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Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:03 pm
by Wolf_22
Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to see how little PHP I know. This occurred when I was given the opportunity to go through a proving grounds with a nearby company who needed a PHP developer for Drupal. Here's what they wanted me to do to be considered for the position:

PART 1.
Develop a Drupal 6.x module called "node_details"
The goal of this task is to create a module that provides a node details page. The details page should include this information about the node:

-nid
-title
-author username, as a link to their profile
-posted date, formatted
-human-readable node type
-status (Published or Unpublished)
-promoted (Promoted or Unpromoted)
A backend settings form should allow administrators to select which node type(s) the detail page is available for.
A link to the details page should be available on node pages of the selected type(s).
A custom permission should limit the visibility of the details page and corresponding link.
The details page should have a default theme implementation.
The module should not have dependencies on other modules.

PART 2.
Provide a written summary of your development, including an accurate time assessment.
Also provide a 100-word explanation describing how Drupal behaves more like a PHP framework then just a CMS.
My question is this: how does one get to a point in this "web stuff" where you can do this sort of thing above and are there companies out there anymore who invest in their employees and who train you to do things like this?

I once had an interview at a downtown shop in Indianapolis who needed yet another web "designer" (I say "designer" liberally) who could not only re-design a Flash-based website without its source code being available, but who could also create a Wordpress CSS-customized website as well as one that used a more traditional CMS in less than 42 hours (total of 3 websites). The Flash website had buttons galore with custom video scripting and database transactions and the Wordpress / CMS websites both had the stipulations of being required to have customized plugins be built, too. Am I just stupid? I guess so if I always believed that somehow, young designers / developers were gradually merged into a company. It would seem that I've been under a rock for some time, eh?

Is this really what's expected out there now? If so, I feel sorry for those amongst us capable of such great things because despite the fact that they're probably always going to be making way more money than I ever will in 1 month, I doubt they have much of a social life, ya know? Not to be offensive by any means, it's just that I can only imagine how many hours a day and night these sorts must look at code figuring out how to do things like OOP, MVC, using databases in uber efficient ways, etc... Seems so depressing to me despite wanting to get into this field. Geez, I'm such a downer, I know, but you can't blame me. I guess I should've majored in CS??? I'm an IT major and one of those poor souls who believed that he could teach himself these things. This stuff is so frustrating... :x

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:23 pm
by Benjamin
Well, I won't take drupal jobs because I haven't worked with it before, and I really have no desire to. I imagine someone familiar with drupal would be familiar with all the terminology. As for Part 2, they can KMA. I don't write school reports.

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:30 pm
by Wolf_22
But in essence, is this really about Drupal, Wordpress, etc., or is it instead about PHP? Underneath it all, it's PHP at the core and not really Drupal, right? I guess it's safer to adopt a singular platform then? The Drupals; the Wordpresses; the Joomlas and start gunning for those in job postings?

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:38 pm
by Benjamin
They are looking for someone familiar with Drupal yes, and that is what they will end up with. Whether they get a great PHP Programmer or not is another story.

I can't advise you to go either way, it's really a matter of preference. My preference is to be great at PHP, rather than learn a few CMS's and work solely with them.

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:40 pm
by Wolf_22
You've put this in a different light astions. I feel like I can look myself in the mirror again. Thanks!

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:56 pm
by josh
I would not invest my time into trial projects. For all you know they are turning around selling the code ( not likely but still, there are plenty of other employers who won't have you running in circles like this for no pay)

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:44 am
by Wolf_22
Yeah, I agree. To me, it seemed a bit odd that this person graduated from CalPoly but who also decided to post for possible applicants at an Indiana school (not that all of us cornies are stupid, but just sayin'...).

:D

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:43 am
by onion2k
Wolf_22 wrote:My question is this: how does one get to a point in this "web stuff" where you can do this sort of thing above and are there companies out there anymore who invest in their employees and who train you to do things like this?
Web development is still a very young industry. It barely existed 12 years ago when I got into it. Pretty much everyone anywhere near the top (senior developers with more than 5 years experience) is self-taught. Consequently training is very rare - if we learnt it ourselves then so can you. If you're not willing to invest time teaching yourself, following tutorials and reading books, then why should an employer spend money doing the same thing when there are plenty of people out there who are willing to teach themselves?

