Where will all the web developers go?
I’ve been thinking recently about what happens when we all get older. Now, I’m not actually referring to everyone here but more specifically what I’m going to call second generation web developers. I don’t mean Tim and friends here, or the early entrepreneurs of Yahoo! and Netscape. I mean the people who came along when the commercial web design and development industry had settled down a little bit, lets say 10 years ago. People like me.
Work seems to exist in lots of places; big in-house teams, small in-house teams, agencies, startups and freelancers. Where the jobs are at any given point seems to be tied to economic conditions and location. Most people I seem to speak to have tended to work in one of these areas, but I’ve not really got anything but vague memories to back that accusation up. I’m a little odd here in having previously worked mainly for agencies followed by a stint of freelancing, and now work for a decent sized in-house team at Global Radio.
As I see it the industry rules are predominantly made up by people involved as they go along. Their is no real impetus behind any trade body that I’m aware of, no real understanding within education and no consensus on organisational structure and jobs within it. That means, unlike accountants or people in many other professions, we’ve very little idea about what will happen in the long term.
So. What happens in 10–20 years time to the now quite large number of professional web developers.
Do we all just do the same thing we’re doing now. Just with higher version numbers? The problem with this is maintaining the challenge. If the core problems remain the same will it be much fun? I fear their are only so many times you can learn a new programming language and then solve the same problem you worked on at your last job before the world catches on.
Do we all become managers? The problem then is who do we manage? If the industry just gets bigger and bigger this works. But that sounds unreasonable. So if their are a limited number of managerial positions who gets them? The people their first?
Is their another industry that will have us? Computer games are starting to look to the web for ideas about community and collaboration, pretty much at the same time as the web is looking at games for thoughts on experience and engagement. But long term I can’t see a mass exodus or a huge cross over of people, just a huge overlap of ideas.
Do some of the areas like agencies, in-house teams, etc. disappear, or at least employ less skilled people? Experience costs money, and not always because it’s worth the extra expense.
Or is it simply that the world in twnety years time will be so different to now that we don’t really have a clue. And that a large group of computer savvy problem solvers will find something to do?
The real question I guess is what does the demand for skilled professional web developers look like in ten to twenty years? In reality most of the people currently doing the job won’t be getting to retirement age any time soon. That means every newly trained graduate or kid with a computer getting their first job adds to the size of the workforce. And how big do we think that workforce can get before it reaches a nice equilibrium? Certainly in London at the moment their are jobs aplenty. Many good friends have just left Yahoo! rather promptly and I’d be worried for them if I didn’t know how many people will be knocking down their doors.
I’d love it if their were numbers somewhere on this that you could graph. Maybe spot a plateau coming. It’s the sort of thing the Institute of Physics or the Chartered Institute of Marketing do. But as I said, we don’t have anything similar.
So maybe their is another option when the workforce has expanded as much as it’s going to do. We could get all work for The Institute of Web Development.
Comments
Interesting article. It gets the mind thinking…
I see Web Development as simply the current iteration of where software development is going as a whole – a little further along the software industry’s trend line.
First it was mainframes, then it was traditional client/server environments, now we’re handling client/server applications on a massive scale (eg the internet) and slowly merging with the Mobile industry which I believe will be our next destination. After that, who knows, but I think that covers the majority of the next ten years.
Part of the fun I think, is in discovering where one’s predictions are correct and where they’re not. I personally can’t wait to see how software development evolves over the next ten years!
Max Indelicato - 1st December 2008
Is there something special about “web developers”? How about game developers (how many FPSs do we need?), or embedded developers (how many firmwares do we need?), or Windows developers (how many platform-specific apps do we need?), or any other kind of programming?
Then again, the whole premise seems a bit odd. Are we getting close to writing all the programs we need, and running out of bugs to fix? Are fewer things being put on networked computers these days? I see many problems with computers these days, but “not enough work for programmers” isn’t one of them.
Tim - 1st December 2008
When “the web” goes away, all of “the web” developers will do the same thing all other developers for obsoleted technologies wind up doing:
Something else.
Cheer up man – you’re post is far too bleak! Web development requires skills and creative talents most people cannot even fathom. You mentioned perhaps one of the greatest strengths of people that do what you do: The ability to get things done without any significant structure or concrete framework/starting point (which is not entirely accurate, what of the W3C?). In other words, while any five year old can “program” a website in HTML, “the fellas that know” pay top dollar for a proper and professional interface to the rest of the developed world. The definition of Top Dollar is subject to the requirements of the service, but that’s a different debate entirely…
Seriously, consider the degree of flexibility your job requires. You ask if, sans an organizational body, your profession has any future at all. What you really should consider is, “Does Web Development require a professional body to give it future direction?” and, perhaps as a corollary, “Is the mark of a great Web Developer to create websites efficiently that are easily maintained by the next guy lacking any established standards or proposed organizational body whatsoever?” Again, consider the W3C, et al.
You might not even work with computers in the future, but you will definitely find something else that works for you and makes use of the human capital you have nurtured throughout your life. The simple fact that you’re debating your own fate is evidence that you’ll land on your feet.
When the time comes, do not think of if as the end times. Consider yourself the horse-whip maker who decides to teach himself how the internal combustion engine works upon hearing news of its invention. For that matter, consider yourself lucky to have the intellectual fortitude to give a damn about your future employability in such an internal capacity (ie not suggesting all Web Developers worldwide unionize to preserve your way of life). The Web might leave, but the concepts that went into it will stick around in the same way that HTML 1.0 is only supported in a backwards-compatibility fashion although HTML documents can still be handily represented by a simple tree.
(drunk)
Mat - 1st December 2008
Very interesting thoughts. I feel that as computer science evolves, it will become more clear to people entering the field what kinds of skills and talents are needed/desired. In my opinion, there are a fair amount of people in the field who got started because of the excitement of the industry, but maybe didn’t realize what they were signing up for.
However, going along with that idea, I think that we will continue on a path where there are many levels of programming and people with varying skills will more easily find their place. For instance, in some ways, Facebook has created a niche programming market on all its own.
Colin - 16th December 2008
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