Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Web Development - A Tough Job to Have?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can-you-make-a-career-out-of-it dept.

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?"

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. As a Web Developer ... by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've been developing web apps for two years in a Fortune 500 company. I've run the gambit. ASPs, JSPs, Weblogic, Websphere, Plum Tree, Axis, Spring/Struts, etc. Let me point out the my easily identified cons of web development:
    • 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.
    1. Re:As a Web Developer ... by suv4x4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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."

      Amen to that brother.

      I just had the same experience again the other day. The "CEO" turns to me and says, "So for tha past week you've only worked on the login page?"

      It *is* correct, but it's misleading to tag is "webdev specific" issue. It's same in just about any work that has design and programming phases.

      Dev: "I've been working past 3 months on the script part of our 3rd person shooter game engine"
      Boss: "Can I see how it's shaping up?"
      Dev:"No, it's nothing we can demo yet, just couple of demos where a ball hits a cube and the cubes rotate and such"
      Boss: "You're fired"

      Dev:"I've been working the past 3 months on adding heuristics to our virus scanner"
      Boss: "Can I see it?"
      Dev:"Yea, here it is, enable this checkbox"
      Boss:"3 months for a checkbox? You're fired"

      Basically this is why a project leader has some experience in the technologies involved so you don't lead pointless and potentially catastrophic conversations like these. The team leader's job is to understand his team members needs and the resourse a task really takes, and dumb it down to the management so the management has a realistic idea of the work involved.

      In other words, there are not plenty of highly technical jobs, where you can just walk to your boss and tell him: "I've been porting shit from tables to CSS past month" and expect him to have a clue.