# se-job: a Taiwanese guide for people starting in software work > se-job is a guide, written in Traditional Chinese, for newcomers who want to work in software. It answers the questions a beginner actually asks, what software work involves, why the front end is the easier door, which JavaScript framework to learn, what a course can and cannot buy, and what a portfolio has to show. It is a set of notes rather than a program. **mengtsema/se-job** — Software Engineer Job Note，讓新手從0到1入門，有1到100的成長能力 - Repository: https://github.com/mengtsema/se-job - Stars: 698 · Forks: 51 - Language: CSS - License: MIT - Published: 2026-10-21 · Updated: 2026-10-21 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/mengtsema-se-job ## A set of answers rather than a curriculum se-job is a collection of notes about getting into software work, written for people who are starting from nothing. The repository description frames it as taking a beginner from zero to one, and giving the ability to grow from one to a hundred, and the readme says it plainly: it is a web development guide project that gets newcomers up to speed quickly, collecting learning links together with a small amount of the author's own teaching and interview notes. The structure is an index of questions. The first group answers what software work is, how to learn the front end and find a job, whether a non technical degree matters, and how a software career relates to an engineering degree and to graduate school. Then there are sections for the front end, for the back end, for interviews, for tools, and for the mindset side of learning, with the last one linking out to a separate repository on learning a new programming language. Inside the readme the answers are in the form of short bullet lists, and several of them carry the marker of a quoted source, one from a PTT post and one from a discussion board, which shows that the author is assembling answers that people have actually asked rather than inventing a curriculum from scratch. The repository itself is four entries: the readme, the licence, and three directories named for the front end, the back end, and interviews. The topics list is wide, covering the browser languages, the back end, git, markdown, python, the interview process, and the resume, which is a fair summary of what the notes touch on. The licence is MIT, the last push was on 2026-07-06, and there are no releases, because there is nothing to release. The value is in the reading. One practical note for anyone who does not read Chinese. The notes are in Traditional Chinese, and among the learning resources the guide recommends, the Chinese-language version of w3schools is listed as one of the places to start, so the list points at both English and Chinese versions of the same tutorials. ## Why the guide starts at the front end The first substantive answer is what software work is, and it is defined by participation in development, design, testing, and deployment, spanning websites and applications through to large enterprise systems. The readme then makes the range of roles explicit, from front-end engineer to data engineer to technical manager. The position it takes on the question of whether a degree is required is blunt: it is not, as long as there is enthusiasm for programming and the follow through to execute. The advantages it lists follow from that, with skills that are not tied to one country and can be done remotely, knowledge that can be learned from the internet without waiting for a school to teach it, and a choice between a comfortable job and a larger stage. Then there is the part that is not encouragement. The challenges section names three: the rise of artificial intelligence, which can replace junior developers whose skills are not yet strong; the internationalisation of the market after the pandemic, where speakers of English from places with lower costs take some of the work; and a younger generation that grew up with those tools and can enter the market faster. That honesty is the reason to read the guide rather than skim it. The front end is where the guide puts the starting point, and the reasons are specific. The knowledge is narrower, since it is the browser and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The work is visual, which makes the feedback loop obvious, and the barrier is low. The university system does not emphasise it, which is why a non technical major can reach the industry requirements. And the career stays flexible, because the same person can move to the back end, to interface engineering, or into project management. The readme is also candid about the front end's own drawbacks, which is the part most career guides leave out. A low barrier means a lot of competition, and the guide points out that many of them come from good universities. The technology turns over quickly, every year brings new front-end tooling, though the author argues that the same turnover is what lets you build skills quickly. The work also demands communication, a sense of aesthetics, and attention to user experience, and once you have those they become the advantage. And the flood of graduates from training programmes has raised the bar, so knowing at least one JavaScript framework is now close to a requirement. ## What the back end asks for instead The back end is described as the programs that run on the server, with a list of the common languages: JavaScript on Node, Java, Python, PHP, Go, Ruby, and C#, plus SQL for the database. The key difference from the front end, in the guide's framing, is that