[auslegung]

I echo what @Rjevski said about consulting. His suggestion might be better than mine, but another option is to do Wordpress sites. As a PHP dev I imagine you can make some killer Wordpress sites pretty quickly. That's what most people and small businesses need.

Have you considered getting into the product side? Get some Scrum or Agile cert(s) and make the change. I work for ITPro.TV, we have a lot of content on the subject, for instance https://app.itpro.tv/course-library/agile-foundation/overvie....

[throwaway790]

but another option is to do Wordpress sites

I am not sure I want to get into wordpress/drupal etc, unless I am left no other choice. I am looking into doing data analysis type of work, as I am better at it than fighting with CSS :)

Have you considered getting into the product side?

Yes, this is one thing I can confidently say I am good at. My own product manager asks me for advice all the time. I am just not sure how to transition

[auslegung]

> Yes, this is one thing I can confidently say I am good at. My own product manager asks me for advice all the time. I am just not sure how to transition

Could you ask your product manager for advice, or would that raise red flags?

You feel very stuck right now, I can tell because as a developer you're always learning. And you can learn how to make the transition into product manager. You can absolutely figure this out! :) You will have a job in 6 months (maybe sooner) on the product side as soon as you go for it.

In fact, there is a very active discussion on hacker news right now about this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823616

[gregjor]

HTML/CSS front-end work, and design/graphics, is easier to outsource than back-end programming and database work. I don’t do design or elaborate front-end work myself because I can hire people to do it at one-fourth my rate.

[Rjevski]

Meh. Wouldn’t recommend Shitpress.

This niche itself doesn’t pay too well because prices are pushed down by so-called “developers” from third-world countries (they are bad, but clients don’t know any better and still end up going with them).

The product itself is crap, code quality is bad (PHP can be done right with good practices and modern frameworks like Laravel, but Wordpress is the total opposite of all that by design).

A Wordpress client ends up being a nightmare. Maintenance and support nightmare for you, not a good experience for the client because it always breaks and requires constant maintenance, etc.

Also a lot of Wordpress projects involve dealing with bad code from previous developers. I’m not saying that to shit on the previous developer - it’s just that shitty code is normal, accepted and expected in the Wordpress world, but is definitely not enjoyable to work with and will make you miserable.

Finally PHP clients are often bad. I recently turned down a client after arguing back and forth how upgrading their crappy Joomla site with 20+ plugins (most of which will need to be updated manually because the original developer is not around) and developing a custom theme from scratch will not take one days worth of work.

So I would recommend staying away from CMS projects completely. If a client needs a CMS just get them on a hosted solution like Squarespace so you don’t have to maintain the crappy CMS down the line.

[gregjor]

Not my experience. Lots of marketing departments and agencies use WordPress. They have huge budgets with discretionary spending authority, unlike IT departments. Who cares if WordPress isn’t a “modern framework” or uses PHP? It pays the same as any other programming as long as you don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel putting up mom & pop sites or submitting bids on Upwork.

I have Fortune 1000 clients running multiple WP sites put together by agencies that have no back-end integration or database skills in house, they outsource that. Pay is very good, same as any other back-end programming.

[Rjevski]

> Who cares if WordPress isn’t a “modern framework”

Developer experience? I'd rather spend my way working with Laravel than crap old PHP code written like it's in the 90's.

> It pays the same as any other programming as long as you don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel putting up mom & pop sites

It's good that you manage to find good clients but this wasn't my experience. A lot of WP projects go to the lowest bidder which just doesn't happen with the technologies I work with and recommend.

So if you already make good money on WP then go ahead by any means, but I personally wouldn't recommend getting into it if you're starting out.

[gregjor]

I have a little developer experience. Some old code is crap. Some new code is crap. Frameworks can help or make a bigger mess. In the context of solving business problems it makes little difference. Clients don’t care.

I didn’t get the impression the original poster was just starting out. Low-end Wordpress work is competitive and not well-paid, like all low-end work. Competition is always most fierce at the low end of any talent market. Plenty of complex, challenging, and good paying Wordpress projects out there.

[Rjevski]

> I have a little developer experience.

By "developer experience" I meant the equivalent of "user experience", ie whether the codebase is enjoyable to work with.

> I didn’t get the impression the original poster was just starting out

IMO it would still require them to get familiar with Wordpress before being able to get the good jobs, which means he's going to be stuck with crap gigs for some time while he builds references.

[gregjor]

I get your point about good code vs. bad code, but in my experience that doesn’t have much to do with legacy vs. modern frameworks. It has to do with the skills and aesthetics of the original developer. I work on framework-based code (Laravel, etc.) that I don’t find very enjoyable, and I work on procedural PHP from ten years ago that I find easy to work on.

Programmers who focus on their own enjoyment or priorities like working with the most recent tools and frameworks will turn up their nose at less appealing legacy work, and that’s why there’s so many companies unable to hire people to work on their business systems and web sites. To some developers an older code base is just a turd, to others it’s an opportunity. After working with a legacy system for a while and incrementally refactoring it, if my client decides to rewrite it they will talk to me rather than sending out RFPs. I have two ground-up rewrites in progress right now that started as legacy support work. Those clients didn’t write RFPs or ask anyone else to bid on the work.

I agree that learning Wordpress, or anything, takes time. Wordpress certainly has some bad design decisions (mainly caused by maintaining compatibility with a huge installed base), and some ugliness to work around, but on the other hand WP has a large and mature developer community, good documentation, and lots of tools and add-ons.