The problem is compounded by the fact there aren't really any accredited training programs available. There's the ZCE and MCSE stuff but those are language specific and not much good for teaching someone how to be a good web developer. Until there are courses that represent good value for money that an employer can send someone on and prove that they're going to come back a better developer you won't see many employers paying for training.
Wolf_22 wrote:I once had an interview at a downtown shop in Indianapolis who needed yet another web "designer" (I say "designer" liberally) who could not only re-design a Flash-based website without its source code being available, but who could also create a Wordpress CSS-customized website as well as one that used a more traditional CMS in less than 42 hours (total of 3 websites). The Flash website had buttons galore with custom video scripting and database transactions and the Wordpress / CMS websites both had the stipulations of being required to have customized plugins be built, too. Am I just stupid? I guess so if I always believed that somehow, young designers / developers were gradually merged into a company. It would seem that I've been under a rock for some time, eh?
There will always be employers who have unrealistic expectations. You're better off not working for them.

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:07 am
by matthijs
Wolf_22 wrote:Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to see how little PHP I know. This occurred when I was given the opportunity to go through a proving grounds with a nearby company who needed a PHP developer for Drupal. Here's what they wanted me to do to be considered for the position:
Not sure what a "proving grounds" is, but to me it seems strange that they have you program what they describe, without paying you. (or are they paying you for the time invested?)

I would think that a good portfolio and references they can check, plus some in dept interviews, should be enough to make a choice whether to continue with you or not.
Wolf_22 wrote:I once had an interview at a downtown shop in Indianapolis who needed yet another web "designer" (I say "designer" liberally) who could not only re-design a Flash-based website without its source code being available, but who could also create a Wordpress CSS-customized website as well as one that used a more traditional CMS in less than 42 hours (total of 3 websites). The Flash website had buttons galore with custom video scripting and database transactions and the Wordpress / CMS websites both had the stipulations of being required to have customized plugins be built, too. Am I just stupid? I guess so if I always believed that somehow, young designers / developers were gradually merged into a company. It would seem that I've been under a rock for some time, eh?
Maybe there are some fast developers out there, but 42 hours for what you describe seems totally unrealistic. Maybe if you had some pre-made templates/sites and modules lying around which you could copy-paste and adjust a bit, but even then it would be a rush job

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:34 am
by onion2k
matthijs wrote:
Wolf_22 wrote:Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to see how little PHP I know. This occurred when I was given the opportunity to go through a proving grounds with a nearby company who needed a PHP developer for Drupal. Here's what they wanted me to do to be considered for the position:
Not sure what a "proving grounds" is, but to me it seems strange that they have you program what they describe, without paying you. (or are they paying you for the time invested?)

I would think that a good portfolio and references they can check, plus some in dept interviews, should be enough to make a choice whether to continue with you or not.
Testing candidates by getting them to write a small app is pretty common. If all the people you're interviewing have written the same thing it's very easy to compare the quality of their code.

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 6:06 am
by jayshields
On my last interview I had to write a trivial app, and had 1 hour 45 to do it. I had to re-write some HTML/CSS so that it validated, change/add PHP to validate form fields, add PHP to insert those form fields into a database, then add JavaScript form validation.

I ran out of time and didn't get all of the JavaScript validation part done. JavaScript still annoys me, and I am generally using trial and error whenever I use it, so it could take me 5 minutes or an hour to implement something trivial. For some reason I still can't grasp FireBug particularly well for JS debugging.

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 6:48 am
by Wolf_22
Web development is still a very young industry. It barely existed 12 years ago when I got into it. Pretty much everyone anywhere near the top (senior developers with more than 5 years experience) is self-taught. Consequently training is very rare - if we learnt it ourselves then so can you. If you're not willing to invest time teaching yourself, following tutorials and reading books, then why should an employer spend money doing the same thing when there are plenty of people out there who are willing to teach themselves?
Who said anything about whether or not I was willing to teach myself (I know you didn't mean this in a personal way; just to convey the general perspective)? Everyone has a capacity to learn on their own, but you know as well as I do that sometimes one person's capacity is much less than another's, and therein lies the issue: it all boils down to competition and expectations of employers.

