First Ever Web Design Survey Results

rainhill writes "In April 2007, A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey's 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development (PDF) as practiced in the US and worldwide. Among the findings: over 70% of people in this field earn less than $60K per year. There is little gender bias in salary. And over 70% of Web workers post to a blog; this number shows very little dropoff with age."

And they made a PDF...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... at least it's not a giant image of text.

Re:And they made a PDF...

[ploafmaster general]

I never thought I'd say this, but R T F A. I know the post didn't link to the article itself, but I think we're all intelligent enough to go up a level or two in the URL to see the article itself.

Immediately below the download button you see:
"Findings From the Web Design Survey (1.6 MB PDF)"

I don't think 1.6 MB is too huge for us nerdy Slash-dotters with our high speed connections, especially when we've been warned. And I don't think any reader here can justify clicking the link without first knowing what file type it is.

Additional details about the PDF choice:
"Note: This PDF has been tagged for accessibility, however the graphics representing the complex charts do not yet have equivalents. An updated document will be available soon."

Anyway, they have the raw data available as well in multiple formats (with sizes indicated) so you can avoid charts if you want.

Sheesh.

Re:

[twistedsymphony]

bah... the could have used SVGs for the graphs... At least that's what all the cool web developers use.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day, we used characters for charts:

Option 1: @@@@@
Option 2: @@@@@@@@@@@@
Option 3: @@

That's beautiful, and don't ask me to draw you a pie chart, because I will.

Re:

[soliptic]

Eric Meyer (who I suppose might count [wikipedia.org] as a "cool web developer") wrote about the choices/process behind producing the graphs [meyerweb.com].

Re:

[soliptic]

D'oh - I linked you to the wrong entry in the blog, sorry. (Although it is still on-topic, in that it's about this survey.) This is the one talking about the graphing [meyerweb.com].

Re:

[fishdan]

The problem is not the charts, but the information itself. Although Google reads PDFs and puts them into it's index, PDF is fundamentally a printing format, and not easily searchable by a browser.

Having the raw data available is fine, but the raw fact is this -- they chose to not express this report in a web format, when it would have been trivial to do so. Also, they have the raw data available in ZIP files!!! Is there a browser out there that does not support gzip? (Well yes, of course, but the are s

Re:

[mstahl]

Interesting story: a while back on Craigslist in Chicago I saw a guy who wrote this ridiculous post to "gigs" that said—and I'm paraphrasing here—"I project that my company will be worth $300B in five years. I need an unpaid intern to do all of the technical work, since I don't know how to program." The response from the freelance community was fantastic, seriously. Tons of people posted response posts to his with photos of either their genitals or an extended middle finger in his direction. Thi

First ever?!

[sulli]

Nobody has done a survey of web designers since 1994? Bull-shit.

Includes the whole group?!

[CarpetShark]

This was a reasonably representative survey of all web designers? Bull-shit.

Re:

[codeshack]

Probably it's not a bad sample. I don't trust any web designer that doesn't read A List Apart -- it's pretty much the creme de la web design sources, both in terms of style, technique, and best practices. My old boss used to mandate it.

And yes, I am a shill. But they have taught me many clever things, and turned me into a CSS Nazi to boot. And I filled out the survey way back when it started (feels like awhile).

Re:

[Stooshie]

If you RTFS(urvey) it's a survey of a wide range of job types.

Re:

[Stooshie]

In fact, just realised the title is "First Ever Web Design Survey Results", Not Web Designer

Re:

[Lobster Quadrille]

Probably it's not a bad sample. I don't trust any web designer that doesn't read A List Apart

At my company, there's a lot of designers who don't read A List Apart. There's also a lot of designers who are very bad at it. I wouldn't hire my company to design a web site.

My point is, this is not a representative sample. Maybe representative of the good designers, but definitely not of all designers.

Re:

[McFadden]

There are a lot of bad designers, that still read A List Apart. Just like there are a lot of bad golfers, who follow Tiger Woods.

