Standards Geeks Hard To Come By?

1. Shirazi said:

I enjoyed exploring your pic stream. Are some of them honymoon pics?

Posted on September 1, 2005 09:55 PM | #

3. Keith said:

Shirazi – Yeah some of them are. Palm trees are a good bet. I didn’t take too many…

Scott – Well, yeah, me neither. Thus the post. I find it really odd. I mean, some of the jobs I’m talking about are really quality. If I wasn’t trying something else I’d be checking into them. Maybe that’s it. We’re all going solo…Anyway, I think it says something about the economy, and standards adoption. I’m just not sure what exactly.

Posted on September 1, 2005 10:36 PM | #

5. Brad Wright said:

I’m with Kevin. (Except I’m not in Seattle.)

I have a full-time job doing mostly interface and web-programming stuff, with a splash of CSS design here and there. Mostly I just get to complain about table-based design etc.

So, even though I know my stuff backwards, I don’t get to utilise it in client work as much as I’d like. That said, I’d love to work for a company who “got it” like I did.

Posted on September 1, 2005 11:10 PM | #

7. Roy said:

I’m currently employed doing a lot of standards-oriented work. I’ve gotten the same feeling as you - and I’m from tiny Chapel Hill, NC… I really think there is a dearth of standards-oriented geeks. Maybe we should start collectively demanding higher salaries ;)

Posted on September 2, 2005 12:35 AM | #

9. Alan said:

I just came from a smaller market in western NY, and the only time I could work web standards/semantic markup/validating-code into projects was in my solo work. Most agencies were either Flash or “Dreamweaver the Photoshop file” based, and still trying to grasp that the world outside of IE/Windows mattered.

I’ve always assumed that most standards based commercial web work out there is done by a small group of elite (in a good way) developers, and the majority of the webdev world doesn’t care enough (aka. pay enough) to hire the needed talent to make the change.

Posted on September 2, 2005 12:42 AM | #

11. Matt Turner said:

I’m a freelance ‘standards geek’ here in the UK, around 80% of my work is from the US! I also find that people generally don’t know, care or understand.

Part of the problem is there are a lot of people doing web design who are just trying to make a living and really are anti-change. I’ve met some of them who think tables aren’t fixed so we shouldn’t break them by trying to implement CSS layouts.

Indeed, you wrote about it yourself not so long ago - http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives05/2005/04/web-standards-blindness#more

P.S. I just discovered a bug that crashes safari2 (latest version) with this form. Try typing ‘tr’ ‘td’ tags next to each other!

Posted on September 2, 2005 01:59 AM | #

13. avianto said:

Here in Europe (Germany, especially), they don’t even care about Web Standards. I couldn’t find any open position even mention the need of Web Standards skills and most of them have “Use Flash or Die” kind of attitude.

So yeah, I always watch in envy for those in the US who has this kind of opportunity to implement Web Standards, while I am still trying to get a job here in the Old World.

Posted on September 2, 2005 02:26 AM | #

15. Richard Kendall said:

I work for a daily local newspaper in Cambridgeshire, England, and Web Standards are not an essential element of my job, although I apply them whenever possible.

Accessibility is a big deal, but it’s not necessarily coming through from a Web standards angle, unfortunately for me.

There don’t seem to be many newspaper sites that have caught on, but with the weight of content and backlog of archives, I guess it is a lot of work.

Posted on September 2, 2005 02:46 AM | #

17. Andy said:

Here in the Dallas, TX area there are several standards-savvy shops. When I went to work for my current agency a year and a half ago, I was able to completely redirect their development from archaic, traditional development to be fully standards-compliant. Now we’d never hire someone that didn’t get modern development standards.

But this sort of approach is still uncommon enough that we’re able to market ourselves behind the benefits of modern design and develoment standards. That’s nice, but it’s pretty sad, too.

Even so, I find the occasional job listing in this area for standards-savvy designer/developers. But surely there are very few as compared to job listings for those who are aces with tools (dreamweaver, flash, illustrator, whatever) rather than standards or technique. And that’s a shame.

Posted on September 2, 2005 03:59 AM | #

19. Hans Nilsson said:

So, Seattle is the place to move to, eh..?

Posted on September 2, 2005 05:38 AM | #

21. Chris Moritz said:

We’ve had a helluva time finding people with web standards experience here in Metro Detroit. It’s been especially tough to find DOM/JS wizards.

