3 ms·

What other specialisms aside from WebGL/graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

by jblok 11y ago

svisser 11y ago
Build / release engineering.
- iagooar 11y ago
  Could you elaborate, please?
  - JamesBarney 11y ago
    Many enterprise organizations have a build/deployment process that is archaic, error prone, and takes lots of time.(in terms of man hours, and deployment latency.) A build or release engineer comes in and takes that process and transforms it into the press of button. Basically just build/deployment automation. But the benefits to an org are vast for just a couple of months of the build engineers time. -Deploys much faster deployment, shortening the feedback loop between end users and development -Is far less error prone. The manager doesn't have to explain to his boss why development started deploying last night at 6pm but now it's 10 am the next day and the software still doesn't work. -No longer has to pay someone to sit there and baby sits builds all the time. I've worked with a couple of release experts and they've always been extremely valuable.
    - iagooar 11y ago
      Now that you say it, it is both something I always missed and would love to do. Especially, if you work with Rails, deployment / release times can be really slow. What about the operations aspect of the job? What is the state-of-the-art nowadays?
  - codingvelocity 11y ago
    Not the original person, but in any organization with a non trivial amount of code needs someone that is really on top of managing how the applications build and how dependencies mesh together. There's many tools to learn and leverage (in java you have ant/ivy, maven, gradle) and can easily take up a fairly large amount of time to organize. If done properly it can also prevent certain project failure.
    - charlieflowers 11y ago
      It's definitely true. But does it lead to money? We developers think it's logical that it should lead to money, but does it?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
heynk 11y ago
Security. Also 'growth hacking'; I'm not sure if that will actually up your salary, but knowing "everything" about SEO, analytics, a/b testing, email marketing, blah blah can definitely specialize you within an org. EDIT: Employers also hire for 'tech stack' specialization, even though it's usually not necessary. For example, I'm only really recruited because I have demonstrate-able Rails expertise. In reality, I've also worked in Node.js and Java environments, and I'm pretty much just as productive after a few weeks.
- mpeg 11y ago
  "Growth hacking" definitely increases your salary, but it's really in consulting where you can leverage your marketing skillset to get a much higher rate (obligatory patio11 blog reference)
base13 11y ago
You can always specialize by domain. It's not too hard to take general web development experience and apply it to finance for a nice pay raise. You can do even better by transitioning away from web stuff to "core" parts of financial systems like trading or risk systems.
lnanek2 11y ago
You may not realize it, but a lot of web developers still only know things like ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP, etc.. So knowing modern languages and APIs like Go, Ruby on Rails, Python, NodeJS JavaScript, etc. is already a step toward specialization. Another frequent ask I see from clients is knowing modern streaming methods like Web Sockets, Comet, Meteor, etc. which is another level again. Past that their is mobile development, which can be done in HTML/JS on platforms like Cordova, and also scaling and deployments. It's often different to write something that can run on hundreds of servers at once than a single web server, for example.
fbr 11y ago
You can imagine everything, you "just" have to find a niche big enough (ex: security, performances, SEO, AWS, varnish specialist...)

What other specialisms aside from WebGL/graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

by jblok 11y ago

What other specialisms aside from WebGL/graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

svisser 11y ago

Build / release engineering.

iagooar 11y ago
Could you elaborate, please?
- JamesBarney 11y ago
  Many enterprise organizations have a build/deployment process that is archaic, error prone, and takes lots of time.(in terms of man hours, and deployment latency.) A build or release engineer comes in and takes that process and transforms it into the press of button. Basically just build/deployment automation. But the benefits to an org are vast for just a couple of months of the build engineers time. -Deploys much faster deployment, shortening the feedback loop between end users and development -Is far less error prone. The manager doesn't have to explain to his boss why development started deploying last night at 6pm but now it's 10 am the next day and the software still doesn't work. -No longer has to pay someone to sit there and baby sits builds all the time. I've worked with a couple of release experts and they've always been extremely valuable.
  - iagooar 11y ago
    Now that you say it, it is both something I always missed and would love to do. Especially, if you work with Rails, deployment / release times can be really slow. What about the operations aspect of the job? What is the state-of-the-art nowadays?
- codingvelocity 11y ago
  Not the original person, but in any organization with a non trivial amount of code needs someone that is really on top of managing how the applications build and how dependencies mesh together. There's many tools to learn and leverage (in java you have ant/ivy, maven, gradle) and can easily take up a fairly large amount of time to organize. If done properly it can also prevent certain project failure.
  - charlieflowers 11y ago
    It's definitely true. But does it lead to money? We developers think it's logical that it should lead to money, but does it?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

heynk 11y ago

Security. Also 'growth hacking'; I'm not sure if that will actually up your salary, but knowing "everything" about SEO, analytics, a/b testing, email marketing, blah blah can definitely specialize you within an org. EDIT: Employers also hire for 'tech stack' specialization, even though it's usually not necessary. For example, I'm only really recruited because I have demonstrate-able Rails expertise. In reality, I've also worked in Node.js and Java environments, and I'm pretty much just as productive after a few weeks.

mpeg 11y ago
"Growth hacking" definitely increases your salary, but it's really in consulting where you can leverage your marketing skillset to get a much higher rate (obligatory patio11 blog reference)

base13 11y ago

You can always specialize by domain. It's not too hard to take general web development experience and apply it to finance for a nice pay raise. You can do even better by transitioning away from web stuff to "core" parts of financial systems like trading or risk systems.

lnanek2 11y ago

You may not realize it, but a lot of web developers still only know things like ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP, etc.. So knowing modern languages and APIs like Go, Ruby on Rails, Python, NodeJS JavaScript, etc. is already a step toward specialization. Another frequent ask I see from clients is knowing modern streaming methods like Web Sockets, Comet, Meteor, etc. which is another level again. Past that their is mobile development, which can be done in HTML/JS on platforms like Cordova, and also scaling and deployments. It's often different to write something that can run on hundreds of servers at once than a single web server, for example.

fbr 11y ago

You can imagine everything, you "just" have to find a niche big enough (ex: security, performances, SEO, AWS, varnish specialist...)