Today’s employers want to get the most out of you and perhaps they would use a similar type of excuse telling a server side programmer something like “your html is not that good so thats why we can’t pay you that much”

its all BS if you ask me

The way I see it is that vertically there are skills (lets say from nurse to doctor). Horizontally there are different functions (lets say a plastic surgeon and a neurologist) expecting roughly the same kind of expertise is needed for the job.

Horizontally they get paid equally. But vertically there are many factors that set the price in wich I think experience plays the biggest part.

If job opportunities are scarse its comparing even bigger apples with even smaller oranges because people ar over qualified and the people they work for will not pay for experience or skills that are not needed for the job. The same applies the other way around.

Enough about comparing…
Eventually you should get paid for your added value to the project or company. If one of my team members does the job better than expected or a specific role is very important he will get a raise or bonus because he or his role deserves it. Eventually it’s as simple as that!

grtz

The proper metric is price per completed task. The more one can accomplish in an hour the more one can charge. But then the question becomes: how can you compare whether one completed task is more sophisticated than another?

In terms of the work that you achieve, only you would know the answer to that. But how can a potential buyer of your service compare your rate to that of a different type of service? Only the buyer can know that based on what has been communicated to him/her.

It is the buyer of the service to whom you have demonstrated what your level of skill is and it is the buyer who determines whether your rate is appropriate based on how impressed they are. Clients are sometimes ignorant and will judge accordingly. They need to be educated on how your service meets their needs. The price is then an agreement between buyer and seller. Whether or not you are charging more or less than a programmer is irrelevant.

Anything other than that, in terms of comparison, is all apples and oranges because there’s too many variable factors.

What should people like me be paid?

By the way, I don’t like the term “Front-End Developer” to be mixed with “Web Designer”. That’s like lowering the value of “Developer” to the “Web Designer” level. Sorry, please do not call yourself as a “Developer”.

I never said I was a designer, nor am I mixing front-end development in with design. They are two separate things…..IMO. All of the work I do is in the text-editor. I don’t see a problem with the term “Front-end Developer”, because that is what it entails. You develop the code for the front-end of the website. And, in defense of my designer colleagues, for you to think that the web design profession is of a “lower level” than that of coders/programmers is pretty silly.

Design is a COMPLETELY different realm, and you can’t really compare the two. When it comes to creating a visual/enticing presentation, the designer is in a league far above you. As are you in a league above the designer when it comes to instantiating objects.

You know… we, developer, have destroyed the occupation once known as “Webmaster”.

That is because people started to realize that, generally, one person is not good at all of the responsibilities. Designers(in general) are not great programmers just as programmers(in general) are not great designers. I wouldn’t look at it as “destroying” an occupation. I would look at it as, the web has evolved, so now you can spend your time programming because you don’t have to be the “master of all things web” and fuss with the elements you may not enjoy(working with Photoshop perhaps?) :o)

I understand if you mean something like HTML or CSS, but what about JavaScript, for example?

“Web Designer” is next in our list.

GWT

ASP.NET

Drupal

We’re onto you “Front-End Developer”.

By the way, I don’t like the term “Front-End Developer” to be mixed with “Web Designer”. That’s like lowering the value of “Developer” to the “Web Designer” level. Sorry, please do not call yourself as a “Developer”. I know it sounds like I’m trying to put “Developer” in elite level. But I assure you, Web Designer is no Developer.

Take a look at this humble person’s website:

http://www.mezzoblue.com/about/dave/

“I’ve learned various coding languages over the years. In the mid-90’s it was a hobby, these days I sometimes get paid for it. I am not and will never be a real programmer, but being able to bend a computer to my will often proves useful.”

I recently architected a site that acts as a portal for 150 hotel sites(subdomains of the portal). So, we are talking several thousand pages.

Basically, there is a main wrapper that fits around every single site. When you access a hotel from the portal, there is an interior view that appears, which has it’s own navigation.

I will definitely say that this project required the same sort of design/architectural thinking as a back-end OOP system. I had to constantly refactor things to make them more dynamic, so, whenever we go to add another hotel in our admin…….things would just work. I had to find the fine line of abstraction so we could still customize things if need be. This was ALL HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT work. ALL OF IT. Yet, it still required the same sort of architectural decisions faced by the back-end developers. Yes, the decisions are of a different realm, but they require a very similar approach. Tack on making sure everything worked in all of the browsers, and you have yourself a big project.

I am not sure if I would agree that Front-end Developers should be paid as much as the Back-end guys, but I would definitely agree that the difference should not be that substantial(comparing two people of proportional skill level, of course).

The main point I am trying to make here is directed at all of the comments I have seen about front-end work being “easy” and “you can learn that in an hour”. This is completely and utterly WRONG. Just because it’s easy to get up and running on something, does not mean that it is easy to become an expert!

I am a jazz pianist, and I would say that the piano is REALLY easy to learn compared to other instruments. It is very easy to make a sound and very easy to visualize the notes in relation to one another. There are also no register issues. It’s just as easy to play a high note as it is to play a low note. BUT, I will also say that the piano is probably one of the most DIFFICULT instruments to master. This is not meant to be a direct comparison. I just feel that people hack a bit of html out real quick and say “oh, that’s easy….anyone can do that” and think they know everything about it. They don’t.

I would challenge any of you who think that front-end development is a piece of cake to become experts at this field and then reevaluate your decision.

