Feeling stuck 2 years into career, need advice on what’s next /u/Ok_Island_9825 CSCQ protests reddit

I graduated in 2022 with a BS in IT from a large state university. At the time I really had no idea what I wanted to do, I just knew it would be something computer related. I didn’t do an internship, and due to covid my networking opportunities really suffered. With no experience, it was really difficult to break into the industry.

By the end of the year, I was able to land a job as technical support. I worked hard in this role for 1 year and absorbed knowledge from the guy above me who was basically a system/network admin. Learned about vlans, routing, dns, etc.

An opportunity opened up to become a developer at this company and I took it even though I had minimal experience coding anything. The work, technically speaking, is not super advanced. It’s mainly creating web apps for different departments and automating manual processes. A lot of it revolves around their CRM and it’s API which I am using to create tremendous value as it is a niche software that doesn’t have many integrations.

It’s the end of my first year now, and I am deathly afraid that I am shooting my career in the foot. I always feel stressed out that I am not a real developer, and if I got laid off I would never be able to land another job. At the same time, I have learned so much by tackling these projects on my own, that I feel I have really accelerated my growth.

I’m trying to figure out what to aim for next, and any advice on how I can market my experience to land a job that will provide better growth opportunities would be really appreciated.

I graduated in 2022 with a BS in IT from a large state university. At the time I really had no idea what I wanted to do, I just knew it would be something computer related. I didn’t do an internship, and due to covid my networking opportunities really suffered. With no experience, it was really difficult to break into the industry.

By the end of the year, I was able to land a job as technical support. I worked hard in this role for 1 year and absorbed knowledge from the guy above me who was basically a system/network admin. Learned about vlans, routing, dns, etc.

An opportunity opened up to become a developer at this company and I took it even though I had minimal experience coding anything. The work, technically speaking, is not super advanced. It’s mainly creating web apps for different departments and automating manual processes. A lot of it revolves around their CRM and it’s API which I am using to create tremendous value as it is a niche software that doesn’t have many integrations.

It’s the end of my first year now, and I am deathly afraid that I am shooting my career in the foot. I always feel stressed out that I am not a real developer, and if I got laid off I would never be able to land another job. At the same time, I have learned so much by tackling these projects on my own, that I feel I have really accelerated my growth.

I’m trying to figure out what to aim for next, and any advice on how I can market my experience to land a job that will provide better growth opportunities would be really appreciated.