Analysis of What's Hiring

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
jack_indigo
Forum Contributor
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:25 pm

Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by jack_indigo »

If I scan the PHP and LAMP jobs on sites like monster.com and dice.com, I hit these stumbling blocks over and over again:

- Java experience

Why Java? Isn't PHP enough to get everything done that you need? Why is PHP being considered just a "front end" language for so many jobs? For that matter, why would the Java guys even want to use PHP when they can either use JSP or Java and keep things pure in their little world?

I've used Java and JSP. I used it for about 6 months. It was the most frustrating, hair-pulling experience with programming in my life. I could list for you all the reasons why. I will never be wanting to work anywhere near Java or JSP again.

- Want experience with everything under the sun to a ridiculous level, as if you're a genius and have absolutely no life

This one baffles me. The recruiter must be a complete moron.

- .NET experience

They say they want LAMP experience, so that means LINUX, but then they say they want .NET. That's like stupid.

- XSL experience

You mean people are still using this ancient, poorly-implemented technology still? I can get more done faster with either Smarty or PHP Alt Syntax.

- Drupal experience -- more than just installing and using it

Yeah, yeah -- I need to learn this I guess.

- Zend Framework experience

I used it slightly. I sort of get it. But I won't pass an exam on it. On about 1 out of 10 PHP jobs, I keep seeing this. It's frustrating because there are so many frameworks out there for PHP now -- hard to figure out which one to use.

- C++ experience

Again -- baffling. Why would you use PHP with C++ on a regular basis?

- Heavy web service experience

Yeah, I need to get up to speed on this I guess.

///

So, in sum, I'm unhirable. I might as well beg for cash on a street corner or become a greeter at Walmart.

I really wish the bloggers out there would be getting the word out to CIOs and the like and explaining some things:

1. PHP is good enough to be used for everything you need. You don't need Java/J2EE or .NET or C++ added in. And if you do use Java or J2EE, PHP guys can still interact with you over web services and don't need to learn a lick of Java or J2EE. And if you are in a web service environment, and still requiring Java/J2EE experience even though you have a team already doing Java, then quit asking for your PHP devs to know Java.

2. If you're still using XSL, you're a moronic company still with your head in the sand. You might as well use COBOL, and you probably still do. I mean, what a complete time-killer.

3. Okay, so you use Zend Framework. Just realize that PHP MVC frameworks are going through a lot of turmoil right now -- new ones arriving on the scene. A lot of great ideas are being passed around between them. ZF isn't the container of all the best ideas.

///

Meanwhile, I see a huge amount of openings in California. I wonder what exactly has happened to create this issue? I mean, I think I hear two things about California right now:

- They have high requirement costs on businesses for healthcare.
- They have a bunch of people who couldn't pay their homes, abandoned them or sold them at whatever rate they could afford, and many have moved out of the state.
- The state is going bankrupt.
- Many people are moving away.

But that's just what I read -- I don't really know why all these PHP openings are happening in California.

///

So, it's depressing. Time to hit the bottle.
User avatar
papa
Forum Regular
Posts: 958
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:36 am
Location: Sweden/Sthlm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by papa »

Funny and interesting post.

I took a quick look at monster.se (The Swedish equalent of your monster) and they are asking for php, mysql, ajax, js, linux basically.

So it does feel that the job offerings are written by people who know what they are looking for at least.

Maybe you were looking at the wrongs ads or Americans have very high and wide standards.. :)
BornForCode
Forum Contributor
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:56 am

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by BornForCode »

Your answer to all your questions is simple:

Companies are addicted to a specific technology, some of them on java, others on .Net. The problem with the PHP is that comes in middle of this and is solving only one problem: the web presence. But for example if you are on Microsoft platforms is easier for you to devel some asp sites, or if you are willing to migrate your applications from asp 1.0 to faster and cheaper technology like LAMP than you need a person that know also a second language.'

In the end is all about money, why should you hire two specialists when you can get one at the cost of one salary? :twisted:
jack_indigo
Forum Contributor
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:25 pm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by jack_indigo »

Only solving web presence? Don't know if that was sarcasm or what.