Posted on September 2, 2005 06:09 AM | #

23. Dean said:

The way I approach it is not to hard sell the “Web Standards/CSS layout” bit. I’ve adopted a “It’s just the way things are done now” attitude. My freelance clients (and my full time employer) don’t care if it validates - they just want it to work. I use standards and CSS for layouts as much as possible and they get sites that work and look good.

err…I see I’ve not really answered your question now…sorry!

Posted on September 2, 2005 06:38 AM | #

25. john said:

I just joined a small design firm and so far they’ve been rocking the photoshop/dreamweaver combo. I’ve been harping on about standards and css since I joined and have gotten the boss interested enough that he picked up Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. So, slowly I hope to turn this place into a proper xhtml/css outfit. Next step is getting them to focus as much on the content as they do the design.

Until then, I have to content with crappy table layouts and non-semantic code.

Posted on September 2, 2005 07:02 AM | #

27. Aaron Gustafson said:

Many are gainfully employed or are making a run of it on their own. I am trying to balance both.

Oddly enough, I am currently looking for a young web standards developer, or a developer interested in getting a standards education, for my full-time employer in Connecticut.

Posted on September 2, 2005 07:39 AM | #

29. Mike S. said:

Where I am currently it’s pretty rare that there is a job description that mentions anything about standards. CSS is mentioned a little bit more prominantly but nowhere near where it should be.

One of the biggest hurdles is that local businesses/design firms/development co.’s still only make the distinction of programmer (JS, PHP/ASP/Whatever, C, etc.) or designer (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. but absolutely no coding).

And hey, if you have some sweet jobs lined up that you can’t fill, just let me know - I’m only a 45 minute airplane ride from Seattle.

Posted on September 2, 2005 07:55 AM | #

31. Ted Drake said:

I think it is a regional issue. I believe there are plenty of web standards geeks and demand in areas around web technology. I look at San Francisco, Seattle, London, and Brighton and see pockets of leaders.

Perhaps we should begin local outreach programs to co-ordinate jobs and seekers, train new people, generate more attention to CSS, DOM, and accessibility. I have led classes at conferences and trained people at work. But I don’t see any organized local movement in San Diego. What are people doing in other cities?

P.S. If anyone in Europe is hiring, especially France, Spain, or U.K., contact me. My long-term goal is to move to Europe.

Posted on September 2, 2005 08:13 AM | #

33. Tim from philly said:

I’m really feeling what Mike S (#28) is saying about local businesses, etc. making overly simplistic distinctions (just programmer vs. designer). And they aren’t the only ones to blame. I work beside developers who perpetuate this all the time. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard: “so are you a designer or a programmer”. There are a couple of “ideal web team” posts floating around that I might start siting, but who knows.

To address your question, here in Philly there a few prominent shops that are leading the way in terms of standards-based design/dev. They are mostly names you’ve seen often in the blogosphere. So the “first generation” (~10 people, 2 to 3 shops, mostly well-know freelancers) is doing pretty well finding work (I think), but there’s still a long way to go overall in this city. (I’m an in-house guy, not doing standards at work. Although my boss recently started using FF, so he now wants to go back to forking code to “accomodate progressive people using FF”. Yay, a two browser world.

As for job descriptions, other than from those notable 2-3 shops, I’ve seen absolutely zilch about Web standards or “best practices” or W3C in *any* job description (for contract or perm). For freelancing, I feel like it’s less of an issue as I’ve never had to “sell standards” to non-technical clients. (Qualification: I’m not a full-time freelancer, though.) They just want it to work. And then there’s still all the typical challenges: job descriptions for java AND photoshop AND 3D animation AND … expertise, or update our porn site for almost nothing, etc.

We’re trying to start a grass roots thing here (Philadelphia Standards Organization) to raise awareness, provide education and resources, but it’s just getting started (lots of energy, but still very early). How about something like this in Seattle? I was surprised just how many people came out of the woodworks here the first few “philly web standards” meetups we had.

Posted on September 2, 2005 09:00 AM | #

35. Adam van den Hoven said:

I think that a lot of the problem, as someone has already said, is in writing the job description. In almost every case the posistions are Coders with web experience or Designers with web experience, never Webbies with coding or design experience. The best job description I’ve found so far was for a “CSS Ninja”

I’ve also been on the other end, looking for someone. My rule, find the portfolio, grab the most recent site and look at the source code. I was amazed at how many people applied for a job that stressed CSS submitted a portfolio where every site was either done in NightmareDreamWeaver or even worse (and more common!) Image Ready.

