This is a great thread and I hope it is motivating some folks to take some risks. I am a big fan of failing early and often.
I definitely agree that while it may appear there are more web development jobs out there, they are tons of small jobs, and should not be mistaken for more over all work available. That being said, I also agree that Drupal is a platform in high demand, and I can speak from experience as an employer that the rates for excellent Drupal developers and designers are going up. One thing I would add that I feel separates the good from the great web developers is having a passion for, and ability to create elegant interfaces. Beyond rock solid programming and technical skills, you need an artists sensibility to be a great web developer. So follow your passion as Sean said, but make sure it includes a passion for beautiful and simple user experiences or you will be one of the thousands of web designers and pseudo designers that crowd the web (especially small business sites) with so much ugly. There are a great number of tools out there that make creating beauty much easier than it used to be, but without the eye, it may not matter. Good luck in whatever you pursue. Johnny On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Kristoffer Walker <[email protected]>wrote: > Yeah, do it because you love it. I'm a full stack web developer, > meaning that I do everything from deploying distributed systems on > Amazon AWS, to designing and building the user experience in the > browser. So, I say "Yes! Absolutely, go for it." but that is because I > love web development so much that I'm blinded to the fact that it may > not be for everyone. > > It may help to know that the reason I enjoy my work so much is that > web development embraces most any software engineering technology. > This wide breadth of technology in the web stack allows you to keep > yourself interested by just following your mind wherever it may lead > you. For example, I was able to dive into the new NoSQL style > databases at an early stage, as well as the server side JavaScript > network programming environments just because I thought they looked > like fun. These areas are challenging, but the work is so interesting > that it isn't really "work". The wide variety of technology you could > potentially be working with also leads to opportunities to meet some > very talented developers that will challenge you and raise your game. > > One thing I will say, is that many engineers hate working with the > browsers, and that can be a big hurdle to get over. I would try > building a few small side projects that are heavy on HTML, CSS, > JavaScript, and light on server side technologies. Front end > engineering is a good barometer to know where you are in the web > development stack. > > I'm going to echo Chris too: "To succeed you must start failing as > soon as possible." > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College > Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef > May 2 - Git > Jun 6 - June 2012 Meeting > -- Johnny
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef May 2 - Git Jun 6 - June 2012 Meeting
