The other day a recruiter tried to lure me into an opportunity for a Magento shop. I gave him a pretty high figure, which was partly me trolling him and me seeing how far he would play along. Not surprisingly, he retorted that the company in question had a ceiling quite below what I asked and said that Magento was not required. However, the spot was to lead the Magento effort.
I laughed and talked to a few friends about how clueless this recruiter was and probably the company as well. First, many people probably know that I rant a lot against Magento. There are pro’s and con’s to it like anything but it isn’t for everyone and those that do want to implement it should realize way in advance what they’re getting into. That said, in reading the job description, I felt that the company and the recruiter had no idea what Magento entailed.
Being a “good” PHP developer isn’t enough for filling that role. There’s tons of “good” PHP developers. But in the city of LA, there’s so many PHP roles that are far sexier and pay better than what’s being offered. Any sane “good” PHP developer will know their true worth. And the “good” ones aren’t just going to be about money. They look for projects that will help their careers so they’ll choose companies where they can really cut their teeth, especially in this period where companies going IPO or being bought out can turn anyone into millionaires.
The other thing is just being a “good” PHP developer does not mean the person is going to understand Magento in a day. The architecture for Magento is incredibly complex and being able to lead a group for a company and architect solutions imply that the developer will require substantial knowledge of Magento to be effective. Otherwise, they’ll be overwhelmed from the start. I estimate that a “good” PHP developer will require at least 3 months of constant programming and study before they reach a reasonable stage of understanding with Magento.
Then you have the other side of the coin where you get good Magento developers. I always laugh at companies who end up choosing Magento as their platform because it becomes their COBOL, mainframe or whatever non-proprietary system that leeches the life out of them with all the difficulties and poor documentation. And the sad part is that Magento is probably the best platform out there to do this type of job. So that says a lot.
But going back to the good Magento developers I want to say that knowing what a pain in the ass Magento is, they will end up contracting for huge amounts of money. Why? Because not everyone is a Magento developer. It’s a specialization that requires a great deal of knowledge. Companies are too idealistic when they think you can just slot in a developer at random and suddenly the next day they become experts. It’s not how things work.
Even better, those that have a very good understanding of Magento and the business behind it will develop their own plugins. The plugin market for Magento is amazing. Not in that the plugins are effective but how the developers can charge $100-1000+ for their plugins. Sometimes the necessary plugins are done by some independent guy who does all the support. A company will move to a plugin out of desperation to meet the tight deadlines of a project. When the developers have problems installing the plugin because the version is incorrect or some other issues, the plugin developer more than happily will step in…for a price. And boy those guys aren’t cheap. Not to mention there’s no guarantee that they install things correctly nor bill for the real hours they worked on the installation.
To me Magento is kinda like SAP. It’s very specialized and the pool of developers for Magento isn’t huge. Ecommerce by itself isn’t sexy and working off a poorly designed platform just entails nightmares. But if you do have to work on such a behemoth, you might as well get paid well for the suffering you’ll have to endure. So recruiters and companies, if you have to deal with Magento, start planning to bump up the price tag.
But any intelligent “good” Magento developer will scoff at this.