Are you suggesting the fact that there is not much PHP work around means that the career prospects of the field are in decline? One language is not indicative of the whole, this comment is not evidence either. And besides you seem to be assuming both that legacy work does not happen and that people can't adapt. I know both a fresh out of school person who does cobol and a mid 50s JavaScript UX person who started on punch cards.

Actually, there is a quite a bit of jobs that require PHP considering the plethora of sites built on Drupal and WordPress. I guess it depends where you live.

I actually intepreted that as the jobs require a very low level of skill and provide low compensation—exactly what you’d expect from making a job “blue collar”.

Most of the skill in that area is not working with the CMS but doing the crazy complex integrations that clients ask of them. (And of saving the work of not-as-skilled/too-skilled-for-their-own-good crowd.)

Maybe more of a light blue collar.

You can make very good money as a consultant in the PHP/Joomla/Drupal world if you are professional, reliable, and write solid, bug free code.

Nothing you make will be particularly interesting, but you will make an excellent living for yourself.

That is true, but you’re focusing on the php part rather than the median php position part, which is the relevant point to the discussion.

Not at Facebook.