Even then, I think you might be surprised how many “Web Standards Geeks” are out there who don’t understand how the cascade works, where to put class names or how/why to use multiple classnames.

If I find someone who passes the sniff test, I have a hard time finding people who understand the importance and role of content management, document design and IA, or who understand how things like CVS or ANT work (and why they’re useful).

I’m thinking that I’m going to put together a test that I would have a hard time passing and using that as part of the interview process.

Posted on September 2, 2005 09:24 AM | #

37. Jason Marble said:

Though I’m a bit late on this convo, I might as well chime in with what the Southern California seen is looking like.

I just landed a contract to full time position with Tonja Demoff Companies. The position is more of an entry-level position, but I wouldn’t have taken it if it didn’t look as promising as it does.

My standards-based design practices definitely helped me get the job, but it certainly wasn’t a requirement.

IMO, most web designers in socal are slacking, completely. But, I think more businesses are catching on to some of the newer design trends, and quite frankly, I think most of the web standards community have been leading the current trends. So, I think most businesses may be indirectly looking for standards-based designers.

So, to conclude, the job market in Southern California is looking pretty good for standards-based designers. Perfect weather, and some sweet swells to add ;-)

Posted on September 2, 2005 09:33 AM | #

39. Keith said:

Wow, this one generated some good discussion. Mention standards an y’all come out of the woodwork. Interesting to me is some of the undercurrents I’m reading here. The difficulty in getting people to “let you” use standards. B. Adam mentions telecommuting and virtual teams, which I think is pretty important and a hard leap for many employers to make. Then there are job responsibilites (I know how that one works, I was an IA/PM/etc. and it was too much, now they’re just looking for a designer to fill the spot I left) and the honest fact that maybe many standards folks don’t have enough experience yet…

There will be a follow up summary to all this next week. For now, keep the comments coming. This is good stuff that I think needs to be talked about.

Posted on September 2, 2005 09:37 AM | #

41. Jason Marble said:

Looks like my last didn’t post. But to sum it up, the market here in Southern California is looking as good as the weather is.

Posted on September 2, 2005 10:00 AM | #

43. Carlos Porto said:

Kevin you are so right about this. I make it a habit to talk, share and design with the developers I work with. I also try to educate them about standards, sending them article sitting and showing them concepts, they more they know the easier it is for for us all to complete projects on time. After all you can’t have the front without the back.

Posted on September 2, 2005 10:16 AM | #

45. Dan said:

I’m always looking for work.

The standards compliant work I’ve done isn’t really acknowledged or appreciated. It seems that outside of a relatively small community, standards aren’t regarded as being especially important. That may be changing, but it’s a slow change.

Posted on September 2, 2005 10:22 AM | #

47. Mark said:

I am thinking that the sorts of people who have the talent to do beautiful work and the initiative to learn Web standards are the sorts who enjoy freelancing.

It’s especially hard finding great people for a small team.

Designers with a background in bigger firms tend to be too specialized (they have an art director to do to the concepting, an IA to do IA, a developer to do coding, etc.).

People coming from an in-house position tend to have limited portfolios and often aren’t armed with the vocabulary to talk about big-picture stuff like branding or user experience or even design at a conceptual level.

Working virtually with someone could be ok for per-project work, but in a small agency there is so much more going on than just the project of the day. There are internal meetings about projects and non-projects, critiques and brainstorming sessions, folks helping one another with big ideas or small software problems, giant whiteboards to gather around and scrawl on, proposals to review, new-business presentations to attend, etc. And since you are the lead designer on the project (in a small firm like ours there are no junior designers), you do need to be available for client meetings too.

Posted on September 2, 2005 11:07 AM | #

49. Another John said:

Here in Montana, hardly anybody even knows (or cares) what a table is, much less CSS or web standards. In fact, the state government is actually leading the charge on these topics (and was recognized for doing so by Zeldman a couple years ago). My job is becoming less and less about design and if this keeps up I may have to relocate to Seattle.

Posted on September 2, 2005 11:14 AM | #

51. Jason Marble said:

Seems to me that the demand for standards-based web designers will not come with direct corelation the the semantic benifits of web standards.

