've had multiple take-home tests that were in ASP.NET MVC. My current job had a live-coding session with MVC and SQL.

So, if you just want a stable, boring job at a company with standard benefits, these boring, stable, 100% enterprise ready technologies might be good ones for you to study.

Because I've gathered from my experience that this is one way to get a software developer position, I've started creating an MVC tutorial here. I also have a list of interview questions I've been asked in this post .