Web Developer Jobs Are For Everybody!

Most web development sites seem to be talking about web developer jobs at the moment and how there won’t be enough web developers to fill all of these vacancies by the year 2020.

So in order to prove or disprove this, I did a bit of digging to see whether the growth of the Web, Smartphones, connectivity and migration of businesses online is really going to need us to become developers or simply learn a programming language as an essential job skill in the years ahead.

2009 Recession

Back in 2009 the global recession struck and the economy took a bit of a tumble. Unemployment was rife, but while all that was going on, there was a mighty surge in the IT industry as businesses fled the crumbling high street in favour of the internet, which promised consumers affordable prices and businesses greatly reduced overheads.

How was this exodus facilitated?

By developers of all disciplines.

According to figures from IT Jobs Watch, in the UK alone, the total number of developer jobs spiked 50% and has continued to steadily rise year on year 3% ever since.

If we filter through the different types of developer jobs, there are some clear winners and losers. But virtually everything to do with development on the web is rising.

The number of front end web developer roles peaked sharply mid-2009 and recently they’ve spiked again at the start of 2013.

Possibly this is why many tech sites are talking about web developer careers at this moment in time.

The spike also seems to have tied in with the latest bought of major retailers going into administration, ringing another death knell for the high street in favour of shopping online instead.

And this week comScore reported an all-time high in US desktop searches of 20.4 billion in March. That’s not including mobile search.

These stats would indicate that as the number of people online grows, businesses are continuously challenged to develop their online presence or risk being left being by the changing markets.

As a result, web developers are needed in greater numbers than ever to facilitate this migration and sustain it in the long term.

Web Developers Wanted

However, there’s just one problem in this digital revolution – not enough people know how to code.
So knowing a programming language (or two) is going to be an essential career skill in the years ahead.

For example, Code.org has forecast (based on current trends) that by 202, there will be 1.4 million computing jobs in the US, but only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them.

While these stats may seem rather ambitious, it remains likely that demand for web developers will far outstrip our resources.

It also raises questions whether or not you actually need a college degree to become a web developer, because computer programming languages can be self-taught using free online resources.

Meanwhile, employers in the IT industry are known to favour work experience, self tuition and personal projects before college degrees.

So suddenly we have a rapidly growing and very lucrative niche in the jobs market which may not be dependent on University qualifications.

The next question is whether business needs this many full-time web developers when most people working in online jobs know a small amount of HTML, even if it is mostly for linking and turning text Bold.

But time will tell whether the average online marketing exec needs to have an in depth knowledge of CSS, HTML and a little bit of JavaScript or if every marketing team will include a web developer.

The number of contractor web developers in the UK seems to have fallen by 20% since last year, so while this doesn’t correlate with the rise in permanent web developers, these figures could demonstrate that web developer positions are becoming more permanent, long term roles within companies to accommodate a constantly growing online presence for businesses.

Either way, the future looks bright for anyone learning to code.