I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that most of the web-design trends that have been set, are being set by standards-based web designers.

People notice the design, not the code. If you really want to push web standards, we need to keep on designing those beautifull CSS/XHTML standards-based designs that we have been. All the standards based semantic mark-up is just icing on the cake when it comes to geting hired with most businesses.

Posted on September 2, 2005 11:26 AM | #

53. ben said:

And let’s not forgot the browsers still. Once we start seeing better browsers (ie7) maybe we’ll see more emphasis on the importance of consistent, clean code.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it’s not just the producers, it’s the art directors, too (atop the current aesthetic). Then there are stakeholders who want to retrofit sites without redesigning them.

Retrofitting table-based layouts eats up plenty of time, which can sour management on the idea of standards PDQ.

Posted on September 2, 2005 12:13 PM | #

55. Brian L said:

As I’ve been looking for a new gig, I’m seeing a line being drawn between code and design whereas some jobs labeled “web designer” will require not only knowing html/css, but also jsp, php or some other server side scripting language. While other “web designer” positions are looking for someone who can design and create static PS mockups and no code. I won’t even go into the whole “award winning” thing. This really seems out of date to me.

I feel somewhere in the middle. I have what I would call above average skills in html/css as well as Flash/actionscript, but wouldn’t consider myself a guru. At the same time I am hugely concerned with the concept/design/ui/ia/usability aspect of web-design. As a designer, I consider design not only what it looks like, but how it works and what it does. I’ve tried to position myself as versatile and a big picture thinker, but I’m not having a lot of success so far.

Posted on September 2, 2005 01:00 PM | #

57. Krista said:

I’ve been in my comfortable but low-paying (Seattle-area) government job for ten years. I’m hesitant to take those baby steps away from the security of the job I have, especially since I’m not entirely sure how my skills measure up in the “real world.” I don’t have anything to compare them to. My pages validate, I know my CSS and HTML, I’ve read all the standards books religiously, and am more of a coder than a designer … but am I any good? How do I know? Am I employable? The private sector is scary.

Posted on September 2, 2005 02:32 PM | #

59. Bryan Veloso said:

Well, I’m Facebook’s new standard’s geek, just sent out an email teaching all the engineers how to code according to standards. But yeah, I’m taken. ^_^

Posted on September 2, 2005 04:16 PM | #

61. Scott said:

I’ve been considering relocation, in order to follow the apparent abundance of good jobs that appears to be everywhere but in Vermont. Unfortunately I took the formal training route (degree in Web Development and Management; there must be a reason they call it a “B.S.”) instead of putting in more time building what counts as experience. Accordingly, I’ll be stuck as an intern, production assistant, or something equally lame for a while most likely. It’s good to hear there are still jobs for people who love standards and have good css skills. While I try to be well rounded, that’s probably my strong suit.

Posted on September 2, 2005 07:03 PM | #

63. Steve Ganz said:

There are a LOT of jobs available here in the San Francisco Bay Area for knowledgeable and experienced Web professionals that have a passion for Web standards. There are more jobs than there are qualified candidates for sure. From start-ups to the big boys and everything in between, businesses are looking for experts in the area of user experience, information architecture, interaction design and user interface engineering. Often all in the same job description. But for some of the larger companies and big names in the Web, the division of duties that I am seeing recently consist of all user experience and design related tasks being segregated from all development and engineering related tasks. The designers at these companies design and do not code. Conversely, the developers code only and are not involved in the creative process at all. It is on this latter group that the responsibility for Web standards implementation falls. All structural, presentation and behavior layer coding is handled by the developers. The designer is being asked to stop coding if they want to work for a larger company. That might be one reason so many of them are going solo these days.

I recently left my post at one Silicon Valley company where I served as the standards geek for the last couple of years. I dipped my toe into the free agent pool and received multiple offers in a short period of time. At the same time, the search for my replacement was excruciatingly difficult. Traditional channels failed in turning up any decent prospects. It was only when we asked Dan Cederholm to post a note about the job opening on SimpleBits that we got anything worth pursuing. We met with exactly one qualified candidate and practically hired him on the spot. Yes, standards geeks are extremely hard to come by.