the back end stores data, and the speed of a database query is what the user feels. The argument against starting there is the most concrete part of the notes. The entry barrier is higher, and a back-end engineer is expected to have at least a back-end language, comfort with the Linux command line because that is where the programs run, basic public cloud operation and deployment such as on AWS, working knowledge of a relational database, basic networking, and the ability to write an API in a back-end language. Then there is the small company point, which is a practical one: a small company's back end also means understanding the front end, so you need to be full stack anyway. The recommendation follows from that, get comfortable with the front end first and then move across, with JavaScript named as the reason, because the same language works on both sides. Mobile application development gets the same treatment for a different reason. The runtimes vary across screen sizes and are more complicated than a browser. On iOS it ties you to buying a Mac, which raises the cost of starting. Publishing an application is a drawn out procedure, in contrast to putting a site on GitHub Pages for free. And a web page can be released as a mobile sized site or wrapped as a cross platform application, so the same work covers more cases. The salary section is where the notes become local. Entry level front-end roles, listed at zero to three years of experience and requiring HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a framework, are quoted at a monthly figure of thirty to sixty thousand, and each tier links to a real posting from a job board. Mid level roles at three or more years are quoted at an annual figure of a hundred, and senior roles, which add Node back-end experience, at a hundred and twenty to two hundred and more, with the unit left implicit in the notes. Those figures are for the local market and they are dated, which matters more than the numbers themselves. ## Which framework, and what the market asks for The framework question gets a clear answer, and the reasoning is about the learner rather than the framework. The advice is to know JavaScript properly, because the principles transfer, to understand several, and then to specialise in one. For Vue, the entry barrier is the lowest, the Chinese documentation is relatively complete, and the project is led by Evan You. The recommendation is for someone new who has not touched JavaScript or has touched it very lightly. For React, it is the most popular framework at the moment and led by Facebook, which also means it has the most vacancies, and the entry barrier is higher because it assumes some JavaScript knowledge. The recommendation is for someone already fluent in JavaScript who wants a higher salary and a large company. For Angular, it is the comprehensive, strict, enterprise grade framework led by Google, with thorough documentation for upgrades and less year on year change than the other two. The recommendation is for a back-end developer moving across, and the readme adds that learning it is usually employment driven, while someone strong in React or Vue will still be hired by a company that uses Angular. The list of in demand skills that follows is the most reusable part of the whole repository, because it is not specific to a language. Git. English. Using artificial intelligence in development. Cross platform work, meaning web, application, or desktop. Back-end literacy, since knowing Linux, APIs, and databases helps you talk to the people who own them. Problem solving, described as working out what a company actually needs and proposing the matching solution. Integrating services such as GitHub, cloud platforms, and other operations tooling. Basic software engineering literacy, knowing the details behind the work you do. Keeping improving, with clean code named as an example. And improving the team's delivery yourself, with introducing automated testing given as the example. That list is also the argument for the whole repository. None of it is language specific, and all of it is checkable in a portfolio. ## What a paid course can and cannot buy The guide answers the money question several times, and the answers are consistent. On whether to pay for a course at all, the position is that the expensive thing is never the money, it is the time you spend, and that you should prefer a course you can actually finish over a famous one. On a course run by a well known institution, the answer is that it can make sense if you are a beginner with a lot of time and limited self teaching ability, but that the biggest cost is again time, and that you have to fix a direction first, because a course may stuff you with technologies you will never use, such as learning the front end while also being taught MySQL, Java, PHP, and C#. The verdict is sharp: finishing such a course may not help your resume and could even hurt, because what matters is your self teaching ability. On whether finishing a course gets you a job, the answer is no, and the reason given is the most useful observation in the notes. Portfolios from interviews all look the same, and a certificate from a school means little to the person doing the interviewing. What they care about is whether you can use what you learned to build projects that are distinct. On the artificial intelligence course, the conclusion is that a beginner asking this question should not do it yet. If the course starts with Python syntax, the answer is to read the Python tutorial on w3schools instead. Data