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Posted by lawrence k on 05/18/06 05:13
TristaSD wrote:
However, is there a universal level of php competency,
> say, like "if you know this, this, and this, you're in a good shape to
> get a job"? What level of complexity should one be able to tackle to
> be employable?
I'd say no. Employers will instead want to see that you've done a
project similar to the one they are hiring you for. If, say, a company
has commited to using Smarty as its templates system, and you can
honestly say "The last two sites I've done have been Smarty based!"
then that counts for much more than knowing a lot about regular
expressions. That's how I got one of my jobs.
I'm not sure how you get started. I suppose you have to freelance a few
projects to get some actual commerical experience, and you might have
to take on your first project or two for a very low rate (we all get
paid based on how productive we are, and how productive are you really
going to be on your first project?). Once you've 3 successful projects
you can point to, you may get jobs based on any specialty you may
develop.
I would not suggest doing what I did, for it is too painful and slow
and under paid, but in 2001 I started working on a CMS, partly to
expand what I knew about PHP. For each client I had, I added
functionality, based on what they needed. The project began attracting
commercial interest in 2003, and then in 2005 the project finally got
some serious funding. I'm pleased with the end result, but it was a
long hard road.
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