Re:

[CarpetShark]

There's only one site worth mandating, and that's w3.org. Even then, they could simply download the standards, and refer to them locally. You don't have to be a sheep following some website to be a good designer or web developer.

Re:

[The_Crowder]

Yeah, the title of this headline is completely misleading. The Usability Professionals' Association has been surveying professionals for several years. Go to their homepage [upassoc.org] and under News is the results (pdf warning) [upassoc.org] for the 2005 survey. Are these two surveys different? Yes. My point is that the title of this headline is completely misleading.

Bias?

[kripkenstein]

There is little gender bias in salary.

It would be better to say that there is little difference in salary; 'bias' has negative connotations of unfairness. As research in this area shows, it is hard to pinpoint which salary differences are actually discriminatory and which are not, but reflect objective factors (amount of hours worked, etc. etc.).

I don't mean to start an offtopic discussion, just wanted to point out that the choice of word there might bait people.

Re:Bias?

[foobsr]

I don't mean to start an offtopic discussion

You may turn that into one that is completely on topic by mentioning that their use of the term 'bias' might shine a light on the overall quality of their research on the basis of a self-selecting sample, which they are not shy to advertise to give a 'true' picture, which again shows that they do no less than nothing about statistics based research. They don't even come to a conclusive result regarding the count of items their questionnaire might have, 36 or 37 (here http://www.alistapart.com/articles/webdesignsurvey [alistapart.com] — does not matter, just a fence-post error.

However, the meta-result to me is that they again expose themselves as half-educated and overhyped. Yes, I do not particularly like them, along with Dash, Pirillo, ... you name them.

CC.

Definition Police

[cromar]

The use of the word "bias" in statistics means "a systematic distortion of a statistical result due to a factor not allowed for in its derivation." This meaning is quite different from that of the common usage of "bias." (Thanks NOAD.)

Re:

[oni]

That's clearly NOT the meaning that the authors intended, as evidenced by use of the word "perceived." This was a survey where they asked people, "do you perceive any bias here" and then they compared the salaries of people who perceived bias with those who did not. The only possible way to interpret the word bias in this context is unfair discrimination.

And the results are quite interesting. If a woman *thinks* there is discrimination, she tends to make more money than a woman who doesn't think there is

Re:

[myowntrueself]

It would be better to say that there is little difference in salary; 'bias' has negative connotations of unfairness.

Hello??

Gender bias in salary is, somehow, not unfair?

The '80s called. They want their bias back.

Re:

[kripkenstein]

Gender bias is unfair, of course. That question is, is the existing difference in average salary due to bias / discrimination, or other factors. The research community is divided on this issue, it is complex.

For example, women tend to work at more part-time positions, and part-time positions tend to get paid less per hour (workplaces prefer to hire full-time employees).

Re:

[kripkenstein]

I wasn't offended, and everything I said is true regardless of which gender has the lower salary.

Re:Bias?

[Surt]

Salaried workers don't get paid overtime, but they get paid for overtime in the form of bonuses and salary raises that reflect on the perceived or real performance that results from extra hours worked.

If you have a man who works 50 hours, and a woman who works 40 hours all year, and the man is 10% more productive as a result of his 25% longer hours, which are you more likely to reward with a larger raise?

Re:

[Surt]

How does that very large company decide who to promote?

I've only worked for small and medium size companies so far (< 1k employees). So I don't know how the big companies do it, but all the (5) companies i've worked for decided raises and promotions based on performance and networking, both of which you can do better if you work a few extra hours.

Re:

[Surt]

Thanks for responding. That fits well with what i've heard about big companies, and is one of the key reasons I've avoided working for them. I've had about 9% average annual raise over the last 14 years, and would put my resume out for a new job the day after I received a 4%.

Re:

[Surt]

I started at $33k, but otherwise you were right. But i'm now reasonably near the top of my pay scale, so my ability to keep that up is probably going to be limited.

Re:

[Surt]

I'm fairly sure that salary raises do in fact impact salary.