To me, the competition part is easy to understand because not only does everyone know somebody who can throw something up on the internet and call it a website, but also, there are a lot of people out there who are just excellent at what they do and who are willing to sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day just to learn some new technology. This, of course, is what makes this field so difficult to deal with. I'm not sure about you all, but I will never sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day investing in something that is never certain and always changing when all I get out of it is a theorized amount of money and extra body weight from a sedentary lifestyle and lost social life. I mean, I know I can't be alone in thinking that way. Every good web designer or developer I have EVER known has either had horrible social skills which led to having little-to-no friends, no girlfriend, and or health problems ranging from high blood pressure to being overweight, etc.

The other issue, however, appears to be much more complicated. The expectations of the employer is very much calloused. We've had too many people vegging-out with this web stuff that they're now equivalent to our childhood neighbor friend who knew how to do all the Mortal Combat moves conceivable while knowing a few undocumented bugs simply because that's all he ever did, does, and will do throughout his day. The employer sees this from the person and since the employer is a layperson, he / she assumes that this must be a market standard and from that point, on, benchmarks all future employees against that 1 individual who could write 3 programs in less than 5 minutes. While this example may appear to be extreme, I do believe it holds virtue for what it implies. Every employer I've ever interviewed with has always had extreme standards and at first, I always thought it had something to do with the economy, but realistically, I think it has more to do with the way the market is in respect to the level of competency everyone appears to apparently have who ends up applying to those jobs.

Without being too deep here, one does have to wonder how this has happened in the world today. I do try to teach myself the trade and I can get pretty far on my own. I have a degree in IT from a 4-year school, so I know how to learn and I know how to do it pretty well, but experiencing what I've experienced in the economy just seems pathetically impractical for anyone. I guess in a way this would be a factor in why our economy (assuming you're in the States, of course) is the way it is. I feel very unprepared for much of this, but the approach of going to school very much depends on your sociocultural trek made through life: to some families, it would be preferred that little Tommy over here goes to a university while Joe on 4th street has a family who can't afford school and has to teach himself whatever he eventually uses to get a job one day. Of course, if you have the means to go to a school, why would you not want to? I guess I should've passed on getting my degree so that I could sit at home all day to learn how to make Drupal modules. :roll:

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:20 am
by onion2k
Wolf_22 wrote:I'm not sure about you all, but I will never sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day investing in something that is never certain and always changing when all I get out of it is a theorized amount of money and extra body weight from a sedentary lifestyle and lost social life.
You're trying to compete with people who are not only willing to do that, but actually enjoy doing it. Personally, when I was a junior level, 10 hours in front of a computer would have been a short day for me. I would frequently do 14 or 16 hours (although, that said, a few hours of that would be Counterstrike). When it comes to comparing resumes I'd get the job every time. Mind you, I must say, it never really hurt my social life. I would get up at 6am or so, work on web stuff all day, and into the evening, then go to a bar with my girlfriend and mates until about midnight. Pretty much every night. :twisted:

And if you're worried about having a sedentary lifestyle why are you applying for jobs where you'll be sitting at a computer for at least 8 hours a day anyway? Is there really such a difference between 8 hours and 10 hours?

