We (at SANIsoft) are screening a lot of PHP programmers these days to fill a few vacancies. It looks like there is a dearth of good PHP programmers particularly in Nagpur and generally in India. So what are the reasons for this scarcity? I think the root causes are…
Lack of awareness :
PHP is still an alien language for an average college student. I have met a lot of students who have never heard of PHP. Let alone students, the professors/teachers of technical institutes themselves don’t know what is PHP. Until the college students are unaware of what PHP is – its popularity as a career choice and in turn students becoming good PHP programmers is not possible. There are ofcourse few exceptions where students are fully aware of php and are thriving to learn and become good php programmers.
Going with the herd :
And the herd generally opts for Microsoft Technologies. If i see a lot of my friends opting for .NET as a career choice then it will be my natural tendency to go with .NET. Students need to overcome this tendency and move away from herd.
Lack of good trainers :
Unfortunately in India you need a trainer for learning programming languages. No one is willing to learn on his/her own. As soon as a student goes to university, (s)he starts to search for training institutes. There are very few training institutes offering PHP courses and I will say none of them are good (at least in Nagpur). The sole reason is that the trainer himself/herself is not adept at PHP.
Money Matters :
No matter what, money is the most important thing when one chooses a career. Unfortunately very few MNCs (Multi-National Companies) work in php in India. And those who work, none of them reveals this to general public. You will find newspapers full of ads for jobs in MNCs but none of them mentions php. I think they are afraid of associating themselves with php publicly (reason is unknown). Since only MNCs can offer good salaries (which is fast changing) and they don’t work in php, students don’t opt for php as a career. After all no one wants to earn less money.
Fear of PHP getting vanished in few years :
Everyone wants a stable career and opts for a technology which is everlasting. I see increasing fear amongst newbies that php might vanish after a few years. They think php, being an open source language, won’t survive amongst other closed source alternatives. Their impression is that a technology which has a corporate backing lasts longer and is more secure.
PHP is not the only victim of above mentioned facts but many other languages like ruby, perl and python have the same plight.
[Update 2009-08-28]
Above points are just the problems PHP is facing in India. It is not at all meant to frighten budding PHP Programmers. In my next few posts I will be discussing the solutions for these problems.
[/Update]