And for productivity, there are metrics in many areas. Web design may not be one, I don't know, I'm not in web design. Even if there are not precise measures, there may yet be ways that management can reasonably gauge performance (peer review, supervisor review, blind code review, etc).

What do you have to back up that assertion?

[Rix]

I find it entirely plausible that women, when averaged across a reasonably sized population, do less work for employers than men. Don't you think it's reasonable to conclude that women, in general, take more time to care for children?

Re:

[Surt]

While I'm sure women do work as hard, I'm fairly sure the statistics show they do not work as long.
Here's a couple of citations for that:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jul/wk1/art01.htm [bls.gov]
http://jada.ada.org/cgi/content/full/135/5/637 [ada.org] (specific to dentists)
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/ [nsf.gov]

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more, but there's some term for this I can't recall that would probably turn them up.

Re:

[Surt]

I think this is a matter of choosing the right employer. Don't work for big companies is the #1 rule. Small companies understand who really contributes to the bottom line. The visibility is much, much higher. Once a company hits about 1k employees, it becomes impossible for the leadership to see to the bottom, there's just too much information. At best, they can see what areas of the company are most effective. Individual contribution is lost in the volume.

Re:

[Surt]

That's an interesting point of view. Most employers are going to measure productivity in widgets per day/week/month/year rather than per hour. It is well established that productivity per hour does go down as hours increase (which was why I only claimed a 10% increase on 25% more hours). Most employers (I think) are going to reward the employee with the greater long term productivity.

Money not Time

[haakondahl]

I disagree. The man worked 10 hours of overtime every week, so the 25% additional time worked actually cost the company 37.5% (I think) more money. And this is what the baseline for productivity is: neither hours nor weeks, nor any other measure of time, but MONEY. A business wants to maximize productivity (and therefore dollars of revenue) per dollar of cost.

The woman produces 100% (as the standard) per dollar. The man produces only 110% of her production, but costs 137.5% of her cost. He is produc

Re:

[Surt]

This whole discussion was premised on salaried employees, not hourly. The man and the woman are presumed to be paid equally, regardless of hours. The question is what happens to those 2 employees after a year of the many working 25% more and being demonstrably 10% more productive over the course of that year. Which one will get the larger salary adjustment?

Re:

[haakondahl]

Ah. In that case, I agree. The woman is toast. I don't know any salaried folks who work only 40 hours.

Re:

[NMerriam]

Given 100 people, half men, half women, I would expect that they have the same distribution of salaries.

Assuming salaries are fixed, yes. But most salaries are negotiable -- and it has been shown that women generally wind up with worse deals from negotiations than men do. Whether that is because of cultural issues (women taught not to be assertive, others thinking they can always talk a woman down and therefore pushing harder) or not is a totally separate question from whether actual bias exists in salary

Good design also has to look good

[pzs]

A few years ago, I worked for the head of a major University computer science department in the UK. I was in charge of building the web page for our research project. My boss told me "whatever you do, my main preference in all these things is that it hast to look good."

For inspiration, I visited the home-page of this arch aesthete. I discovered that his page, entirely in an overlarge Times font, used big thick-bordered frames (with scroll bars) a fantastically pixellated jpg of him and big flashing "new!" buttons next to various bits of the page.

Somehow, I managed not to laugh next time I discussed the page with him.

Re:Good design also has to look good

[Stamen]

Style is a subtle thing, very subtle. A lot of people, simply can't distinguish good from bad. Really awesome design looks like anyone could of created it in 5 minutes; which of course they can't, but that's the genius of it.

For me it's music, I don't hear in a very wide range (so say my hearing tests), and I exasperate my co-worker, who is an audiophile, because I simply can't hear the difference, like he can. The "horrible" pop music, with terrible range, sounds the same as "good" music to me.

Re:

[HartDev]

I am glad that the people who make scam web pages and garbage sites have no design sense and give themselves away quickly. THIS IS NOT A SCAM is the best indicator ever! Especially when it is in large, bold, blinking red text!

