I am facing a puzzle and I am not sure the best way to make a decision. In my spare time besides playing video games I got around to develop some games, nothing fancy, just small projects to get a better grasp at programming.

After I finished college and got my BA in Computer Science, I got a job as web developer at a small firm. The next few months were very stressful as I had no previous experience and tried my best to make up for it. But after 6 months my boss told me I was inefficient and not very independent and let me go. To my credit, the help from the senior was very limited, I did learn a lot but I have learned by myself. For example they told me to do a UI in BackboneJS and I took me a while but I got it working (even if it was poorly designed). But I managed to do it all by myself because my senior was very busy and he did not have time even for my questions.

Now I have found a new job again in web development but I am very afraid of what is going to happen next. I am afraid because I don't want to take the job and then be fired again after a couple of months, I get the feeling that this will be very bad on my CV, job hopping is like a red flag. They want to hire me but I am aware that they are working with new technologies and maybe I will end up not coping with it.

So the question is: Should a entry-level programmer be better off with a starting job in QA, testing and work his way from there?

I did learn allot from my first job but it was a moral blow when they decided to fire me. I do have a low self-esteem and I know my skills as a programmer are not that great. But I like programming and want to get better and I want to have a long career in it so that basically my pickle.

Thank you in advance for the answers.