pxl·eight

A few days ago, A List Apart released the findings of their Web Design Survey, conducted back in April 2007. I must say, I had not heard anything about a survey being conducted (even though I visit the ALA site frequently), otherwise I would have participated.

Here’s a bit of a backdrop on the survey from the ALA website:

In April 2007, A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.

Wow… 33,000 responses. That’s ALOT of data.

I took a look at the survey during my lunch break and I found some interesting (read: shocking) information in the reports 82 pages.

1. The Web Design “business” is still largely dominated by males. Almost 83% of web designers surveyed were men. Sure, there are some hot female designers out there, but come on… this industry needs more women. Being a male in this business can be likened to going to a bar where the male:female ratio is 8:2. In other words, it’s competitive and, well, “competitive.”

2. 14.6% of those surveyed had no education beyond high school. While I don’t fall into this category, I certainly don’t fit into any of the other categories. This I find interesting. Being someone that is somewhat involved in education (I sometimes teach people XHTML and CSS in spare time), are people becoming more tech-savvy without having to take a formal course? That trend is picking up steam.

3. 46.6% of those surveyed ended up in the field of web design after taking an unrelated stream of study. Now THAT is interesting. Why this is, or how this is happening is not clear to me. But hey, I can dig it.

4. 72.5% of those surveyed have a blog. That’s pretty much a given, as the design industry has moved towards collaboration using social media and information sharing platforms like Facebook.

5. 23.4% of those surveyed are self employed or freelancing, and they are being edged out by 28.4% who “work for the man”. Self employment in the web design business is popular, you can work your own hours, work on interesting projects from cradle to grave, and even though there is no benefits package, you stand a good chance to drawing a decent salary.

6. 14.7% of those surveyed work for an organization with more than 3000 employees.

7. 5.9% of those surveyed worked more than 60 hours a week. I know what that feels like. Starbucks becomes your best friend. This is, in my opinion, directly related to poor project management, inaccurate development estimates, not enough resources, and a myriad of other issues.

This is a very high level summary… I just don’t have the time to go through the 82 pages of the survey results and get something interesting out of every category. I picked the ones that were most interesting to me.

Want more? Check out the ALA Web Design Survey Findings article. The report is available in a variety of formats for you to make your own findings.

Enjoy!