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Web Development - A Tough Job to Have?
frank_tudor asks: "Hey everyone, I have been a web developer for seven years now. I have had some moments of success, but mostly down moments with low pay, less than stable work, and unemployment. I love what I do and I don't mind the trends and technology changes that come with web development, but I am getting older and have been mulling a change in professions. But to what? I an wondering what those of you on Slashdot think about web development as a job, and what professions they think would be both stable and challenging to consider?"
- The technology & framework you're using will be obsolete in two months (see above list).
- Your scope creep is worse than another project because web technologies (like Web 2.0) are constantly offering new features. The customer sees them and wants them
... now.
- A lot of times, you can add something graphical in two minutes and the customer might wet themselves when they see it. On the other hand, you can spend two months knocking out major requirements in back-end functionality and the customer will probably ask you why they're paying you since nothing's changed in the interface.
- You need GUI experience and a sort of artistic knack (or at least a team member with this expertise).
- You need a solid programming background for functionality (or at least a team member with this expertise).
- You need to know a lot about security (or at least a team member with this expertise).
- You need to know a lot about databases (or at least a team member with this expertise).
- If you rely on team members for the above, you need to keep constant communication with them through every step of the development process--this is why it's often better for you to just learn everything.
- You have to develop original content for the website. Seriously, where do people get their pictures for websites? I want licensed images of people standing around and using computers in my website
... I had better get my digital camera and waver forms and hit the office cubicles.
- A lot of the tools are FOSS. My company's FOSS Process has 20-25 control gates. Most of them are lawyers.
- You sometimes have to deal with lawyers.
- It's a tiered or layered framework that you work with & therefore to introduce a new functionality, it has to be implemented from front to back. This means that it's fairly difficult to have people in charge of a layer (like presentation-side versus functional server-side versus database) because they all have to play ball in order to get the functionality working.
- You have to balance server load with what can safely be done on the client side.
Now, I know a lot of the above elements are present in other programming/IT jobs but I do find web development to be the most difficult form of programming.The pros of web development:
- A lot of jobs are available.
- The pay is decent.
It doesn't sound very fun & yet I still continue to do it. If you want a suggestion, only take web development jobs on a large team that already experiences success. Learn how to fit in and then you can work on taking on challenging tasks. As you can see from above, I'm expected to do it all and then some. I've been forced to do things as a one man team and I don't like it. Don't enter into anything unless your duties are well defined and involve well built products, tools & technologies.Most importantly, educate yourself about enhancements, advancements & changes and stay well rounded. Best thing I ever did was set up an Apache Tomcat server at my home and start tinkering around. Well, I suppose that's another story though
My work here is dung.
Definitely not stable - I agree with all the other opinions posted. You constantly have to be on your toes, both from a front-end perspective (understanding HTML/XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc...) as well as from the programming perspective (different options like ASP.NET w/C# or any other myriad languages, Java/JSP, PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc...) And as if it didn't get worse, the languages themselves seem to change as frequently as the which ones are in vogue (take PHP, for example.) And then, at a higher level than even the web development languages, you have the various frameworks that they utilize (Struts, Ruby on Rails, and others).
But it can be interesting - if you want interesting more than you want stable, I'd suggest trying to find a startup. Or better yet, work on your own projects in your spare time, and try and spin them off into things that you can do full-time, working for yourself. This is ultimately what I want to do, but it ain't easy. Plus, you need to find an employer who is amenable to this and won't try to claim your off-duty work as their own.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Since offshoring is becoming all the rage (though there is some backlash) if you are articulate and can write well, use your development experience as leverage to become an analyst. In fact, there are alot of places an analyst could be used. If you need to develop these skills more, take a couple of classes.
One of the posts mentioned health care as a interesting industry. I will reccomend the energy industry as it is huge, heavily subsidized (the gov't will not allow them to fail), making huge sums of money and some of the problem domains (earth scienes, environmental compliance) are a bit more intersting than your typical ecommerce site.
Best of luck on the change...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Back in the day when I had an employer who respected what I did, came into the web world with an open mind and interested in success, and didn't second guess everything I did it was great.
There are two phrases any client should never use:
1) "Make it look exactly like this."
2) "My friend has an 8 year old kid he says built him a web site."
A bad client can be a real problem. It takes a lot of work to find a good one.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Does that sound odd to anyone else, or am I just disconnected from some greater reality?
Frank, I've been doing Web stuff since 1994. I started with very little know-how -- I went to college to study English, not programming. Over the years I spent time as an artistic Web Designer & Photoshop monkey, then usability expert, then a JavaScript & Perl CGI developer, then PHP, MySQL, and eventually I just decided to say yes to everything. I'll try anything. And what is important to note is that my salary has steadily gone upward -- huge leaps upward during the boom, and then it was flat for a while, and then I started working for myself, and gave myself a pay raise. ;)
I have more work than I can accept. In fact, I've probably disappointed a few business people lately because not only was I too overloaded to take their work, but my subcontractor was too. How does this sync up with "low pay and unemployment" problems?
