Growing with PHP

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For the last four years, oDesk has been building a global service marketplace with an innovative way of connecting technology workers anywhere in the world to the companies that need their services. We have a vested interest in staying on top of trends in that global service economy, and that means we're acutely aware of the surging growth of PHP. As demand for PHP skills increases, so does the demand for oDesk's services. We've had $40 million in gross services transacted through our network, and every month we are seeing more of those jobs in PHP.

We've connected more than 100,000 skilled tech professionals on the oDesk platform, providing the transparency and real-time collaborative tools to ensure the trust required for both sides of the remote-work relationship. Our platform guarantees payment to workers and lets employers literally see the work as it's performed with screenshots and work memos. Given the scale of this marketplace, oDesk is becoming an ever-more-accurate barometer of the global remote technology workforce. We're finding that companies are increasingly seeking PHP solutions and voicing satisfaction with the technology and the developers who provide it, as reflected in rising feedback scores. And by all measures, we're finding that Zend developers are clearly elite amongst the oDesk global workforce.

Being the most widely used skill in web development today, it's no surprise that PHP talent is the most requested on our network. On a recent day in late August, there were 4,150 jobs open on oDesk, and more than a fifth called for PHP skills. That's pretty good as a static number, but even more significant is the growth over time. We're seeing more than 2,000 PHP jobs posted per month, a year-over-year growth of nearly 1,000 percent.

The need for PHP programmers is drawing remote workers to oDesk from all over the world. The largest group of PHP providers comes from India, while the highest paid — and highest-scoring in feedback — come from the United Kingdom. Variances in depth of experience and pay level, as well as factors such as communication skills and time zone, produce a workforce that, collectively, can match the requirements of any project, and an individual's feedback comments and demonstrated skills provide a tremendous amount of hiring information even before an interview is scheduled.

Reaching into the data to extract numbers for Zend programmers is even more interesting. For programmers listing “Zend” experience, we see a global median pay rate that's 39 percent higher than for programmers listing just PHP skills. The Zend programmer is able to command a premium for that experience in the oDesk marketplace because the hiring companies recognize the value of it.

Buyers are looking for quality results and they pay more for a qualified Zend professional. This is also demonstrated in the duration of jobs with Zend engineers. Companies on average keep “Zend” engineers employed for almost 3 times as long as other PHP engineers. We believe this is because Zend engineers truly understand the technology better and deliver higher-quality code — and employers recognize that and keep them on the team as long as possible.

An example: Alexey, a Zend developer in St. Petersburg whose feedback from previous buyers is a perfect 5.0, is making a career of long-term projects with his happy employers. His current profile lists three active jobs, one ongoing since 2006, another that he started in January, and a third assignment that kicked off in July. His work history also shows total satisfaction on quicker tasks, jobs that lasted up to a month each and required less than 50 hours of his time. A look at his profile shows that 10 companies have requested interviews with Alexey in just the last month alone — indicative both of the demand for his skills and the ability of oDesk to lead an employer to the most talented people, based on actual work history and buyer feedback. In addition to his feedback, Alexey has scored very high on free oDesk online certification tests, including PHP5 and MySQL.

Reputation is the most fundamental aspect of a working relationship. Employer and employee try to establish their reputations, and understand each other's, before they do business together, and as they work together, the credibility earned as managers and workers affects the quality and energy the worker brings, and the rewards that work earns. At oDesk, we've made it possible for employers to know who they're hiring, to see the work that's being done while the remote worker is on the clock, to pay only for actual work completed, and to leave feedback at the end of a project to improve the power of our reputation economy.

Therefore we announce with pride that we have collaborated with Zend Technologies to be able to add the “Zend Certified Engineer” (ZCE) qualification to the list of certifications that PHP programmers can register in their profile on oDesk. Over the past years Zend’s ZCE program has become the defacto standard for PHP skill certification in the industry. Employers seeking PHP talent already know this — Zend certification provides the peak measure of reputation building for the PHP programmer. Zend's certification program and oDesk's platform are both in the reputation business, and that's not a coincidence. As the market for technological talent, in particular, goes global, visible measures of reputation become all the more critical.

Major enterprises continue to bring talent in-house, putting the resources into building cohesive, coordinated teams. That's not going to change. What is changing is the ability for such enterprises to augment their in-house staff with remote workers on a flexible contract basis. In the past, hiring a temporary worker was nearly as time-consuming as filling a permanent position, and relied upon the same locally based talent pool. With thousands of PHP programmers skilled at working remotely and plugged into a system that makes hiring, managing, and paying them extremely convenient and assured, we think oDesk improves a company's ability to rapidly scale up and down and to hand off discrete projects to world class technical talent as needed. To make the advantages of flexibility and remote work succeed, we're relying on the value and power of reputation. We know that's something the Zend community can understand.

About Gary Swart

Gary Swart is CEO at oDesk. Founded in 2004, oDesk is a global marketplace for programmers and technology professionals that enables businesses to build and manage remote teams. Hiring managers can search the oDesk network and choose from among thousands of tested, top-rated technology professionals in more than 90 countries. Using oDesk web-based collaboration tools, project managers can visually track and verify all work performed, both historically and in real-time.