this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025

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Web Development

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Career path after bespoke WordPress development - looking for salary and security! (feddit.uk)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey all, I've been working in web agencies for years now. Not using site builders (obviously I've had to use them at times but I don't love it), building custom themes from scratch with PHP/HTML/JS etc., custom plugins, interesting client needs, some Shopify development, design work, all the standard digital agency drudgery.

I'm starting to get pretty disillusioned and would like a new challenge (and a salary increase). I'm currently in a pretty well-paid agency, earning around $70,000 a year.

I've worked briefly with React, Angular, GraphQL, Vue, but not in a full-time capacity. Is React/Node the path I should be looking towards if I want to make more cash and have a bit more security? I'm safe in my current role, but I'm bored and frustrated.

Also.. is there any way to be in this industry and not be constantly pestered about AI? I'm honestly sick to death of hearing about ChatGPT or Claude, lol

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Are you in the US? You should be making way more than that if so

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm not, I'm in the UK -- I just gave the figure in $ cos I assumed it'd make more sense to people! It's a pretty decent wage for UK devs, for what I do. Would it make sense to work for a US company?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What exactly do you do on a day-to-day basis?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A mix of support and project work. At the moment, I'm building a custom Shopify theme for a client using Liquid, but I'm also helping to manage the scoping and planning for an upcoming WordPress rebuild for one of our other clients, which have some quite niche requirements that will necessitate some custom plugin development on top of custom theme development. That will land soon, and my time will be split between Shopify/WordPress development.

I'm only specifying "custom" here to differentiate the coding "from scratch" style work I'm doing from WYSIWYG/Site builder style work that I know comes with the WP/Shopify territory.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you were in the US I would guess that during normal times you could find a job that pays $90-100k + benefits.

It's not an exact comparison, I'm a front end person with a lot of Drupal experience, probably less php and js experience than you, and my agency pays really well, but I was hired at $108k and earn $118k now, + about 15k in benefits, to give you a rough idea.

You might be able to find a remote job in the US but it will be tough, the time difference is hard, plus the added expense of employing someone in another country, plus the massive uncertainty around the US economy right now will be challenging. Worth a shot, but I think it's definitely worth trying to find something better in the UK.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Thank you for the breakdown, I appreciate your time on this! How do you find Drupal to work with? There was a time I was tempted to go into Drupal, and then Laravel or Symfony; I think they have generally decent salaries associated because of their relatively niche nature.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I can speak from experience: working on the agency side the pay is insanely low. Switch to the client side and while the work isn’t as interesting or fun, you’ll get a huge pay increase.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When you say client side, what do you mean? I've worked in-house and for agencies, and the in-house pay was fine but not markedly more or less than agencies for similar roles (although it was less stressful).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would interpret that as in-house.

To get a pay bump you’re probably going to want to be looking at Frontend Engineer roles in a tech/SAAS company. Skim through some job descriptions for those to see what is in demand. (React is probably involved.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Exactly - in-house (the companies your agency used to do projects for). I think I got an immediate 40k bump going from advertising (an interactive agency) to healthcare.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I'll take another look at in-house roles. Thank you!