Re:

[Yetihehe]

And a lot of people can't distinguish good and bad, but like me when it comes to design something, it WILL be bad even for them. Let's face it, most people can't design just like most people can't program (I think often it's only one of those two skills).

Re:

[Stamen]

I think often it's only one of those two skills

I completely disagree. I think most programmers just aren't interested in design and have spent all of 20 minutes, or less, thinking about it. If someone spent 20 minutes learning how to program, they'd hardly be any good at it.

What makes beautiful code --code that is simple yet complete, powerful yet flexible-- is the exact same things that makes beautiful design. I believe that "beauty" is an intrinsic truth of the universe; wether mathematical, musical, or visual. If you are creating, no matter what

Re:

[mini me]

But to be a good programmer, aesthetic ability is a requirement. The visual appearance of code is the most important factor in maintainability.

Re:Good design also has to look good

[brainproxy]

It makes sense that if he could not create a "stylish" page, he hired a professional web designer, (guessing you).

You should give him the benefit of the doubt. A lot of art critics are not, themselves, artists.

Sounds like he knew of this deficit an gave you the job.

Re:

[Tim C]

As another poster pointed out, he most likely knew that he couldn't create the sort of look he wanted, which is precisely why he hired you.

For my part, I can do HTML, JS, CSS, etc; but I'm a programmer, not a designer. You want functional, I'm your man. You want stylish, good looking - go talk to someone else. I'll happily do the back end, and integrate the finished HTML page to make it function, but you'll be wanting someone else to do the artistic stuff.

Surprised? Not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

~$60k/year or less sounds quite about right. Web design isn't rocket science.

People who don't suck at graphic design are a dime a dozen. People who can chop up a PSD and write valid XHTML are a dime a dozen. People who can apply cheap hacks to make it work in Internet Explorer are slightly more expensive at a quarter a dozen, but that's still damned cheap.

The real money's in development of all this fancy Web 2.0 Ajaxy crap, web-based services, et cetera. Bit more involved than mere 'web design'.

'sides,

Wrong survey

[Hatta]

A web design survey? I thought they were going to be asking web users how they felt about various web designs. That would be a survey I'd really like to see happen. Maybe us users could communicate to the designers exactly how we feel about their designs. Maybe they could ask how many web users like it when a website takes over the windowing functions your browser should be managing. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll do it myself TYVM. Or maybe they could ask how users feel about being tied to flash based in browser media players, instead of getting an old fashioned .avi to download. This is the kind of web design survey we really need.

Re:

[The Queen]

You're still assuming that the people who are PAYING for the websites to be built really care about (or have the capacity to understand) what the users would like. Even now, with all the research and data available for us designers to argue with for simplicity and usability, the folks who sign the check want what they want and as long as I need to pay rent, they'll get it.

That said, I've talked many, many clients out of building a site entirely in Flash - and they promptly found another designer.

Re:

[Womens Shoes]

A survey might not give accurate results because what people say they like is not always what they respond to. There's a pretty great presentation by Malcolm Gladwell [ted.com] about this.

For example, everyone says they dislike blue underlined links. But in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience there is no better way to let a user know where to click.

So I'd like to see the data you're looking for too... but I bet a test vs. a survey would yield very different results.

Re:

[Hatta]

I love blue underlined links.

Re:

[mstahl]

A lot of the stuff you're complaining about isn't really in the hands of web designers or developers. I will come clean, now, and confess that I have committed some of those sins you describe, but only at the urging of a client. And when the client's paying my bills, I do what they say, even if it feels a little dirty sometimes.

A couple of examples of bizarre client behaviour....

I once had a client (and I'm going to spare them the embarrassment of saying who they were; suffice it to say they're among the

Re:

[Hatta]

I've noticed a lot more sites are becoming static, instead of dynamic, because it's the easiest way to obtain cross browser support.

What does server side dynamic pages (PHP, etc) have to do with cross browser support? You can dynamically generate the exact same content you host statically, it just takes more processing power on the server.

But I'm a fan of the dynamic pages that fill the pages based on how big your window is.

