[flatline3]

$84k average salary is surprisingly high for non-production-ready engineers who are still in training, especially when compared to the rest of the industry.

I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general?

To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity in the web space for senior engineers with traditional software engineering backgrounds. If people are so desperate that they're willing to hire brand-new engineers at an $84k average and spend months/years training them, how much will they pay for people that require no training at all?

[roguecoder]

You assume that people with traditional software engineering backgrounds need no training to move into web development, which is not what I've observed. In fact, I have personally seen several who either weren't willing or weren't able to acquire the new skills required at all.

How many C++ programmers grok CSS? How many Java programmers understand prototypes? How many enterprise developers are used to shipping code at least weekly? No CS degree I've seen has covered analytics, or even effective logging at scale. As much as CS-oriented coders look down their nose at web devs there are skills involved. If engineers can adapt there are huge payoffs sitting on the table, but they have to actually do so. There aren't very many who have, not nearly enough to meet demand, and so prices rise and companies swap from teaching web development on the job to teaching CS on the job.

[flatline3]

The skills you list involve very simple knowledge acquisition. Once you have core CS competency, you can pick those things up very easily, and do a better job by far than the person that lacks the core CS competency.

To use your examples:

* I'd never worked with web CSS, but I built a CSS styling system for iOS, and used the CSS spec for inspiration.

* I've never worked with web analytics, but I ran a team that built a real-time (non-web) custom analytics/logging/querying system for a huge consumer-facing corporation.

* My team had never written any sizable JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, nor had any familiarity with prototype languages, but we were able to bang out a comprehensive HTML/JS XMPP client using BOSH in a couple weeks. We had an external HTML and web design expert on-hand to actually make it look pretty.

I think the real reason the engineers don't adapt is that we'd have to go work in environments that are filled with less skilled people using frustratingly knee-capped technologies. I might be able to stomach HTML/JS/CSS despite their myriad of flaws, but I'm not sure I could do it if I also had to use Rails and Ruby working for one of the existing players.