The PHP scene in Belgium is exploding… the amount of requests my company receives for PHP projects is growing every month. The result : I’m looking for 5-6 developers to keep up… now normally that would be a good thing, except that in Belgium those people are extremely hard to find, for the simple reason that :

Belgium = .Net + Oracle

Why is that, you might wonder ? It’s actually quite easy to explain : people with a master in IT (university level) don’t end up becoming developers. So most developers come from college… and colleges don’t receive the same kind of funding as universities. So in order for them to offer the necessary tools to their students, they rely on sponsoring and probably the largest sponsors in Belgium for IT education are… surprise, surprise… Microsoft and Oracle.

The result : .Net and Oracle are taught, but hardly any college teaches PHP, let alone MySQL. The result of that is clear : when our graduating bachelors hit the job market, they’re interested in doing anything but the language they know nothing about : PHP.

There are a few exceptions ofcourse, usually the students who started ‘experimenting’ with other technologies in their spare time. However, this often leads to using PHP in a way it was not meant to be used and honestly the PHP market would often be better off without them…

I’m currently in the process of starting a new PHP/Open Source-centered brand (more on that in about a week) and am looking for several skilled PHP developers right now.

So to make a long story short : if you know anyone who does know PHP, knows what MVC is, knows his/her SQL, has good knowledge of technical analysis and is interested in the whole Web ecosystem… please let them contact me –> wim % at % wimgodden – dot – be – and please, only local people, no India-based outsourcing companies !