So… My family moved to Portland, OR from other country 4 years ago and now I finally have my work permit.
Back in my country I’ve had extensive experience in freelance web-dev (PHP/mySQL/CodeIgniter 3). Before CodeIgniter I’ve made same things in pure PHP (made up my own mini-framework). Also I did some markup with simple HTML/CSS. Mostly I did web-sites for small businesses.
Last year I’ve spent digging into data science staff. Just because I really like to put my hands on data 
I’ve got basics for Python and processing data - like importing/exporting (and scraping from web), cleaning, making basic visualisations, etc.
What I really want - to work with data and I’m completely ok even if it would be the simplest same tasks which others are bored to death with. I have zero experience in this field (besides databases for web-pages and exercises from learning platforms) and nothing to put into my portfolio. But I have experience in programming and I’m familiar with basic concepts so it doesn’t take a long time to figure out new library or even a language.
How do I jump in? What to write in resume? Is it a good idea to make several simple things like scraping and visualising and pack it in git or web app? Or continue into more complex learning and hope that it would give me some more ideas of what data scientists really are doing? Or go freelancing with web-scraping and build basic portfolio and confidence on that? What else beginner can learn and perform in a reasonable time?
And if I continue with pure online studying I still want money Just think - I was living 4 years without gaining a single penny! Is PHP web-dev still alive? And again what to put into resume? All my previous sites are no longer online or been remade. And it’s whole new CodeIgniter 4 which is really different from my experience in 3. So my previous experience not 100% relevant. Ok, I’ve tried and I still am able to make up a couple-pages site in a day or two from complete scratch with this new CI version. I’m revisiting my HTML/CSS knowledge here on FCC. But really, is it a resume material?
Any general advice on a job finding process in US?
Or maybe you’re in Portland area and have a nice job opening for a willing to learn beginner data scientist? Or even not in Portland - I’m good in working from home