The Joel on Software Discussion Group

I recently posted this question on the Dice boards and received a recommendation to post here for professional answers:

seeker.dice. com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=19166&tstart=0


If anyone is a professional web developer or web designer, can you please comment on your thoughts on the state of your industry?


1. What are the hurdles to breaking into it?

2. Are the professionals actually being challenged by the "home" devs and designers?

3. Are many large and small companies actually turning to these $2 an hour freelancers from India and if so, how do you intend to compete?

4. Is there still room for a lot of creativity on the job or, like most things in IT, are things relatively standardized and routine?

5. What do you enjoy most / least about your profession?

6. Salary surveys on various jobsites indicate a relatively stable and decent salary - is this true from your experience?

7. How much time outside of work do you spend keeping up with the technologies?

8. Is it still fun?


Anyone with a professional background in web development and design is encouraged to comment.

Thank you.

Hi, I have been a hard core web dev the past 10 years with no work breaks since entering the field. That should give you some idea of how steady this career field is.

I would just say a couple things....first, pay is great and will be for many years to come, unlike other programming careers, simply because the web development is completely taking over all forms of business, industry and goverment interactions. Everything is and will be online someday....and that someday is approaching fast. Alot of old desktop people on here will argue that point but its an online world.

What you can expect is great salaries and wages, tons of creativity thats ever widening and growing, and constant challenges. Despite all the open source crap coming out of thiord world countries and abroad, there is a driving need cutting edge custom web development.....and its constant and growing. For every web standard and automated content management system there are 100 custom ones that businesses want online now. So, offshoring and India and open source and salaries are not a threat at all. Like water, talent in this field seeks its own level too. That means that the more raw talent and experience you have (not certs or degrees) the more you will make. So, work on accenting what you  are good at......like web design, multimedia, coding, design, architecture, data, messaging, etc.

The one thing I always tell new web developers, and this will never chanmge, is you need to know basic HTML inside and out. So many young people dive into scripting or proprietary frameworks and GUI's and dont know basic XHTML or CSS or web standards. Whats the point if you have never typed a basic html page? You need to solid experience hacking code and basic HTML is key. You can always layer ECMAScript and Actionascrip and Silverlight and PHP on top of that. But if you dont know the basics, you are doomed. I think this is why we have so mch bad web design and coders out there.

Last thing...you need to know a little of everything as a web dev. But start with one area and build onto it. As you get into n-tiers and applcation layers and REST/SOAP and JQuery and all the heavier stuff, you at least are darn good at something you love. But you cant be the best at everything. I used to be a Flash guru and top designer but have since gone into other things, and now a web architect. But like any profession you need to do what you enjoy. If running queries and xml data transformation and heavy lifting type stuff isnt your passion, find out what is. Because web development includes so much now, there is lots of cool stuff to get into. Video and security is really hot and will get hotter, so try one of those. Of web design, or traditional server-side development. But dont let anyone fool you into thinking their technology is the "end-game" of the Web. It never will be....as Ive seen the web evolve and have yet to see one company that dominates and has driven the Web one direction. Its one more reason why I say learn HTML/XHTML and CSS and get into Web Standards and iots the only thing that no one can claim they own and will be around for a long time, yet evolving as well.