The Trouble With The Web …

by admin on Jul 01 2009 · View Comments

Web Development is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Nearly every day some new product or development turns the whole scene on it’s head. Just a dozen years ago, the thought of being a web developer was less than promising for most folks. Today, that’s quite different.

There’s a huge catch in all of this though. Web developers are quite possibly the dumbest professionals on the earth. No other industry sees it’s standard salaries and income vary as much as the web development industry. Imagine trying to pick between one lawyer who charges $300 / hr, or one that charges $10 / hr. The cheaper one sounds enticing, but we all know you usually get what you pay for.

That’s the trouble with the web. Because so many developers are willing to provide services for next to nothing (for a variety of reasons), the entire industry suffers. There’s just not much consistency in what people expect to pay for professional web dev services.

And now, professional companies are starting to get into this mindset as well. As I’ve been trolling for steady jobs, I’ve seen tons of positions open for senior web developers that pay $15 to $20 / hr.

That’s an insultingly low rate to pay a senior web developer. The skillset and intelligence required to perform solid web development duties is typically on par with my own background in structural and civil engineering. This stuff is complicated, and $15  / hr isn’t reflective of the skill required to successfully create and implement a good web app.

So, what will likely happen, is good paying jobs will be more geo-centric to tech hubs throughout the country (New York, San Francisco, etc..), and the remaining web development work will be limited to implementations of the products that come out of those areas.

The variety that’s made the web so intriguing for years, will likely fade to a much more bland version of the web, filled with millions of cookie-cutter websites about uninteresting products and services.

It’s frustrating, because even some of my closest friends feel the need to undercut their services to get work. My own colleagues and buddies are helping to enforce the un-sustainability of our own careers.

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  • http://ErikBaldwin.com Erik Baldwin

    I see this as a giant problem in the web community; both developers/designers and the “client”. I see it as a lack of initiative from the developers & designers to inform these potential clients that are under the impression that $10/hr is suffecient to get what they want that it is in fact not. we, as a community, should not just scoff at these ridiculous pay rates, we should embrace them and see what the potential (under informed) client is actually willing to spend as a whole; what is their total budget if they are planning on spending $10/hr. if they simply state that they don’t want to spend, or simply can’t spend more than $600 on their intended project, we (successful, creative, unique) developers and designers should show them what they can get for that amount of money. Most, if not all, web professionals should have a multitude of projects in their portfolio that display different budgets. meaning that we have all done $1000 projects and that we have done $10000 sites. As a community, we can solve this issue.

  • David Rogers

    I agree with you guys, undercutting is a problem, but I also feel that hourly rates are also something of a problem. Pegging our work, which is undeniably creative, to hourly estimates and bean-counter-grade time tracking further demeans the “art” of development, denigrating what we do and create into the realm of “technician” or “computer operator”. No one asks an artist for his hourly rate and neither would any but a fool pay an artist hourly (Now, Michelangelo, did you track your hours exactly here?). Part of the problem is undercutting; another part is comparing ourselves to oranges.

    BTW, try setting a transparency on the “comment” box or using a gray instead of the white. It’s a little stark. New site looks awesome, though. Keep it up.

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