A proper web browser will reflow the text on any web page static or dynamic. In fa

Re:

[Hatta]

Now I know and you know what users want as far as usability, and that's all fine and dandy. But I honestly don't care all that much about you as a user.

Then you, and your client, won't care if I don't read your site. There are billions of sites on the internet, if you want my eyes on your site you better make it nice for me to use. Otherwise I'll go read your competitors site.

So what's the problem? With a web page, you have statically-sized images in terms of pixels, but you have scalable text. Those two

Re:

[Hatta]

To clarify I meant static layouts, not static content. For example having the page 900 pixels wide, no matter what size the browser is. Examples of this cnn.com, walmart.com, bestbuy.com. These pages don't even fill the whole browser, except with white space or a repeated background, if you're past that static width.

OK, I see what you mean. I hate those fixed width sites with a passion.

This is true, but like I said I've seen a trend where companies are doing this static layout, because the dynamic way has

Re:

[NulDevice]

This came up on another site, recetnly - the discussion was the relative advantages of "liquid" versus fixed layouts in the age of The Giant Monitor.

Surprisingly there were good points to be made on both sides - liquid designs don't always scan well to the human eye when they flow out across a maximized, high-res 24" widescreen monitor (or even a 17", sometimes) - you can often end up with one very long line of text and some enormous menu bar with 5 options.

The upshot was that there wasn't really a hard-and

Re:

[Hatta]

If your browser is too wide for it to reflow text and look nice, you can always resize the window so it does look nice. With a fixed width page you're just fucked if it doesn't look right. The web designer should always let the browser do its job.

Re:

[NulDevice]

I think the argument was once you start requiring user intervention in any form - expanding or contracting a window, for example - to make the page look good, then the design has essentially failed.

I don't know if I fully agree with that - the browser *should* be able to do its job...but sometimes how the browser does its job and the requirements of the content conflict.

Glad it's not a profession that I chose

[jonnyj]

I know the average age of the respondents is pretty young, but those salaries are shockingly low.

Re:

[nostriluu]

I know lots of people who are independent web developers, and they pick and choose their clients not for the high pay, but for interest in their field (non profits, politics, small business, etc). As well, as an independent you can write off a lot of your expenses, so $60k translates to much more. Finally, you get a lot more freedom, which sometimes leads to not working all the time.

Re:Low? 60k for web design?

[Skadet]

Whoa there, cowboy. I see by your UID that you're probably an old-timer, so let me explain to you how things work now-a-days.

sorry web design is not nearly as difficult as many make it out to be.

Making a web page for your mom's cat? Sure, not a difficult thing. Creating slashcode? Drupal development? SQL architecture? That's worth more than $60k.

"Web pages are not critical", are you for real? You might not have seen this, but sites like MySpace, Friendster, et. al. are making more money than many "real" programs on "mainframes".

zomg, I think I just got trolled. I tip my hat to you, sir.

Re:Low? 60k for web design?

[RealSurreal]

I don't think you understand what "web design" is. A web designer doesn't go near a sql server.

Re:

[soliptic]

True, but RTFA: the report includes web developers, who almost certainly do, as well as information architects, usability consultants, project managers... it was open to the whole spectrum of web-related jobs.

Re:

[Poromenos1]

Or anything that doesn't actually get sent to the user.

Re:

[mstahl]

A web designer doesn't go near a sql server.

I do, and I consider myself most of the time to be a graphic designer. I'm a programmer by trade but I design printed items, web sites, clothes, things. I'm also the world's worst sculptor and a somewhat decent illustrator/cartoonist.

However, for most designers, you're right. It's incredibly frustrating actually working with them because I could speak their language just fine but they couldn't speak mine, and I think it really bothered them too. That's why, at around $60K, I was making more than most of

Re:

[49152]

Bzzt, wrong again ;-)

Web designer != Web developer

But sometimes the same person can do both jobs.

Re:

[Surt]

If you're designing sql architecture, that's not web design in the conventional sense, and I doubt that is who they are considering in this salary survey. Our sql architects make 150k+. Our web designers make a lot less.

