Wannabe Developers

[diK]

I work in a digital agency as a front end engineer working mostly with ecommerce websites although in reality I handle everything web related because we can not find anybody that can fill any of the roles that any agency should have. There seems to be a huge supply of "designers" and "developers" out there but I would have to say 95% of them that have walked through the doors of our agency just don't cut it. These are people that have college degrees in the field and on paper are extremely promising but when it gets to the actual grind have no idea what the fuk they are doing.

 

True story, We had a guy come in about 6 months ago that was an apparent wiz at web development. So I go to this master of html and tell him to slice this psd for the home page and create a functional test site for the client. We are talking extremely basic stuff here. There was no javascript, no php, no third party installations just a basic content page. The kid sent me an email at the end of the day and said "I don't know exactly how to convert the design to dreamweaver but this should work" and attached the design as a jpg.

 

I have been working for this agency for 3 years now and I have seen 19 developers come and leave because they fail at every task we give them. I'm sorry people but just because you can spell html does not make you a programmer. I'm not saying I'm the greatest developer that ever lived and yes I was a crap developer at one time too but I stayed humble about it and I did not for any reason apply for a real agency until I knew I was ready.

 

Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you work in this same environment and have to deal with issues like this? I'm beginning to lose hope in the developer community.

[---------]

I have developed a couple of websites, with CMS's on the back end..

 

http://coredesignau.com < My Business' Website. The best one I have made!

http://tpvrc.com < One of the websites I have designed and developed.

http://kids.downundermonsters.com < The first website I ever made that went up, when I was 12yo.

 

I have made about 20 others throughout the 5 years that I have been developing, but they are no-longer online. I also plan on getting my own personal website back up and running with a new design, so hopefully by March this year it'll be back online.

[diK]

That's actually pretty interesting you say that you have about 20 websites in 5 years. I can honestly say I've done more then 20 websites in the past year and these are full blown ecommerce retail stores with over 3000 products. I always feel extremely rushed when doing these websites too and I always thought that if I were to spend a good deal of time on these websites they would be epic but of course when you have an over promising sales team with unrealistic deadlines and extremely pushy clients I tend to be pushed to just get things "done". It's more about quantity then quality here.

 

Do you ever get that kind of pressure from your clients?

[Kigen]

I've worked via contract with a marketing agency that did its own website work. They had extremely unrealistic deadlines and were always calling their employees in for overtime (which they didn't have to pay because it was a salary position).

 

Also, the reason they hired us was because their in-house developer quit without notice. So we had to pick up what he was doing but I have to say, he had no real clue how to do PHP and Javascript (his area of responsibility).

 

It seems to be a common thing at least in the web-design field.

[diK]

So we had to pick up what he was doing but I have to say, he had no real clue how to do PHP and Javascript (his area of responsibility).

 

I know this exact feeling. When our work load outgrows our employee capacity we end up outsourcing the work to India. I can't even begin to tell you the horror I have to deal with when it gets to my plate for custom development work. This is what happens. My boss outsources the work and these Indians do their thing and send it back to my boss for my approval. He sees that the front end "looks" complete but it just isn't functioning so in his head he's thinking "Ok this is good enough and our in house developer can handle the rest since it's almost complete". So it gets back to me and I look at the template and the idiot just exported some sliced html from Photoshop and copy and pasted the code into the templating system. I then have to go back to my boss and tell him I have to do it over because it's not developed with proper semantic code and it will be a nightmare for maintenance blah blah. He then comes back and says "Nobody sees the code so don't worry about that" (He has told me this on plenty of occasions and it's seriously like nails on a chalk board). At this point, he is thinking I am a complete failure and this leaves me staying late fixing the destruction.

 

It's just a losing game against the ignorant in this field.

[Kigen]

Indeed, upper management seems to be mostly at fault in this industry. Like I know the reason why they were only able to get the dude those people had was because they were only paying him roughly $10/hr.

[diK]

Indeed, upper management seems to be mostly at fault in this industry. Like I know the reason why they were only able to get the dude those people had was because they were only paying him roughly $10/hr.

 

Ouch, I would never work for that doing what I'm doing. I'd prob suck at my job too if that's what they thought my worth was lol.