NYCPHP Meetup

[Chris Shiflett]

--- crisscott at netzero.com wrote:
> All of this growth in PHP use is great but what I want to know is
> where is all of the growth in the PHP jobs? Especially in NY.

I just moved here about three months ago, and I found the most opportunities
through craigslist.org.

One disappointing thing about the job market is the number of inexperienced
people who are doing the design and recruitment for large software projects. If
you want to be doing any serious programming, it is almost essential that you
find a technologically-savvy company. For example, mod_perl developers tend to
flock to Ticketmaster/CitySearch or Amazon. Serious PHP/MySQL developers
migrate toward Yahoo!. Python/C experts go for Google. Things like that. Google
happens to be hiring a lot of developers for their next-generation search
engine, and they are hiring them for their NYC office.

While it seems counterintuitive, I think the job market for advanced developers
is smaller than beginners, simply because the people hiring tend to only
understand that which is beneath them. It makes for a challenging situation if
you don't want to sacrifice your standards to find a job, but sometimes gainful
employment is more important. This decision is entirely up to you, of course,
but I recommend keeping your standards high. It will make you happier down the
road.

I held my ground when looking for a job and turned my head from the Microsoft
shops and Java-based financial institutions. While doing so limited my choices,
it actually helped me in the end, because my choices were all *good* choices.
If you lower your standards too much, you will find yourself trying to decide
between jobs that you don't want, and it is tough to pass up job offers (I had
to turn down three due to my strict time constraints) when everyone is telling
you how hard the job market is here.

So, there's some advice based on recent experience. Hope it helps.

Chris

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