Designer fears for web industry’s future

I myself am a young web developer at 17 working in London, I began working as one as soon as I left secondary school but had been teaching myself for a long time before that. The only incentive I ever had to teach myself and become a professional was a love for code in general.

I only know of one other person my age that remotely understands web development, although he does not want to be one in the future.

I share your fear for the industry as a whole. My whole life so far has been based around it, I want it to thrive.

I think it is running quite smoothly at the moment. But I do not think enough is being done to inspire new developers. The only reason I began is because I am inquisitive and my friend showed me how to display a dialog box in VBA via Microsoft Word (I know right...).

If my school is anything to go by, only around two or three people will come out of each school per year with the drive to become some sort of developer.

I hope more is done to show children in school how programs and websites are created, and to show them that programming can be fun and rewarding.

In order for the industry to really fix this problem we need to get to 'kids' at a younger age and the problem is the education system's poor understanding of what our industry does. It's easy to explain/understand what a mechanic, a plumber, a joiner or even an IT technician does and therefore its easy to set a school leaver up for a position in those industries, but ask a comprehensive school teacher what a user interface designer or a PHP developer does and they wouldn't know where to start.

I know this because I have a 14 year old sister choosing the subjects she'll study in the next 2 years and having attended the 'options evening' the school seems to think Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and flyer design are the perfect modules for a future in 'web design'. The games industry unfortunately suffers the same fate year on year.

I agree that Mark Bolton's Apprenticeships are a fantastic idea but again the industry is often concerned more with profit margins than training the next generation of employees and this is the case even more so through the past few years when things have been tight financially and we've seen a lot of agencies go to the wall.

For me courses such at FDA Web Design run by @libwella at Newcastle College are are by far a more realistic and promising prospect versus apprenticeships.

Whilst they rely and benefit heavily from industry input this is more about time resources than financial resources, meaning industry can work with these courses to help a higher number of students rather than just the 1 or 2 lucky to get onto an apprenticeship.

I agree with Oliver ^ - this government needs to recognize the opportunities this industry has to offer and bring in industry savvy web professionals to teach at schools and Universities. How many professional web designers/developers today are self-taught.

I have heard many graduates say that they have left University confused by their teachers and they have learned all they know using blogs and books. It's not good because so many talented youngsters are missing out on what could be a rewarding career - instead they would rather smash up towns and businesses, never achieving anything in life!

In order for the industry to really fix this problem we need to get to 'kids' at a younger age and the problem is the education system's poor understanding of what our industry does. It's easy to explain/understand what a mechanic, a plumber, a joiner or even an IT technician does and therefore its easy to set a school leaver up for a position in those industries, but ask a comprehensive school teacher what a user interface designer or a PHP developer does and they wouldn't know where to start.

I know this because I have a 14 year old sister choosing the subjects she'll study in the next 2 years and having attended the 'options evening' the school seems to think Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and flyer design are the perfect modules for a future in 'web design'. The games industry unfortunately suffers the same fate year on year.

I agree that Mark Bolton's Apprenticeships are a fantastic idea but again the industry is often concerned more with profit margins than training the next generation of employees and this is the case even more so through the past few year when things have been tight financially and we've seen a lot of agencies go to the wall.

For me courses such at FDA Web Design run by @libwella at Newcastle College are by far a more realistic and promising prospect than apprenticeships. A course that has the backing of an educational establishment but teaches real industry ready skills (...and I know I've hired students from this course).

Whilst they rely and benefit heavily from industry input this is more about time that experienced agencies to the course, rather than the financial commitment of hiring someone as a junior or otherwise. Courses like Libby's mean that industry can work with a higher number of students rather than the 1 or 2 lucky enough to make it on to an apprenticeship, meaning more young people come out of the other side ready for work.

I don't think employer expectations are too high. I think that standard 4-year education seriously lacks giving students the knowledge and tools they need to compete. As someone who graduated from a highly ranked visual communications college at a university, I wasn't able to find relevant work until I had a couple really hands on internships and projects in the industry that gave me something worth putting into my portfolio.

Had I not been so persistent about learning things on my own, I would've come out of college knowing barely any current HTML and CSS. The first class was about tables. Why are they even ENCOURAGING making table based layouts in the first HTML class? Absolutely not JS/Jquery/Mootools, etc. classes.

The major was more geared towards making Flash Developers, but there were only 2 classes on Flash. 1 being timeline based animations and sites, and the 2nd one trying to cram actionscript 3 down your throat in less than 10 weeks.

With the rate that design and development standards change, universities just can't keep their programs relevant. I started college with CS2 and Macromedia and ended it needing to upgrade to CS4. I largely found my education a waste of time and money, and would advise that people seek out other means of training themselves for and entering the web design/development field.