Group 1: This are web designers who either have an education in web design, or have taught themselves.

Group 2: Those who implement the design (preferably by group 1) using (X)HTML and CSS

Do you seriously think that the skills in group 2 should be valued as high as the actual web designers? It’s like getting a blue print of an house that were built by architects. If you are given a PSD file and asked to turn it into markup, you should be getting paid less than group 1.

And those who fit in both groups are worth even more. But that wasn’t what you were writing about.

When it comes to “programmers” you have to differentiate. Some have learned to copy/paste PHP and take programming jobs. To compare them with the average programmers, is like comparing HTML coders with Frontpage “experts”

I have spent many years at my University to get a CS degree. I’m not good at web design. I can make a clean and functional interface, but that’s it. But I have no problems with implementing web design and making sure that it follows web standards and tests them against the common browsers. (I have managed to evolve since I first made an HTML page in 1996)

So I hope you can understand that I have the experience necessary when I say this:

A really good XHTML/CSS “coder” is worth more than a self taught PHP copy/paste monkey. I have been in contact with several developers behind web sites, and I wonder if some of them have even seen a computer.

But the average programmer should be paid more than a XHTML/CSS “coder”. The skillsets required are of a completely different complexity.

The problem is the back-end’s approach is solely technical. Where the front-end or UID is creative,analytical and techical.

That’s just ignorant. It may be that you work for a shitty company that can only attract programmers with no experience. A better explaination is that you don’t know what’s going on in the mystical world of programming. Just like the bosses in this article doesn’t understand front-end, you don’t understand back-end.

Programming is both creative and analytical. Some of it can be compared with inventing new innovations on a daily basis. Most of it is re-inventing something a thousand other’s have done before, but the actual process is the same.

BTW: I have nothing against PHP, I use it myself sometimes. It’s just that I am tired of people calling themselves programmers, just because they can install Word Press

You’re free to charge whatever you like, and what client side coding is worth is up to whomever will pay the amount.

And I know this will piss you off but: XHTML/CSS coders have IE6 to thank for even having a trade. Otherwise Indian guys who learn Java in school could do the work for next to nothing.

Nice design/layout Marko, please don’t think i am having a digg at your work. It’s obvious you are a professional, maybe this client doesn’t require a professional job.

SV650, whoot! gotta get me one of those. I wish!

I was not saying that front end guys are useless, thats not true , they have a very important role, and that role plays the biggest to the end user I agree, it’s what the general public see that makes them stay instead of clicking the back button or google link again. (backend work is mostly transparent to the public looking at the site).

I was putting my view accross on the comparison of the wage difference.

My project of a career is taking the ideas, doing the planning of the back-end, what technologies to use and who will be taking care of which job. Setting up the SVN repos and keeping track of progress.

I don’t want to showcase my own personal design work, as it’s not very good and you design guys will fall off your chairs laughing. And it also doesn’t apply to standards until recently.

My main point was that their is no comparison between the two jobs in my view the back-end guys get paid more.

As for the poster of this thread/item, he asks for xx amount an hour, and if his work is worth that then great. The customer has a budget for each stage of the site. If he has paid x amount to the back-end programmers then he is not going to pay x * 1.5 or x * 2 or whatever to the front end guys.

Anyway, any team that I have been involved in splits the work up into back-end / front-end jobs, but the end result isn’t looked at in this way, after all the front-end guys give their input to the back-end guys to help from a user interface point of view and vice versa. The team gets a bonus and some appreciation for a good result, but at the end of the day, it’s the back-end guys that have made the most money and thats perfectly reasonable as they have done more work.

“I am not a designer but I can play with photoshop for a few hours and come up with something that works, a few hours later i can have a style sheet that works on majority of browsers including some nice javascript extras.”

Lee, I suppose you are the rare talent among us. Could you please showcase your non-programming work? What is your project of a career?

Can I afford to charge xxx amount per hour for my work?

If yes then you obviously have enough work and its all good.

But to those comparing front end style-sheet work to back-end programmers work, please!

I am not a designer but I can play with photoshop for a few hours and come up with something that works, a few hours later i can have a style sheet that works on majority of browsers including some nice javascript extras.

I am a programmer for back end work, On a daily basis i deal with the following technologies, Database abstraction / Session Management / Authentication and user-group management, acl’s / api’s / html / javascript / java and more. I have to learn new technologies every week/month.

If the guys who take the output of my hard work and give it a skin using stylesheets and photoshop got a payrise to my wage, I would demand a huge increase or leave, simple as that. And if i could not find a job elsewhere I would ask to be moved to the front end guys job and put my feet up haha.

Just my 2 cents.

Traffic (marketing & seo)
Function (programming)
Presentation (design)

There are some junk websites out there massive successes. Myspace is #1. How did it beat all the the other social networks? Traffic. (read about their marketing strategies sometime).

Function. Does myspace work? Most of the time lol.

Presentation - its horrible.

So the business works without quality presentation. Would it work without function? No. Without traffic? No.

As a front end guy you are only worth what you are worth to the project. Creating xhtml templates that index better and display in more browsers on a site is worth much more to a site that serves 5 million visitors per month compared to 50.

Here’s the inverse.

I’m starting a social network. Guy #1 can build me a myspace replica with all enterprise level geotargeting and load balancing features for $xx,xxx. Or I can buy one of those cheapo indian social networks in a box for $299.

Don’t be offended because the quality of your work isn’t that valuable to a particular client.