A Damning Trend
I’ve had some difficulty in my job search as a Web Developer. The truth is, there simply are not many ColdFusion developer positions in the Tampa Bay area, and I need more produceable evidence indicating my skills and abilities in order to convince potential employers that I am a capable PHP developer. I’ve been focusing more on trying to find work as a ColdFusion developer simply because I figured it would be easier, but I’ve done some research that indicates that this may not have been my best course of action.
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The graph above is a job trends graph from indeed.com. It indicates the number of positions posted on indeed.com where specified keywords are listed in the job description or requirements. Indeed is more or less a search engine for jobs. While this is not by any means scientific, it does present a rather disturbing trend for ColdFusion developers. CF’s primary competing languages over the last three years are all showing an upward trend on this graph, while ColdFusion is uncharacteristically flat (yes, I know that RoR is a language and framework, but Ruby is used for much more then web development; and including it on this graph seemed counter-productive). Though this is by no means a scientific measurement, for a ColdFusion developer, this is bad to see.
I have some theories as to why this is, but those thoughts are best saved for another time. What’s more important is that ColdFusion developers should be made aware of this as a potential problem; and should be looking at themselves, their company, and Adobe and asking for answers as to why ColdFusion opportunities are not growing. Simple economics will tell you that a lack of growth over a period of time this long is bad.
This certainly is a bad sign. As a seasoned PHP developer who has just chosen to use ColdFusion for a new business, I find this difficult to understand. Coming from PHP development, I’ve found picking up ColdFusion incredibly easy. But not only that, I’ve found that I’m able to build fantastic applications in a considerably shorter space of time, with considerably less time devoted to debugging and tweaking, than when developing applications in PHP, and it seems to me that the only logical explanation is incredibly poor marketing efforts.