career

This is a short story from my book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants:

A long time ago -- 1991 to be exact -- a friend of mine named Joe was a contractor for the aerospace company I worked at. Just like a consultant, Joe was paid by the hour.

In 1993, I took a leap of faith, and began a career as a software consultant. I initially worked at a "full-service" computer company, left that company after three years, lived out a one-year noncompete agreement, then started my own business named "Mission Data" in 1996. I sold that company in 2007, started Alexander Consulting in 2008, and later created Valley Programming when I moved to Alaska. During these years my salary went from $30,000 to over $300,000 per year.

CakePHP and Drupal jobs, 2011 - Way back in December, 2009, I first started looking at the PHP job market, specifically CakePHP, Drupal, and LAMP/PHP job openings. I forgot to run the queries again this past December, but I just took a few moments to update them, so ... here is a quick look at the PHP developer job market in January, 2011.

Wow, a friend of mine sent me an email yesterday that echoes my sentiments exactly, and he doesn't hold anything back. With his permission, I'm sharing it here:

Man, I'd rather die than create another friggin' web app. I mean, who really gives a crap about web apps? What the **** are these apps doing for the real good of the world? Who cares if you can order a pizza online, or share photos easier than we did 10 years ago? I just don't want to look back on my life and think that I spent it creating friggin' web apps.

For anyone making a New Year's resolution of finding a new developer/programming job, here is a collection of links to my "developer jobs" articles that I've written over the last few weeks.