A day in the life of a Webmaster/Designer

What is your daily routine?

[brianzig]

Hi everyone!

I am currently in college, finishing my sophmore year as a Computer Science/Internet Management major. I am finishing a job market/company analysis paper and I need to talk with those in the web design/webmaster field to answer a few short questions. Anyone game? You can pick one or answer all. I will omit the more personal questions such as salary scales and company infomation. I don't want to be too intrusive.

1. Describe your position and the daily duties involved with your job.

2. Education, certifications, or skills required.
(I'm sure a B.S. is mandatory, but what else is needed to be competitive in the job market and set yourself above the rest of the herd?)
3. Average number of hours per week. (Also if you are on-call or work weekends ect.)

Thanks in advance for your help!
I really appreciate it!

-Brian

[liquidstar]

1. Position: eCommerce Director
2. Degree/Certification: College Dropout
3. Hours Worked: 40-50

As to your more "intrusive" questions:

Large Corp. $1 Billion US +
Pay: Low 6 figures

Right place, right time. Bluffed my way in, worked my way up. Started at 19, now, I'm 23 years old.

Lady luck shined upon me.

[le_gber]

Hi brianzig, and Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com].

Describe your position and the daily duties involved with your job

Position: started as self employed/own web design company 3 months ago. I do everything with or without connection to the internet world: accountancy, logistics (that's buying all the material needed, fax, business cards COFFEE :)), secretarial tasks, design, development, optimisation of website ...

early wake up

check emails

come to WebmasterWorld and have a look at all the forums to see what my busy fellow members have been up to while I was asleep ;)

work on existing project, if I haven't got any, cold calling and emailing potential customers

eat

carry on the morning task

eat

spend quality time with GF

sleep

Education, certifications, or skills required

Education:DUT (that's 2 years after A level's in France) in Human Resources/Personnel and B.S.c in European Business and Technology.

Certifications: Beginner Java Programmer (distance learning course)

Skills: All related to the daily tasks + the will to learn by yourself (ie read books, forums, tutorials etc...) + those skillS that I don't have, people here at WebmasterWorld have, so the courage to start asking questions instead of simply lurking in the forums:)

3. Average number of hours per week. (Also if you are on-call or work weekends ect.)

11-12 hours/day, 5 days a week - normal 'non busy' days :)

5-10 hours during the week end if project need to move forward

Company phone always plug in and on answerphone only when I go to sleep or I'm out of the office.

Just one comment though:

(I'm sure a B.S. is mandatory, but what else is needed to be competitive in the job market and set yourself above the rest of the herd?)

I think that if many people answer you thread you will learn that it will be REALLY hard to find 2 people with the same background/qualifications on WW and that's what make it a very rich forum. I think that the people will in fact be highly qualified or qualified in the services/products their website/company is providing but haven't necessary a diploma related to IS/IT. They came to it either by themselves or have been forced to, but the majority really enjoys it now.

Just my 0.02 ... euh ... pennies (even though I would prefer them to be euro cents :))

[sullen]

can't resist this!

position: self employed webmistress/programmer

hours: sometimes 1 hour 8.30am - 9.30 am before baby wakes up, 10-1 if childminder visits and during baby's nap (about 4 hours a day on average)

<added>Forgot to mention - I am on call for emergencies at all times, although clients have never called with emergencies after 11pm. I have been known to fix major problems with one hand on the keyboard and the other preventing baby from investigating the computer. Must get a playpen.</added>

qualifications: degree in non-computing discipline, A levels coming out of my ears, PGCE (teaching cert), zero computing qualifications.

The great thing is I never blagged. I was a teacher, got a job teaching IT on the basis that "I knew a bit about it, and I can learn the rest from books" and went from there.

Does that help?

le_gber - couldn't agree more. And this is my E0.02 worth!

[Mike12345]

Position: Well, officialy on my contract im the IT Manager, but i couldnt manage my underwear drawer. But dont tell my boss.

Qualifications? sorry not qualified to answer that one. See liquidstar's second point!

Hours: Way too many. Above 48 its all ablur after that.

[sheilarae]

positon : web e commerece site
education ; bachelor of science in computer science , minor in Management Information Systems

hours; over 40 weekly

wake up get online check sales, ( i love the fact that i can make money while I sleep!) check keyword reports see what words are working, check traffic logs,

check webmasterworld for any added info,

process sales, and send over to shipping department for packing,

start online marketing for new affiliates

surf web to check up on compeition to see what they are doing,

back online to process nightly sales & start the whole process over!

salary enought to drink way too much champagne, keep 5 year old in best school & live in luxury condo!

thank god for the web!

[TheDave]

7:15am wake up a smack my alarm around until it goes off
7:15am and 3 seconds Go back to sleep
7:27am wake up and realise I'm running late

:P

[pendanticist]

"I love my job, I'm overpaid, I'd sleep there if I could."

Pendanticist.

[graywolf]

1. Webmaster (still a cool title) somewhere between programmer/store manager with some networking/DBA/server admin on the side

2.college dropout (engineering major) took some HTML/SQL/ASP classes

3. 40-45 a week at office 5-10 at home (not required but makes my life easier) am on call 24x7

[u4eas]

I am the IMedia (Internet Media) guy for a pretty Large Corporation with 700+ locations.

I was hired 1 year ago to work my ass off. Basically, I take care of anything related to the internet for my company. I am it the only webguy.

This is what I do/did this past year:
1. Setup/maintain 3 corporate intranets
2. designed/maintain 2 corporate websites - one more one the drawing board
3. maintain 200+ dynamic websites
4. designed/maintain a national accounts website
5. support 700+ franchise locations on internet issues
6. took damn near 1 million calls asking for lost NTFS passwords and reset them.
7. maintain 2 offsite 1 onsite webservers and one offsite email server
8. add/modifed/deleted a gazillion vertmaps for various email accounts
9. Teach classes to our franchisees on how to use our intranets.
10. and I cook at our company picnics LOL!

I love my job, wish i got paid more though =(
Went to school for Architecture but never finished...

I work:
50hrs a week at the office and at least another 20 a week at home.

I also donate whatever time I can to a non profit animal shelter/foster home for abused, abandoned, and neglected puppies (setup and maintain a phpnuke based site)

u4ea

Ps. Now I am also learning about SOE and ColdFusion. (redesigning one of those intranets to use CF.

[Robino]

1) work for a $30M+ US company. ($3M+ ecomm.)
2) develope and maintain all web site related and intranet related projects. Work in the "IS" dept. made up of 2 people. Actually do more marketing related stuff.
3) Try to explain to marketing and sales that nothing givin to me written on paper is ever going to make it onto the site(s).
4) work 40-50 at work and 20-30 at home. I work about thre to four hours on the weekends.
5) Salary is 1/4 the owners'.
6) Drink about four to five gatorades a day. This causing me to use the washroom six to seven times.
7) Degree in Business Admin.
8) Demonstrations of your capabilities are always the best way to get jobs like this.

Best of luck./

[brianzig]

Thank you all so much! I now have enough information to finish my paper and give my presentation on Friday! Again, thanks so much! I found alot of information on the web, but most of it seems so generic and broad. It's great to have some "real life" info to fuse into the paper.

You're all my hero!

Thanks again!

[ritualcoffee]

1. Site effectivness and opimization
2. BS, knowledge of web metrics, skilled researcher
3. 45 hours on avg plus occasionally weekend testing sessions

[tbear]

You mean you guys work during the day żżżżżż

It's 3:15 am, and I'm just getting stuck in here.......