I can do anything in PHP5.3 and a PHP-based MVC framework that Java/J2EE, JSP, Python/Django, Perl/Mason, Adobe/FLEX, Scheme, and .NET can do, using 100% PHP. I can also turn on caching, APC optimization, and page compression, as well as put this into a VPS or dedicated server web farm with multiple web nodes thanks to an Apache Load Balancing script, and scale the site just as big as Facebook or greater.

For a scalable database ready to handle massive loads comparable to Oracle or MS SQL Server, I can use PostgreSQL.

And if that isn't fast enough, and bigger hardware won't fix it, then I can find the bottlenecks with Munin and NetSNMP, as well as Xdebug, Firebug, and YSlow, to smooth things out even more. As a last resort in seriously extreme cases, I can outsource chunks of slower code to a C specialist to build me a PHP module I can load and use for a performance boost.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by matthijs »

Can't remember exactly when, but I can remember we had a similar thread a while ago. The consensus then seemed to be that job postings like these are made by people who don't know exactly what they're talking about. So I probably wouldn't pay too much attention to them (or just apply for the job even if you don't fit the description).
BornForCode wrote:In the end is all about money, why should you hire two specialists when you can get one at the cost of one salary?
Maybe for some it's only about the money. But in many cases there's also something like value. There are specialisms for a reason. There are only so few people good at everything. Hiring one person who is only average in many fields might end up costing much more because he is slower and writes worse code. Certainly for bigger projects, you'd want to make sure every part of the job is done properly.
SeaJones
Forum Commoner
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:40 pm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by SeaJones »

Many companies of late have tied into the trends of what their IT departments have always done, and as a result many systems are running on Java because the sysadmin found it sexually exciting back in the 90s.

Companies that have always used MS products, starting with office, and then gradually hosting their first website on IIS1 and climbing to Server03 or whatever are happy to stick with MS technologies and thus find themselves running towards dotnet solutions. Dotnet isn't a bad language, but it's no better and a lot less free (by which I mean gratis) than php, but this hardly matters to John in IT who has just got round to his latest episode of deprecation updates.

Basically, because many companies already spent a fortune on MS products they often see things that way, and it's easy for an IT manager to just keep going with the same cycle, introducing MS software after MS software. Dotnet is just MS catching up and finally producing a halfway decent system for production. Shame they're still behind the rest of us using stuff that anyone could download for nowt.
SeaJones
Forum Commoner
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:40 pm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by SeaJones »

Addendum:

It's worth bearing in mind that many jobs advertised like this will be pretty malleable. Dotnet/JSP may be what they use now, but if you suggest using different technologies, they may well listen, and may well enjoy the saving, if they were using dotnet.

Of course, this is a huge task
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by onion2k »

jack_indigo wrote:This one baffles me. The recruiter must be a complete moron.

- .NET experience

They say they want LAMP experience, so that means LINUX, but then they say they want .NET. That's like stupid.
I can think of plenty of reasons why a LAMP developer would benefit from knowing some .NET technologies...

Porting an existing .NET application to the LAMP stack.
Working in a software company that uses both you'd be better positioned to discuss projects on both sides.
Integrating existing .NET applications into a website/intranet that's on the LAMP stack (For example, making a unified login system).
Communicating with partners and clients who write code for .NET (for example, if a client asks for a "datagrid" it'd be good if you knew what that is).

And so on. Don't assume people are morons unless you really know that they are.
User avatar
akuji36
Forum Contributor
Posts: 190
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:53 am
Location: Hartford, Connecticut

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by akuji36 »

Hello Jack

I too need to learn Drupal (haven't used Java either but competent in PHP
html, css,xml, mysql and a little flash).

Here's a link to Drupal learning with Lynda:

http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=620

Let me know what you think.

Rod

8)
jack_indigo
Forum Contributor
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:25 pm

Re: Analysis of What's Hiring

Post by jack_indigo »

akuji36 wrote:Let me know what you think.
Rod, now that's a super cool link. Thanks. It looks 100% free and with quality material. Learn it like sitting in a classroom.
Post Reply