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:28 am
by Wolf_22
I see your logic behind what I said, but keep in mind that it's sometimes impossible to judge what the expectations are from online postings, classified job ads, etc, and last but not least, beggars cannot be choosers in today's economy. Had I known that this field I wanted to originally be in was of this nature (sitting in front of a computer for 8, 10, 20 hours a day), I probably would've went into something entirely different because doing that sort of thing just appears very dismal to me. Hey, I look up to you and anyone else for being able to balance that sort of thing and if one day I could find a job that set boundaries like ONLY working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week in front of a computer with minor exceptions being that of strictly "up hours" or high impact migrations, etc., then I would be a bit more open-minded toward that line of work, but history has a way of admitting an ugly side of this field which I never thought was there originally. And I know that all work / jobs have a negative side to them--it's just when that negative side outweighs the positive, it becomes trash-worthy to me.
And if you're worried about having a sedentary lifestyle why are you applying for jobs where you'll be sitting at a computer for at least 8 hours a day anyway?
Hmmm... Maybe I need to clarify my original stance a bit? To me, a sedentary lifestyle consists of anything beyond that of 8 hours where upon 8 hours a day (to me) is explicitly consistent with normal working hours. Like I said, though, I would be open to the occasional moments of big need, so maybe my thinking is a bit too vague for my own person to have a good grasp on, right? Regardless, though, I'm envisioning a decent job being that of where you don't feel as if your bound by existentialistic thoughts of digital bondage. The job posting I sent a resume to consisted of a job trek that was as close to something I would like to be placed in as anything else I've seen. Ideally, I see myself as more of a web design and development "mix" whereas I'm much stronger on the artsy side than the programming side. I'm great with markup, CSS and all that jazz. I'm decent with PHP, or, should I say that I know enough about it to normally get whatever changes I need in something like a Wordpress install or whatever. However, when I'm asked to do things like my original posting in this thread, that's when I raise the white flag because I feel intimidated and very overwhelmed by the requirements because I don't even know anything much about OOP and some of those higher level things. It just seems too difficult and time-consuming because in order for me to do something like redo some Flash website without the source code or create some Drupal plugin, I would have to sit in front of my computer for a minimum of 10 to whatever amount of hours just to get to a point to where I feel as if I'm getting somewhere in terms of general understanding--maybe it's a fear of code? Ha. Maybe this is something along the lines of the sort of work you like doing, and that's cool. I have no problem with you or anyone else liking this sort of thing, but to me, it just seems that if this is the general process behind web design, it seems rather overblown and generally way too tedious for my tastes--but that's my value system regarding the professional setting of this stuff.

I won't lie when I say that it's been a big disappointment coming to this sort of conclusion. Believe it or not, I, too, love making websites. But to realize that in order to get anywhere worth mentioning, you're required to do all this (including knowing 2-3 different sorts of languages which all take their own time to learn) is just too much. Life (to me) is way too short for this. I just don't have that capacity, I'm afraid.

Take, for example, this latest gig I had the chance to do. The lady needed a PHP application that could scrape other specified log cabin rental websites for their postings and place them onto her website. She was (in turn) charging a monthly fee to the owners of those websites for her service and while I'm not at liberty to honestly say what the specifics of the scope was, I can say that she expected to have this all done for around $250.00. You see, I envisioned a website of this nature to have a login admin interface complete with the ability to manually specify which websites you wish the scrape and scan. Of course, this would then entail the use of a MySQL database complete with respective fields for better taxonomy of each cabin posting acquired. Also, I see all of this requiring the ability to be able to manually add or remove specific cabin posts that she, herself, may wish to include on her pages regardless of autonomous scans. ...And all of this for possibly $250.00? I know I own some of this problem because I'm sure I should've been clearer on expectations, scope requirements, etc. But her response about how much she saw herself being able to spend on the entirety of the project came before any sort of scope was designed or written to begin with. Maybe she only wanted whatever was scanned to be directly presented to end-users on the homepage, in essence consisting of static displays, but if so, what a waste of $250.00, right? In my reality, it wouldn't have felt appropriate either way.

SO, to all that's end, I think I'm going to get into a different field where I can use what I DO know how to do with websites and apply it to whatever other opportunities I find befitting to a person like me. Maybe one day I can get into crime fighting and where a cape! 8)

Re: Question about web design jobs...

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:44 am
by matthijs
You know, don't give up yet. There are more ways you can make money in the web business without being a silly code monkey sitting behind a desk churning out code 16 hours a day.

Have you thought about specializing in other directions, like:
- managing (web) projects
- usability consultancy and/or research
- creative management
- etc

I do believe that the real money is in these kinds of things. Where handling people, communication skills, organization skills, etc are more important then just being a programmer. In the end it's also about what you want to do and what you are good at (often the same thing)


The $250 dollar example is a joke. That's why it's always wise to ask for a budget in the first telephone call/meeting, to prevent wasting any time on these things