science and machine learning have a high entry bar and generally expect a relevant master's degree, and a surface familiarity with a library does not help much in a job. The readme notes that in the local market many artificial intelligence roles are hollow and the field is oversupplied, that a course which builds a chat bot is really back-end work where learning Django or Flask directly is the better route, and that for research the answer differs from the answer for employment. The learning resources listed are the usual ones, with the official documentation of a package recommended as the first tutorial, the MDN, w3schools, and the Google developer documentation, video courses, the free interactive sites, and a set of paid Chinese and English options. ## The interview, the resume, and the git notes The last directories are the practical ones. The interview notes start with what you need before you can apply for a front-end role, and the answer is work you can show, built with responsive layout work, a call to a back-end API, and one of the three JavaScript frameworks. Then come the channels for finding jobs, and the section is cut off in the copy available here. The resume note sits next to it, and the guidance around it is about what an employer reads. A portfolio of distinct projects carries the weight, and a certificate carries little, which is the same point the course section makes. The tools section is a short introduction to git, linked from the index, and the learning mindset section links out to a separate repository about how to start learning a new programming language, which is the one place where the guide hands off rather than answers. There is also a note about the project itself, that unanswered questions can be raised as issues, and an invitation to star and share it. The author is the maintainer of both this repository and the software learning one, and the topics list carries the result: the browser languages, the back end, git, markdown, python, interviews, resumes, and the career itself. For a reader deciding whether to spend an evening on it, the fairest summary is that this is a well organised, opinionated set of answers to the questions a beginner in the local market actually asks, written by someone who has sat on both sides of the interview, and that its value is in the order of the advice rather than in the depth of any single answer. ## Conclusion se-job fits a reader in Taiwan or a similar market who is deciding whether software work is a realistic path and wants an opinionated answer about the order to learn things in, and who reads Chinese comfortably enough to use the full notes. It does not fit a reader who needs a curriculum with exercises, since the repository is a set of answers and links rather than lessons, and it does not fit a reader outside the local market, because the salary figures and the job postings it cites are local. Verify first that the advice still matches the current market, since the hiring and salary notes were written for a specific period, and that the resource links still resolve before you plan a course around one of them. ## FAQ ### What is the se-job repository? It is a set of notes and learning links about getting into software work, written in Traditional Chinese for newcomers, with sections on what software work involves, how to learn the front end, how to choose a JavaScript framework, whether paid courses are worth it, interview preparation, the resume, and git basics. ### Why does se-job recommend starting with the front end? Because the knowledge is narrower, covering the browser and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the work is visual so the feedback is immediate, the entry barrier is low, universities do not emphasise it so a non technical major can still meet industry requirements, and the career stays flexible enough to move to the back end, interface work, or project management later. ### What does se-job say about paid courses and certificates? That the expensive thing is the time rather than the money, that a course should be one you can finish, that a course stuffed with technologies you will not use can cost you time without helping your resume, and that finishing one does not get you a job, because what an interviewer looks at is whether you used what you learned to build projects that are distinct. ### Which JavaScript framework does se-job recommend? It depends on the reader. Vue has the lowest entry barrier and the most complete Chinese documentation, React is the most popular and has the most vacancies but needs JavaScript knowledge, and Angular is the strict enterprise framework that changes less often. The common advice is to know JavaScript properly, understand several, and then specialise in one. ### What skills does se-job list as in demand? Git, English, using artificial intelligence in development, cross platform work, back-end literacy such as Linux, APIs and databases, problem solving, integrating services such as GitHub and cloud platforms, basic software engineering literacy, continuous improvement of your own code, and actively improving the team's delivery, with automated testing given as the example. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/mengtsema/se-job/issues) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/mengtsema/se-job/blob/master/LICENSE) - [mengtsema/se-job on GitHub](https://github.com/mengtsema/se-job) - [README](https://github.com/mengtsema/se-job/blob/master/README.md) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/mengtsema-se-job