Fine Print

College Jobs: Waiter or Web Developer?

Matt Landers
June 23, 2023
3 min read

So, you’re off to college, but you’ve got to work while you’re there. I mean, you have to eat right? Most people choose to wait tables, work retail, or a myriad of other low paying jobs while they also try to get a well-rounded college education in the form of a 4-year degree.

4 years. Do you really want to spend the next 4 years working at Red Lobster? Really? Maybe you didn’t know there was any other way, but I’m here to tell you there is a much better way.

Did you know that there are currently 500k job openings for programmers? Yes. 500,000. That’s as many job openings as there are people in the state of Wyoming. There are 3.6 million software developers in the United States across every industry from finance to retail to energy, and computing jobs are the number one source of new wages according to code.org (a Facebook backed non-profit).

With that many openings, there is a plethora of needed web development that isn’t getting done, and the jobs pay really well. If you only took on 1 website per semester (2 per year) that paid you $2,500 each. That’s almost 100 shifts (or 500 hours) as a waiter making $10/hr on average. And $2,500 for a website is incredibly cheap. Sites like UpWork and PeoplePerHour have tons of jobs that you can bid on.

You can complete these jobs on your own schedule, not on the schedule that’s predetermined by an overworked restaurant manager. Once you find someone that needs your in-demand web skills, you can set the timeline based on your current workload. Want the weekends off? I bet you do! You’re in college. You need to enjoy your time there not be bossed around by somebody a few years older than you that got a degree they can’t use.

If this sounds appealing to you, apply to our Full Stack course. You’ll come out with the skills you need to never wait another table in your life.

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