The Market for PHP Developers

Below are a couple of links which will show how much things have changed for PHP Developers over the past one and a half years. The demand for PHP/MySQL Developers with LAMP experience has skyrocketed while the supply has stayed the same or it seems even to have diminished with some developers moving onto other languages (i.e. C#, .Net) or more senior, less-technical roles. The first link is very interesting and points out how incredibly difficult it is to find good PHP Developers and when you do find them, how expensive they are. The second link is for the UK, however NY and London are very similar markets in terms of the supply and demand for finance and IT applicants.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2004/08/24/php-job-trends/
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php%20developer.do
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3697896

It is hard to exactly quantify salaries, but I can at least give you a general idea about what PHP Developers are demanding at different levels in NYC. PHP/MySQL Developers:(1-2 yrs) - $60,000-$70,000(2-4 yrs) - $70,000-$90,000(4+ yrs) - $95,000+ ….and these figures are for good, solid developers with strong communication skills, decent education, etc. Basically these are figures for candidates who are placeable.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about these numbers or if you’d like to discuss specifics. Take a look at these #’s below. The job ads for PHP has “practically doubled” since this time last year……In our world that is amazing!!!

For job ads requesting open source skills, Dice has seen the following growth since Jan ’07, Melde says: • PHP: Practically “doubled since January,” he says. • Python: 72% • MySQL: 50% • Ruby on Rails: 121%. But this category is “still small in absolute terms,” he says. • Perl: 22%. Perl, Melde notes, “is not so sexy, but it makes the Web go ‘round.”