Re:

[Surt]

I'm not talking about get and select, that's sql development, not sql architecture.

Re:

[NickFitz]

I see by your UID that you're probably an old-timer

243324? He's a young whippersnapper.

He certainly talks rubbish, but that's due to severe intellectual deficiency, not age: note such warning signs as the use of "your" instead of "you're", misuse or non-use of commas, "its" instead of "it's", "desinger" instead of "designer", complete lack of understanding of any technology whatsoever...

I diagnose a low-grade troll, but his gross stupidity isn't due to being an old-timer; he was born with it.

Re:

[sheldon]

Creating slashcode? Drupal development? SQL architecture? That's worth more than $60k.

$65k maybe.... but not a nickel over!

Re:

[Shivetya]

you missed the primary issue I raised.

The four I can get my hands on doing the front seen by others, they aren't responsible for writing the services that get the data, maintain the data, or update it. Perhaps it is different at other places but what I deal with are people are merely presenting data from established systems.

Making more money? If you ask management mainframers and similar large systems only cost money. The problem is that its where the business's data resides and keeping it going and brin

Re:

[Dausha]

"Making a web page for your mom's cat? Sure, not a difficult thing. Creating slashcode? Drupal development? SQL architecture? That's worth more than $60k."

None of that is web design, which is what the GPP was referring to. You are describing web development. Web _design_ involves making things look good, not making complex behaviors work.

Re:

[Chineseyes]

Yeah, if they were a C++ programmer or programmer in a real language on a mini or mainframe I love when people talk about real languages. Please define what a real language is. I am not a web developer in fact I all of the work I have ever done was c, c++, backend php development, and some php internals. We are rapidly approaching a point where a very large percentage of applications will be able to be written in scripting languages (BE AFRAID!!) because of the amount of system resources available to

Re:

[butterwise]

The reason it seems low is because not many people are solely "designers" any more, and more often than not are asked to bridge over between design and development. I count myself among those ranks, and while I may not be the world's greatest PHP/MySQL developer, I know my way around the code and can solve a lot of the problems that a "developer" might normally be asked to tackle, leaving them to go after the big fish. I don't just create designs, chop up PSD and write HTML.

Re:

[timoni]

I work in SF as a web/UI designer and I make more than $60K. There's a huge scale in terms of website quality, front-end and backend, and you usually get what you pay for. (BTW I think you're underpaid.)

Re:Low? 60k for web design?

[lena_10326]

sorry web design is not nearly as difficult as many make it out to be. Some of the cumbersome tools and even client requirements can make it work - but its not like writing the back end that serves these pages or runs the business.

I've done both: server work and front end web design. The difficult part of server work is usually integration with other systems as well as designing for performance. There are two back-ends: the internal architecture that encompasses your database, support scripts, and custom server code, and then there is the CGI layer, which queries and formats the data for presentation. The easy part of back-end work is with CGI scripts, which is the link between the real back-end and the front-end (browser). Writing CGI scripts to serve those pages is stupid simple, usually performed by junior developers, so it's not like all back-end work is touchable only by the resident genius guru.

Your insulting comment is correct in that parts of web design work is easy. Processing images, slicing pages, and uploading them is quite easy, but so is writing a CGI form that gathers a user's information and inserts a record into a database. The difficult part of web design is with managing the information architecture of the site, integrating various applications and their project files, as well as dealing with browser and CSS idiosyncrasies. Those aspects are similar to database architecture, systems integration and project files, and dealing with operating system and language idiosyncracies. It's not surprising to me that the difficult parts of both happen to be logically very similar.

The reason web designers are paid less is due to the fact it's a creative and desirable job, so more people are going to apply. It's also a field in which your portfolio makes or breaks you. You are judged quite heavily on the visual quality of your work. Producing visually stunning output, does does not mean you're a HTML/CSS/Javascript god. The problem with this scale of judgment is that it's based on what a manager sees. You and management see a nice illustration and you drastically under-estimate how time consuming creating that illustration can be. Of course, you don't try to reproduce it yourself and find out, but you judge anyway.

