[thechat] A question for Issac...

[Martin Burns]

On Monday, August 25, 2003, at 09:37 AM, DESCHAMPS Stéphane DSI/SICOR 
wrote:

> I'm wondering if there's still *one* place that has web dev jobs 
> a-plenty, since the dotcom bubble burst.

Depends on what you mean both by "a-plenty" and "web dev"

I don't think we'll ever get back to the same number of people doing 
front-end production, for a number of reasons:
1) Increasingly few commercial sites are being hand-produced - the only 
front end work is in producing templates. There's more work involved in 
integrating those templates into the end systems.

2) Even in 1999, there were far more people able to do front end web 
work than were commercially justifiable, not to mention all the people 
who were learning HTML etc when the bubble burst.

3) Even for developing logic and data layers of a site, there are 
increasing numbers of packaged systems available that do the vast 
majority of the required work as a great number of organisations have 
similar enough processes and systems. I mean, do you *really* need to 
bespoke-code an access-control list? Or a templating system? The work 
involved is mostly configuration of the 80%+ of functionality provided 
by packaged systems, with a small amount of bespoke work on top.

> FWIW note that France is as much a devastated country as anywhere in 
> the world. They all ask for Java in job offers, and I'm sure they 
> don't even know what they're asking for.

Well I can't speak for the people you've been talking to, but I've just 
been struggling to find contractors with Java/JSP/XML skills to do 
integration between an eMarketing system and the client's legacy 
system. And those were genuinely the skills needed to use the 
eMarketing system's SDK.

I'm very much finding that the demand for numbers of people is in
1) People able to do integration - both between systems and integrating 
front end work into systems - but with enough of an understanding of 
the front end code and design not to screw it up

2) People who understand enough of a client's *business* needs to be 
able to design the solution, choose which packaged components are 
needed (and spec where bespoke work is necessary), define how its to be 
configured and document it in such a way that both developers and 
clients understand it.

Cheers
Martin

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