I have to wonder. What is your skill set? In seven years, you could and should have learned quite a lot. You should be much more competent, and thus much more in demand, than any young bloods coming onto the scene. Your skills should be apparent to those working with you -- "oh, he's the guy who does _____." For me, it's "he's the guy who fixes the Web site when our employees break it." There should be certain things you have zero doubts about as far as your skills are concerned. For me, it's PHP and MySQL, with all the ancillary buzzwords as a given (XHTML, CSS, Ajax). Can you easily and readily point to your strengths, and can your peers?
Lastly, what are you doing to market yourself? You don't provide links to your sites or portfolio in your story submission. With your mention of low pay & unemployment, I wonder about your networking too. Have you mass-mailed every friend & relative in your address book, asking for work? Have you kept relationships with the people who have hired you in the past?
I ask because it seems odd that after 7 years, this is the story you have to tell. And that makes me worry about the next thing you jump into. How many of the issues you have right now are due to the job itself, and how many are due to your own networking/skillset/learning/marketing deficiencies? If you find that a lot of it is of your own making, then changing jobs is NOT going to help. It will just be a year of euphoria followed by several more years of being brought back down to harsh reality. Think hard before you jump to the next thing. I'm worried it may be more of the same, unless you do some hard self-analysis first.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I perfectly understand what you're going through. Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution myself. I've been making Web sites since around 12 years now, and I must say, I rarely got an enjoyable time.
What makes it the most difficult are the customers, in my opinion. I also worked in call centres for more than four years, and still today, with all that "practice", I still can't deal with customers. Furthermore, the share of customers I got is quite bad. (For example, one customer I got disappeared for months then finally came back, drunk, and shout and me because the work I've done was now "bad" but used to be the best the world just before he left.)
Customers are never happy, never. They may seem to be satisfied, but they always want something more. They never pay on time. They never tell you want they want or give you what you need on time. All that, and the site is often just an intranet site or a public site that closes a year later. That makes it difficult to grow a portfolio!
I'm currently, since last year, the webmaster of a call centre. Here the "customers" are the team managers and operations managers. They're not sure about my real position within the company and the requests they give me range from doing an extensive new database-driven application for customizable interface to pull out call data statistics for the past years to posting "cute" pictures on our intranet. Most projects I do here get cancelled or unused once done, and they often get superceded by other projects when managers feel like it. My position was supposed to be independant, but they've put another guy to supervise me with who I often need to argue to get things done.
Plus, the full-time job I have now is finally the first one I ever got in my domain. Ironically enough, I don't like it. I think it could be much better. The only other kind of work I've done was technical support on the phone.
To be honest, I think I prefered being a webmaster when it was just a hobby. As a job, I must say, I know I'm good personally, but I somewhat could never succeed. Personal satisfaction always lacks. At least, when it's by myself for myself, I know I'm satisfied with my work and I know I can get things done. But the money won't pour in!
I'd love to do something else, but like you, I have no idea what or how. Good luck!
R.
I agree totally - my partner and I work together developing high end eCommerce solutions - we've written a bespoke system, and we pull in high six figures (in pounds stirling) between the two of us month after month - web (particularly eCommerce) development is booming.
Yes, it's a tough job - you have to be prepared to work seven days a week, be on call at 4am, and work 18 hour days (minimum), and put up with shit from clients who don't have a clue. We have a good team insofar as he is a photoshop and design genius, and has a decent working knowledge of PHP/MySQL, and I do all the guts - the javascript, the AJAX, the PHP, the SQL, the server setup, the scalability...
In all - Web development is a tough job to have, but not for the reasons you give... If the work is short, it might be (Sorry about this) because you're not very good.
One piece of advice - find a focus, and stick to it - there's no point in being the jack of all trades and master of none - by this I don't mean a technological focus - I mean a business focus.
I'm of the opinion that if you don't enjoy your work you should find something else to do. Life's too short to stay in a job you hate. Maybe web development isn't for you. Find something you like to do and head in that direction.
My average job length is about a year because I get bored quickly. For developers changing jobs is often the easiest way to get a pay raise.
If you do enjoy web development there are plenty of good jobs out there. Be picky! Find one that you will enjoy doing for a while. The environment makes all the difference. Meet the people you'll be working with. If you don't get along with them you're all better off if you find something else. You may have to find temporary work while you're looking for a good job but in the end you'll be much happier if you take the time.
My current employer found me on Dice.com. After posting my resume I was getting several calls a day. Many of the calls were only good for laughs but at least they gave me options.