A self-taught web developer with an engineering degree posted a question on list-serv. "What certficates or degrees should I get to become a web developer?" Here is the feedback from Estelle Weyl, the Bay Area luminary who wrote the book on CSS3.

You don’t need certifications to be a web developer.  In fact, unless you are considering .Net roles, certifications are kind of frowned upon since there is no single respected source that provides them.

You also don’t need a masters degree. You have an engineering degree, so you have the “technical” background they are looking for. Not sure what type of engineering you did, but if it’s not CS related, a course in programming logic and OO fundamentals is REALLY helpful.

It takes about a month to learn to be a web developer, and a lifetime to master it. So, take a month and learn the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, or if you want to be a mid tier, focus less on the CSS and more on the PHP, MySQL and Ruby.

My recommendation is to deep dive into Javascript. JS is required for so many roles, and there are very few people who are good at it. But, it is really what YOU want to do. What part of building the site did you like the most.

Do NOT learn Dreamweaver, jQuery or any other programming software until you have attained a certain level of expertise in markup and code, as having a crutch that does the work for you can be debilitating to your learning curve.