In the end, naturally, it’s up to what developer it is, not the trade. It’s about experience, personality, education and so on, but also about availability in the market. Then, sadly, people boost their resumes to no end, which is just a download spiral for what people customers actually get from the developer in the end vs. what they expected and paid for.

I’d say that there are probably a good deal of people that think they can develop web interfaces, but I would say that at least here in Sweden, seriously skilled Interface Developers are hard to find.

I think Matthias hit the head right on the nail with:

As everyone and their mother claims they can quickly throw together a web interface, and as things like accessibility, web standards and search engine friendliness are still more or less invisible to most, they can’t tell if you’re a great web-interface button pusher or a crap one.

The price though, in the end, comes down to how you can sell it to the customer. In my mind it’s about motivating different skill sets and how they will make it better, but if that doesn’t seem to struck home, the sales man has to be versatile and adjust the selling points.

And no, Oskar, I won’t name the company mentioned in the post.

My perspective on the Australian experience of IT in general and the Web in practice is we have a chicken and egg scenario - IT company advertises for developer with 5 years experience in about 8 different specialty languages / skills, therefore there is a culture that people juice up their resume to fit the pattern. Then everyone gets unhappy. I’ve read resumes that said ‘Java programming’ and I know for a fact they wrote ‘Hello World’ about 6 years ago, and they have XHTML and CSS but have to email and ask how to change their keywords?

About all I can suggest is getting a name for quality work is going to win out in the end and people will hunt you out as a specialist or at least a shortlisted option. Blogging is good because it markets you to the right community, personal marketing is more important than ever.

Ultimately the difference between good interface design and bad is that the client will make money using good rather than bad design. There is a lot of science behind it. Take that a step further to coding specialisation and the value adds.

K I have to run - 15 minutes to get to work! ouch…

in this craft, real-world experience is more important than ever

Here, in Italy, things goes exactly in the opposite way: if You have a generic University degree but You don’t absolutely know anything about Web, Interfaces, JavaScript, AJAX, (x)HTML, CSS, XSL(T), different server-side program languages, best practices (… on and on …) You’ll be hired instead of certified skilled “about 10 years experience” Web Architet / Developer (just me, for example :P) … and that’s probably why Italian IT is about 36th position for both tech and quality … quite hilarious!!!

Of course people don’t say that, because they don’t want to piss you off, and you’re still the one giving them a web site/application/whatever in the end. But whenever things have turned ugly in my working history, this opinion shines through, sometimes even inside the company.

Your salary is then determined by how easy it is to find another person that knows about this magic button. As an application is, usually, much longer entirely invisible, the application button is accepted as more expensive. As everyone and their mother claims they can quickly throw together a web interface, and as things like accessibility, web standards and search engine friendliness are still more or less invisible to most, they can’t tell if you’re a great web-interface button pusher or a crap one.

Any chance you could define “web developer”?

Someone who builds Web applications - skill set would include: X/HTML, CSS, JavaScript, server-side scripting, SQL, basic component development (COM, Java Beans, or .NET libraries) and Web server configuration.

my company would have a real hard time replacing me

There is one way to find out. Ask for a slightly higher annual pay raise than you are normally used to receiving. If the answer is no, then you are easily replaceable.

I don’t mean to be cold about this topic. I have worked for 4 different employers in various job titles including software engineer, Web developer, etc. and I have experienced different salary issues with every employer. So from my experience, salary levels depend on the perception of how replaceable you are.

Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine your boss having difficulty explaining the difference between some of these types of activities to clients who aren’t in the web design business.

(Guess what I do for a living…)