Posted on September 3, 2005 11:00 PM | #

65. Mark said:

I think finding and attracting quality, qualified talent of any sort – in practically any market – is an art form in and of itself. I would suggest firms try to be as resourceful in recruiting as they are in their sales efforts. Despite our location in Boerne, Texas, a town of about 8,000, we have been fortunate to build a team of some of the best in our industry. Our proximity to San Antonio doesn’t help as much as one might like to think… it’s not exactly the mecca for creatives or “edge-seeking” coders. So we tout the thing that brought *us* here… the beautiful Texas Hill Country. After visiting this place, few want to leave it.

Posted on September 4, 2005 07:04 AM | #

67. Adam Fellowes said:

I’ve managed to move things towards web standards in my current role having produced two standards based news sites in the UK - I still think they are the only two main stream ones?

As mentioned by some above we are now reaping the rewards of changeability and getElementById being a commercial win every time. Still not got the JavaScript off the templates but that’s next!

It’s now got to the point that our design job spec includes the requirement of CSS / Web Standards and accessibility. Yes it is very difficult to find anyone with the skill required hint hint.

Posted on September 6, 2005 07:03 AM | #

69. Faruk Ates said:

I work as a designer, programmer, CSS and markup expert and consultant for a semi-small company in the Netherlands. We’re one of the very few website developers in the country who are fully aware of and incorporate web standards in everything we do.

I’ve had this job for over 3 years now, and one thing I can assure you of is that in all those 3 years, not once have we had a local (i.e. national) request for a job where the word CSS was mentioned by the (potential) client.

The only jobs we’ve had where the client actually knew of CSS (or, knew the term, at least) were jobs that came in via my site/blog. International jobs.

The Netherlands are just horribly behind on this whole “modern web” thing, though…

Posted on September 7, 2005 04:08 AM | #

71. Julianne said:

I’ve got to agree with Brian (#55) about what I’ve been seeing in the job descriptions. Most postings I see for “web designers” either want you to be a .NET-programmer-who-can-make-things-look-pretty or a Dreamweaver/FrontPage jockey. So my standards evangelism seems to fall on a lot of deaf ears.

After exploring the IxD site and talking with other like-minded people (like Rick Cecil), I don’t think I’m a “web designer” anymore, given that much of my development approach focuses on achieving business goals and creating lean, usable sites. Apparently now I’m an “interaction designer” (and I know I won’t be finding many job postings for something *that* specific here in NC).

Posted on September 7, 2005 09:28 AM | #

73. Jennifer Grucza said:

It seems like, in the world of Boston-area Java programmers, it’s difficult to find anyone interested in doing any UI or web work, standards or not. My last job, that I left over a year ago, still has not found anyone to hire to replace me.

In terms of using standards on the job, for the last couple of companies I’ve worked for, it has all been up to me, since I’m really the only UI person. So as I’ve learned about standards, I’ve implemented them.

When I’ve interviewed for my jobs, they’re mostly trying to make sure they’re getting a good Java developer (who can do UI). Probably because they’re not that current on HTML/CSS themselves, whereas they know how to judge a good programmer.

Posted on September 8, 2005 10:46 AM | #

75. Michel Valdrighi said:

We had a job opening for a webdeveloper, it took us more than a month to find someone. We were ready to hire either junior or experienced people, and our experience has been that the junior ones were very serious (but sadly, still a bit too underskilled for us) while the older ones were nothing more than a bunch of clowns who couldn’t evolve away from 1999 (combining both outdated skills and ridiculously high salary pretentions!).
In the end, we found a junior. The only one who showed interest in accessibility and advanced stylesheet usage. She starts wednesday, at last!
(And sadly, we learned one of our clients hired a clown that we rejected.)

So, yeah, standards geeks are hard to come by. Especially in Paris.

Posted on September 12, 2005 09:45 AM | #

77. Kim Siever said:

Funny thing is, I can’t find any jobs (in Regina, SK) where a company wants to hire a web standards geek like me. The companies who do respond to my applications tell me I’m over-qualified.

Posted on September 12, 2005 10:11 AM | #

79. Priya said:

hi
I work for the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, Austin.
I am on a contracting position and work mostly on accessibility issues. Every hand coded webpage is tested using Jaws, Zoom- text and other assistive technologies.
Working for the state has confined me to templates; I would like to go further with accessibility and design.
Let me know if there is any opening.
Thanks a lot
Priya

Posted on November 25, 2005 05:07 PM | #