Stay Employed – Web Developer Skills in Most Demand (PHP, AJAX, MySQL …)
While these may not be a great revelation to many, included below are the web development skills that will get you employed now and by all evidences of their growth, for the foreseeable future. Knowing and being professional in at least some of the skills below to maximize your prospects for being employed.
In looking at these graphs, keep in mind that oDesk is a growing site so even a flat trend is a potential sign of decreasing demand.
PHP
PHP is by far the most in-demand web development programming language right now. As you can see from the graph, it has enjoyed a steady climb from November 2007 leveling off in July 2008 at a spectacular 1400 jobs posted. The demand for PHP development work has tripled over the period of a mere 9 months.
AJAX
The demand for developers with AJAX in their resume or portfolio is also in high demand as the average web page has evolved well beyond animated icons, the presentation and need for a smooth user experience in the front end is more and more essential. The skill enjoyed very similar growth to PHP above from November 2007 to July 2008 where it leveled off holding at around 450 job postings.
Javascript
As with the 2 skills above, Javascript enjoys high demand and has a similar shape in demand over the past year. As of November 2008, Javascript demand is steady at 400 after a slight decline since July 2008 but overall demand has doubled over the year.
XML
XML is very dominant in web job postings and would seem like a relatively short learning curve to get capable in since it is not a language but a simple framework for describing and manipulating data. XML has very steadily increased over the past year, almost tripling.
MySQL
MySQL dominates the databases as the data storage method of choice. Increasing to nearly triple over the past year and holding steady at over 1000 jobs posted for the past 8 months.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets is now the way to maintain a uniform professional way to monitor the appearance of modern websites. This method is designer friendly too since one design change does not mean editing every page on a single website but instead one or a few style sheets. It too has near tripled over the past year and holds steady at close to 100 jobs posted.
Graphic Design
Graphic Design is a very in demand skill and although not everyone can color coordinate or design their own icons, if you have any artistic ability or if you can train in it to develop some skills, this will round out your resume nicely. Graphic design demand has tripled over the past year and continues to grow to over 1400 postings.
That’s it. These are the skills to have to ensure your resume is not up for long if needed at all. A full view of these skills and 40 more can be seen in our trends page should that interest you.
**** PHP/Apache/MySQL are the now and the future. ***
MySQL is out and out garbage. Only the brain-dead even think about using that buggy toy.
I agree that people do really appreciate it when you respond to their comments.
jQuery / Javascript isn’t going away any time soon. Neither is PHP… I think Python is making a push towards the top as well.
Overall pretty positive outlook.
Thank you for the article.
Hi all
I am new with odesk. I have 3 year exp in asp.net,silverlight,ajax and sql server.
I read some posts about PHP and ASP.NET. Now m very confused ….should i start learning PHP??
i mean which one is better PHP or ASP.NET??
An excellent informative read for us… Thank you for sharing.
I love this article.
Be careful reading this.
Quantity is not quality. I would say the top ten web developer skills for people who actually want jobs and not 10 dollar an hour sweatshit are:
1. .NET VB
2. .NET C#
3. J2EE
4. Objective-C
5. Flex
6. Silverlight
7. Oracle
8. SQL Server
9. Ruby
10. Perl
Most of these require computer science degrees, and in the case of Apple expensive gadgets. They are also agile and have many two-way tools. Most cannot be outsourced. Setting up the development environments is relatively beyond a guy making 5 dollars an hour too, given Windows servers rent for ten to one hundred times the rate of LAMP servers. Don’t be fooled and waste two years on PHP, unless you can learn PHP and C# at the same time.
Hi all
I am new with odesk. I have 3 year exp in asp.net,silverlight,ajax and sql server.
I read some posts about PHP and ASP.NET. Now m very confused ….should i start learning PHP??
i mean which one is better PHP or ASP.NET??
jQuery / Javascript isn’t going away any time soon. Neither is PHP… I think Python is making a push towards the top as well.
It shocking ASP.NET in not mentioned in the above comparative web development skills trends.
iPhone App Developer, PHP Developer, Web Developer / programmer at affordable cost.
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very nice article
Require urgently Junior Software Developer to work in the latest UI technology in NYC/NJ area. Free training in the latest UI technology will be provided for the right candidate.
Submit your resume and other details as soon as possible to rfernando@iopensystems.com
amazing information thanks for this/
In theory I’d like to write like this also – taking time and real effort to make a interesting article… but what can I say… I procrastinate a lot and never seem to get it done
This page is a walk-through for all the info
Announcement of a BUG..
The facebook connect is not working with this post.
it says as below :
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Please fix the issue..
Nice post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Thanks for the info!
I like your use of graphs to analyze the skills that are most in demand.
As for soft skills, I think that a willingness to learn is very very important. This guy talks a bit about it here http://www.theblogaholic.com/2011/01/22/most-important-software-development-skills/
Good and thanks to posting please keep it up
Thanks for the information. Can you let me know exactly which areas are difficult. I’m intrigued by the thoughts. Would love to get some more information about WHAT is hard to see clearly and WHY. At least from your perspective…. Thanks in advance.
Quantity is not quality. You all should know that. Shirish, these numbers are by keyword in the job posting title. We will look into web desinger as a term for a future posting. sorry.
this information very useful
I have been using oDesk for outsourced work since March, although not for PHP work so I cant comment too much on that. I have been very impressed though with the quality of work that has been performed.
Nice! I love this blog