There are classes you can take, TONS of online resources, internships you can have, freelance work available for people on a budget. Don't rely solely on your college degree, because while the employers are looking for that in most cases, it just isn't enough alone.

One issue is the web industry is slowly becoming too high level. My interest in the web was sparked by its low level simplicity: writing scripts that directly outputted text, which in turn, made significant visual changes in a browser with lots of control over it.

The web is an abstract idea, but it is simple to understand. In the past decade I have watched as more abstract layers have been built on top of each other – to a point where you are no longer building websites, merely tweaking frameworks, accessing objects and interacting with APIs.

These tools are good for productivity, but I am not sure they spark interest. There is a reason why we saw bedroom programmers flooding the market in the 80s and early 90s, web developers in the late 90s and more recently projects like Arduino attracting hobbyists, even smartphone apps are interesting when kept simple.

It also seems that there are a lot of self taught web designers out there with massive gaps in their ability, certainly on a coding ability, this belittles the industry when these fools armed with a template and a little wordpress knowledge are pertaining to be web designers. Of course this is great for the people who do know, as their salaries are higher with skills shortages.

I would like to make a few observations from my personal experience. Here in the United States, the educational system also seems quite lacking. In 1999, I decided to return to college for a degree in graphic design. I attended a community college, hoping to acquire an Associate degree, with the intent of eventually acquiring a Bachelor’s and a Master of Arts. The community college kept cancelling one class after another until, 6 years later, I still didn’t have my degree. One day, in irritation, I wandered into the lobby of a private college, and talked to the people in the placement office. They told me that they would give me 76 ½ credits from the community college, and that I could receive a Bachelor’s degree in one year. They had me enter my portfolio in a contest, and I won a $2,000 scholarship to their college. I was ecstatic. I worked my heart out on the program- I was on the President’s list every quarter, with a 3.76 G.P.A. However, one woman was in charge of making sure that all the graphic design students were on track to finish their degrees on time. She kept giving me the wrong classes, because “the names were different” from the ones I had taken at the community college. I made several attempts to rectify the situation: one of my instructors and I had a meeting with her; I even wrote all of the classes out from the previous college, listing the titles with a brief explanation of the class- but she kept making the same mistakes. I discussed the problem with her supervisor, but she just defended her. I received an “A” grade in the same classes at two different colleges! At the end of the year, I was told that I didn’t meet all the requirements for my degree, and I would have to attend another year. I didn’t have the money to continue, so I had to withdraw. Now, at nearly 49 years old, I have completed 31 courses, with no degree, and a $14,000 loan. With our economy, and no degree, I have no idea how I am going to find a job. I was told that this happens when you go into another college without an Associate degree from the first, but many of the other students had an Associate degree from a third college, and they were also told that they would have to attend a second year.

While I was in college, I made many observations: the instructors were very little help, and didn’t seem to know anything about new technologies- even those who had their own business on the side. The first instructor I had, in college, spoke in very broken English when he taught. He raced ahead so fast, during class, that many of us would just give up and watch him, rather than following along. We learned almost nothing. Many of the students would sit in the back rows in class, watching cartoons on the web, while the instructor was teaching.

I have decided to switch from graphic design to web design, but after my experience in college, I am teaching myself, something I’ve had to do all along anyway. However, I’m finding the whole experience overwhelming, learning new technologies and designing a completely new portfolio. I am very serious about my career- I want to be the best at whatever I do, and I am still excited about design, even after 12 years of hard work without any reward. One of the counselors at the community college remarked that my attitude is always “never say die.”

When all this hard work is finally finished, will I actually find a job, or will the art director/interviewers just sneer at me, discounting nearly 12 years of hard work, because I don’t have a degree? If the colleges/Art schools are anything like I experienced, and the employers won’t look past the lack of a degree, and see the person who is passionate and willing to put out more than an average effort, how can any field survive?

Please excuse the length of my comments!

To RSpatz, I sympathize with your frustrations on this rapid-change industry. Too often instructors do not focus on showing how to utilize the tools and keep up and instead focus on the mechanics of out dated software. Please contact me on LinkedIn, Facebook - DKemp Designs or Twitter - @dkempdesigns so we can support each other.

“get more people involved or looking to get involved in our industry from a younger age, working with the education system directly to see how we can achieve this”. In addition, he’d like to see an increase in “lengthy placements that act as mini-apprenticeships”

This is actually already happening.

As a previous commenter stated, I'm too on the FdA Web Design course but in Wakefield. These types of courses already work with industry and many students do go on placements.
I've had the opportunity to obtain some brilliant contacts through this course.

Can't comment on all the courses out there but I do know FdA Web Design courses are far more realistic to the industry and gain great support from local web design companies.

Maybe other educational courses should be looking at how FdA Web Design courses are managing to stay relevant and current?