Software developers are judged with a different scale, which is generally work experience and education level. You aren't judged by the quality of your code*. You get to hide behind the cloak of mystery, safe in the knowledge management will never see or understand your work. Management only sees whether your product performs the task it's supposed to do or not. It could be an architectural nightmare slapped together with a fragile hodge-podge non-framework--a spaghetti code mess. But, do you lose income if you produce such a colossal piece of shit? No. You get a raise because you "optimized" a query to return results back in 2 seconds instead of the 10 seconds as before.

Web pages are not critical.

Which, you posted using a web page. Irrelevant, but funny.

What does amaze me is how long they can take to deliver certain changes, the only thing slower are C++ programmers on our pc based servers.

Maintenance changes to the back-end often follows along the lines of adding a new column or table to the database, so it's not like those changes you make are all that complicated to begin with.

60K low? Yeah, if they were a C++ programmer or programmer in a real language on a mini or mainframe.

Difficulty is relevant. If you're a mainframe developer, you are expected to know your trade. Lots of people can't do what you can do; accountants, lawyers, salesman, delivery boys, etc. Big deal. I know what you do is not that difficult. I've done work in assembler and writing network server processes that many consider "difficult", but in truth it wasn't. Knowing how to do it doesn't make me smarter than a we

Re:

[mstahl]

You get a raise because you "optimized" a query to return results back in 2 seconds instead of the 10 seconds as before.

That's why there's acts_as_enterprisey [agilewebdevelopment.com] for us Rails developers.

45k in california, man.

[Skadet]

I live in a metro area of California, have a B.A. from the UC, am in my mid-20s with no kids/wife/mortgage, have been building web sites and learning web technology for 10 years, give or take, and am one of the more sociable, agreeable nerds I know. I have 5 years of hands-on LAMP/js/css/Flash/AS experience (as in, got paid to do some work for someone)

I make $45k.

At least it's up from my first post-college job at Clear Channel Radio -- that was $43k.

The problem is the guy right above me in the reply t

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...there are 33,000 web professionals.

I thought that, for many people, it was very much an "on the side" activity.

Oblig. web design site.

[jackpot777]

I occasionally take a look at Web Pages That Suck [webpagesthatsuck.com] to get a feel for what NOT to do.

In summary: don't be doing this [hrodc.com]. It's not big, and it's not clever.

Re:

[monkeyboythom]

Holy crap.

It's the mother that spawned MySpace!

Re:

[hobo sapiens]

hrodc.com, wow. I mean, that's so bad it's impressive. 2.75M page size! No wonder it takes forever to load. That's just as bad as hvysl.org but for entirely different reasons.

Re:

[Stooshie]

... It's not big, and it's not clever ...

I agree it's not clever, but boy was it big!

Re:

[alyawn]

In summary: don't be doing this [hrodc.com]. It's not big, and it's not clever.

You need to warn people w/ a NSFW. I practically fell out of my chair!

Re:

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

That's absolutely beyond belief...

Incredibly, they do offer web design courses:
http://www.hrodc.com/WEB.DESIGN.htm [hrodc.com]

(Surely it's a joke though? A standard page format, each one populated by "Eliza"?)

How the fuck?

[r_jensen11]

How the fuck does one page have more than 2MB of content to download, excluding audio and videos?

Re:

[fishdan]

ok I'll bite, what does that show about FF threading model? Rendered in 5.13 secs on my gaming machine in FF 2.0.0.7 and 9 secs in IE7? I don't mean this as a slam -- if you've got knowledge, please dish.

Re:

[deftcoder]

Well, Firefox on Linux is a bit different.

While that page was loading, both cores were 100% utilized on this laptop. I couldn't click on any other tabs, and the Firefox window was ignoring input for a good 15 seconds straight.

Also, 2.0.0.7 is out of date. You should update!

