Job Market in Web Development

Over the past few months I've applied to 200+ jobs in web development, had ~20 phone interviews and 7 in-person interviews.  I've spoken with a lot of recruiters and technical managers, which has given me a good idea of the skillsets and #years required, location hot-spots, and other resources associated with positions in web development.  In this blog, I'll discuss those job-hunting bites, starting with resources and ending with technologies/locations.

As far as finding jobs goes, some resources are more valuable than others.  Here's my list, best to worst, based on the number of interviews each resource has landed me:

1. Dice.com -- Bar none, the #1 source of my interviews was initiated on Dice.  Furthermore, Dice is the only source whereby I've been approached by clients/companies based of my resume posting.  If you've done a lot of online job-hunting in the past, you'll know that Monster and Careerbuilder have very little footing in the IT market, which is completely dominated by Dice.  I recommend using an RSS reader (like Google's) to subscribe to a custom search, I get some ~100 new listings a day, and you can't manage that many posts without an RSS reader.
2. Career fairs
3. Indeed.com -- An aggregator for online job postings.  It scrapes Dice too, but not very effectively, so I recommend subscribing via RSS to both Dice and Indeed.
4. Everything else -- I've had decent success applying to jobs directly (if I know of open positions, or know about the company), as well as through Craigslist.  
5. Also, I threw together a website for tracking jobs to which you've applied as well as follow-up information.  Check it out :)

So those are the resources whereby I've landed interviews, now for the results of those interviews.  Fortunately for the reader (unfortunately for me), most of my interviews were with recruiters rather than hiring managers.  Recruiters know what technical skillsets and years of experience companies require.  At first I simply observed patterns, but then I began asking the recruiters directly -- questions like "what technologies have the best job-scalability?  which ones pay better? which ones are the easiest to tap in this market?", etc.  Here are the results:

• PHP (Easiest job to get, 0-3yrs experience required) -- This includes Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, etc.  The LAMP stack is the stack most familiar AND accessible to students.  What this means is that a PHP gig is the easiest to land straight out of college because (1) companies are willing to take fresh B.S. grads with no experience, and (2) it's the most ubiquitous web language, especially for local (ala Sacramento area) startups and companies where web isn't their primary focus.  However, a pattern I've observed (and ALL of my recruiters agreed) is that PHP is the lowest paying technology in web, and has the worst career-growth opportunities.  A typical PHP gig in the Bay runs $65-75k, and will likely cap there because you're competing with outsourced labor (PHP is strong in outsourcing).  Another reason for it's low career-growth ops is that it's strictly a web language, which doesn't plug into an enterprise backend.  This is significant because (1) the high-paying enterprises aren't likely to use PHP, and (2) you can't couple Software Engineering with your role as a web developer, thereby capping your growth.  So the short of it: pick PHP as a last resort, if companies wont hire you in another area.
• Ruby on Rails (Best future, .5-2yrs)  -- Rails is a middle-ground in both pay and years experience required.  A Rails gig in the bay runs $70-80k, but companies usually expect about 1yr of experience.  If you have no Rails experience, you might want to find a temporary PHP gig and do some Rails freelancing for a year to get you started, because Rails has a huge future.  Most recent startups are built in Rails, and it's these companies that are the big-boys of tomorrow.  All the recruiters I've talked to agreed that Rails has the best career-growth opportunities because it has the brightest future. Get a Rails job if you can!
• Java (Best pay, 5-7yrs) -- Unfortunately for us, companies hiring for Java web gigs are almost always seeking senior-level developers -- that's 5-7yrs experience required.  So unless you've been working in Java throughout your college career, you're not likely to land one of these jobs.  I learned this the hard way by interviewing for a number of Java positions and being turned down because "I'm too junior."  However, if you can get a Java web job, take it!  These gigs run $80-100k in the bay, and have a great future.  Contrary to popular opinion among students, Java is definitely not dead (it was saved by its open-source web stacks like Spring, Struts, and Hibernate), and is the dominant web language of enterprises with a very bright future.  Look on any careers section of a big-biz site for web development, and you'll see they're hiring in Java.
• .NET -- Microsoft everything is very popular in government, so .NET is a good place if you want to stay local.  I didn't interview for any .NET positions, so I have nothing to say here.
• Other -- I didn't find out much about other web stacks except Python web (Django, Turbogears, etc).  Python is pretty rare, and Python web jobs rarer.  In fact, the only web jobs I've found in Python were for shops already using Python on their backend and which needed something compatible.  So while Python is as good as Rails in job-scalability and pay, you'll have to search the nooks and crannies to land a spot there.

A final topic of interest is that if you want to target a specific platform, certain locations are more conducive to certain technologies than others.  From my interviews, here's what I've found:

• Bay area & NYC: The home of startups and everything hip, Open Source rules -- Ruby on Rails, Java OS (Spring, Struts, Hibernate), PHP, Python
• Local (Sacramento Area): J2EE, .NET, PHP