[thelist] developer ethics?

Jay Blanchard jay.blanchard at niicommunications.com
Tue Mar 5 07:41:01 CST 2002


<snip>
Unfortunately, because of the lack of formal
professional standards, clients have to posess a
certain amount of web knowledge to understand exactly
what they expect at the end of a project.
</snip>

<re-snip>
What do people think of Macromedia's efforts to
provide web development certification schemes? Would
this sort of thing bring a much needed professional
standard? Or does it just stifle the open nature of
the market?
</re-snip>

This is some of what we were getting into last week when I posted the
testing of web development candidates. This may apply to consulting firms as
well. Why not test them?

The base problem is that most customers/employers do not know what they are
getting when hiring a web development "professional". Those of us who have
any certifications at all make those certificates part of our proposal so as
to prove our worth. Thus far though, there is no single source set of
certificates that would reassure a potential employer. This is what lead to
me testing candidates and what generated dialogue between myself and
spinhead concerning testing.

ISO standards, which have also been discussed here, spun off another group
of folks (Ben or Bev can you send me the address? I have changed companies
and haven't located all of my reference stuff yet.) set to discuss web
standards and what a desired role would be for us (professional web
developers) to take with regards to this.

Based on what I have seen lately the web development profession has reached
a crossroads. They question is...what are we as a group prepared to do?
Should we provide a testing service? Should we set some pricing guidelines?
Should we provide certification that could come to be recognized as the holy
grail in this business?

Not normally an activist...but damn, this is what we all want to do for a
living!

Jay





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