I don't know what's scarier

[MeditationSensation]

That there are 33,000 web design "professionals" out there... or that they have enough downtime to fill out a silly survey. ;-)

About the wages

[Anonymous Coward]

The low wage made by most web designers is a product of supply and demand. The barriers to entry for web design are low. In other words, almost anyone can create a web page and call themselves a designer.

The sign industry went through the same problem when it computerized. Prior to computerization, signmakers had to have the skill to produce letters using a brush. After computerization, anybody could crank out vinyl letters quickly and cheaply. What the signmakers learned was that, if you wanted to make decent money, you actually had to be a good designer. People will pay good money for signs that work. IMHO, people will also pay good money for websites that work. Ah but there's the rub. WORK. For a sign, 'work' means that you get twice as many customers walking into your business. It probably means the same for a website.

To prosper, web designers should probably know a lot more about 'design' (design doesn't mean 'pretty' or 'eye candy') and they should know a lot more about marketing.

PS, to the major (radio, tv and print) advertising company whose website is very pretty but takes five minutes to load - you guys are clueless.

Re:

[Bogtha]

IMHO, people will also pay good money for websites that work. Ah but there's the rub. WORK. For a sign, 'work' means that you get twice as many customers walking into your business. It probably means the same for a website.

Sadly, it does not. A person who knows nothing about sign-making can easily look at a sign and see whether it "works" or not. A person who knows nothing about web design can't look at a website and judge whether it "works" or not. Chances are they are using Internet Explorer. Do

Re:

[ednopantz]

More important would be to control for hours worked. Annual salary is meaningless without reference to the number of hours it took to get there.

What About IE?

[baomike]

They didn't ask how many designed web site that were usable only with IE.
and then why?

Arrgh

[wsanders]

There actually seem to be very few IE-only sites left. Firefox 2 is VERY good about dealing with IE-centric sites. The compatibility problems are with earlier versions of IE, and earlier versions of Firefox.

And with the giant turd-ball of shite known as Flash 9.

We just went through this with a design company that others-who-shall-not-be-named hired to "design" our new corporate web site. They delivered pages that were only compatible with IE7 and Flash 9. Actually, they worked with Firefox and Flash 9, too,

Not really just design here...

[sc00ch]

If you read the results you'll find its actually asking anyone involved with the web really. This really annoys me coming from such a respected publication.
The Job Title for example shows 25% are in fact developers, 19.9% are web designers and even includes writers/editors making up the other 55%. Without understanding which job titles correlate to all the other questions it seems a bit pointless. I know some of the biases compare the different titles but not many.

Re:

[AVee]

Thats cool, even I could be included. I just wrote a line of text and it's on a webpage...

But How Many Web Designers Read Slashdot?

[RobotRunAmok]

I mean, actual Designers? Sure, plenty of HTML/CSS jockeys do, but that's a whole different discipline. And I wonder what the ratio of HTML jockey to designer was amongst the 33,000 people who responded to the survey was...

My experience -- not academia, not corporate intranet, not "blogosphere," not Church Group, but entertainment industry -- is that people pay pretty well for a new site design. But my guess is that better than half of the people who responded to the survey hardly even speak the same lan

Perception of design.

[MaWeiTao]

There's a big problem design in general faces. It's seriously undervalued. And I think the problem stems from accessibility. Desktop publishing has inspired a revolution in design, but at the same time it's been very detrimental to the industry.

It has made design tools pervasive. It's created this attitude that good design is something anyone can do provided they know how to use to the software. It's completely screwed with expectations on the part of clients. Some guy in sales believes it should take me a

Not enough VACATION

[careysb]

Interesting (and lots of) statistics, but what struck me the most was that over 50% of the respondents were getting 3 weeks or less of vacation a year. That includes people with a wide range of longevity in their jobs and years in the profession.

$60k!!

[jshriverWVU]

Maybe I'm not getting paid enough but 60k is the benchmark!? Personally I'd be grateful to make 35-40k and that's senior admin level. Am I getting screwed?

Re:

[/dev/trash]

Do you work with me? I make just under 28k.