[thelist] Drupal... what's with the sudden hype?

[Erika]

Tris wrote:
> Our industry is all about learning new skills and knowing that what is
> technologically vital to know today, might not be tomorrow... so this
> is just another rung to the ladder that is being a web professional..
<snip>
 > my knowledge... this thread has just made me realise that no matter
 > what I learn in uni.. it'll be superceeded in good time.. :-(

Right.  This is a meta-issue.  It is really easy to get frustrated when 
you keep running into job descriptions that are near-misses for you, 
especially when you feel convinced that you could do the work if the 
employer gave you room to get up to speed.

My former boss took a job in 1998, spent his first three months on the 
job learning perl, and the next three building a CMS for the 
organization, that they are still using today.  So it can be worthwhile 
to invest in potential, and I do think lot of potential employers miss 
the boat when they focus too much on your specific experience and ignore 
other aspects of personality and experience.  But I guess that's their 
prerogative.

In some cases, knowing one thing well can make it hard to change to 
something else.  For example, moving from table-based front end designs 
to CSS layouts.

But my experience has been that experience working with one CMS helps a 
person understand at least how to approach another CMS.  So you do have 
a springboard.

In a lot of cases, the way technology moves, you actually need to know 
*less* as time goes by, because all these things you were previously 
doing yourself, are now functional out of the box.

My recommendation would be to find something you believe holds long term 
promise, and that you *love* to do, and become an expert in that area. 
And don't sweat the near-miss job descriptions.  The tech world is full 
of them.

Erika