I’m a WordPress developer and a mid-sized company hired me to work on their website that customers see. I take care of updating plugins, improving performance, creating pages, and managing all things web-related. I’m curious how common is this practice Do other companies hire dedicated developers for their websites or is it mostly agencies, freelancers, or in-house marketing teams who do this
Yeah I work for a large tech company focusing on a certain feature for a specific product on part of the company’s website
Kingsley said:
Yeah I work for a large tech company focusing on a certain feature for a specific product on part of the company’s website
What is your title
Kingsley said:
Yeah I work for a large tech company focusing on a certain feature for a specific product on part of the company’s website
What is your title
I’m a lead UX designer. My team has 3 other designers, 2 PMs, 1 project manager, and 13 full stack developers ranging from junior to a senior principal developer with most at senior or lead level. We have a few codebases but developers mainly work in .NET and React
Lian said:
@Kingsley
Wait… juniors from a bootcamp can still get hired I have a chance
Wait… juniors are getting hired
Lian said:
@Kingsley
Wait… juniors from a bootcamp can still get hired I have a chance
Yes you still have a chance. How good are you at interview questions
Lian said:
@Kingsley
Wait… juniors from a bootcamp can still get hired I have a chance
Yes you still have a chance. How good are you at interview questions
Guess you’ll have to interview me 
Kingsley said:
Yeah I work for a large tech company focusing on a certain feature for a specific product on part of the company’s website
Relate
At my company the WordPress maintainer isn’t even on a development team Not actually a dev. They work in sales/marketing
Zadie said:
At my company the WordPress maintainer isn’t even on a development team Not actually a dev. They work in sales/marketing
So he doesn’t really understand HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP and mostly does simple WordPress tasks
@Crosby
This has been my experience too. Usually, it’s people who know HTML and CSS but not JS and PHP. They also work on other WordPress related tasks
@Crosby
The WordPress developer might only handle the customer facing website while the developers are focused on the product.
Think about it if you built a SaaS. Nobody wants to waste time building something for marketing to write blog posts when WordPress can handle it, so the frontend website is taken care of by sales and marketing.
After a user logs in, they go to the portal maintained by the real developers
@Crosby
Right. Every time I explain this to others I get downvoted. Large companies typically let sales/marketing maintain their marketing website. They do constant A/B tests to improve conversion rates.
I’m not sure why, but people assume it’s the job of software engineers at big companies. Usually, it’s not Software engineers aren’t really good at marketing They still get involved when editing features that involve JavaScript, of course
@Adler
I’ve never worked at an agency where marketing managed the website
They usually work with a product owner or manager who coordinates changes with the developers
I’ve discussed UI changes, A/B testing, and features with marketing but they don’t make any website changes from my experience
@Rowan
At an agency
There’s your answer. The agency is the marketing department’s website manager
For the actual product being sold for a SaaS platform, it generally stays very far away
No point distracting the team selling the product with conversion optimization on button placement and color
Zadie said:
At my company the WordPress maintainer isn’t even on a development team Not actually a dev. They work in sales/marketing
It really comes down to their needs and the company size. For one company I work for, I’m basically the IT guy now, even though I usually do web development, graphic design, and other multimedia. There was work that needed doing, and I just happened to be the most tech-savvy one there
Zadie said:
At my company the WordPress maintainer isn’t even on a development team Not actually a dev. They work in sales/marketing
I used to be part of a small dev team inside the marketing department of a large tech company. We built small brochure sites, handled competitions and Salesforce integrations, and dealt with hosting for sites made by third-party media agencies
It really varies by company, how crucial the site is, and how much management understands this. A pharmaceutical company might outsource everything to an agency because their developer headcount doesn’t match their marketing priorities. On the flip side, they might hire devs for mobile apps because that seems more innovative for them. Other companies do it all in-house but remember it’s basic work, and be ready for a new executive to look to outsource that.
I would be cautious about boxing yourself into only focusing on that one website. Look for ways to connect with others in the company and show your value in other areas as well. This will help secure your position long term. Don’t hesitate to use agencies if the chance comes up. Just be sure to manage that well