What’s The Hardest Thing About Being A Web Developer? | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

It doesn’t matter whether you run your business in London, LA or Lima, when you’re a web developer you have shared experiences with other web developers around the world.

You’ll have similar IT hassles, comparable work/life balance trials, matching experiences of things like creative block and on and on.

With this in mind, earlier in 2020 we took to social media to ask:

  • What’s the hardest thing about being a web developer?’

This came as part of our #AgencyLife series – which encourages like-minded web professionals to share their own experiences. As you might imagine, the responses ranged from the relatable to the strange and then the outright bizarre.

We’ve rounded up 20 of the best answers below.

When asked what’s the hardest thing about being a web developer, members of our community responded:

  1. Receiving logos from clients in word documents.
  2. Never seeing the light of day.
  3. Clients touching your screen.
  4. Getting a girlfriend.
  5. Internet Explorer.
  6. Clients who want a website just like their competitors.
  7. Clients wanting a three-month project the ‘next day’.
  8. Being asked to work for exposure (in other words, for free).
  9. Clients ringing your mobile out of hours for no other reason than to discuss their personal, life issues.
  10. Being pressured to put the site up as it needs to go live at 4am then two hours later being told to take it down as there’s a typo.
  11. Requests for ‘minor’ changes (define minor).
  12. How long will it take?
  13. How much will it cost? Just give me a ballpark right here, right now.
  14. Design by committee – the client’s brother decides they know more about design and development than you.
  15. Making 50 versions then the client decides to revert back to version one.
  16. Can you do it by tomorrow?
  17. Clients saying they know what they want (in other words, make me a million versions and I’ll pick the one I like the best).
  18. Got a quick job for you
  19. Please can you contact my last developer (they hate me because I never paid them).
  20. Working with somebody else’s code.

Join the #AgencyLife conversation

If you answer “yes” or “tell me about it” to one or more of the above, then you’re most certainly living the #AgencyLife. We’d love to hear your views on this, or any thoughts, opinions and about any personal experiences.

Knowledge is power and it’s to be shared. That’s the way our web development community sees it. So, right now across on our Facebook page, we’re flipping the coin and asking:

  • What’s the best thing about being a web developer?

Join the conversation here.

Handy resources for agencies and freelancers

If you run an agency or a web development business, explore the Heart Internet website where you’ll discover a veritable treasure trove of information to empower your web development business. We have some fantastic resources to help you avoid the pitfalls many of your colleagues describe in this article.

Here’s a couple to get you started:

  • How To Build Faster Websites – Free-To-Download eBook: Gain insights from front-end developers, engineers, and web performance advocates into building better and faster websites, setting up performance budgets, measuring site performance of your sites, improving the performance of images, animations, web fonts, JavaScript, CSS and more. Download your free copy of the eBook here.
  • The Business of Web Design – Free-To-Download eBook: What should you charge for your services? This is one of the trickiest decisions any agency or freelancer has to make. We surveyed hundreds of web design, development, and agency professionals to help with your pricing. Download your free copy of the eBook here.

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