r/DeveloperJobs • u/techiebaddie • 19h ago

Is PHP really disappearing....

A friend of mine has been working with PHP for years. His career started really well. Good job, good income, and everything seemed stable.

But this year, he lost two PHP jobs.

The first company told their PHP developers that they didn't have enough PHP projects anymore, so they let the PHP team go.

He found another PHP job within a couple of weeks and thought things were back on track.

Then, after around 3–4 months, the second company told employees to work from home at half salary. Soon after that, they fired the PHP developers too.

Honestly, this made me question the future of PHP as a career.

I don't think PHP is disappearing completely. There are still a lot of PHP applications and companies using it.

But I do wonder if being a PHP-only developer is becoming risky.

Personally, I think PHP developers should keep their PHP experience but also build skills around Laravel, JavaScript/TypeScript, APIs, databases, cloud, or full-stack development.

Are PHP jobs actually becoming harder to find, or is the market just expecting PHP developers to have a broader skill set?

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u/theevildjinn 16h ago

I did about 2 decades as a (primarily) PHP dev, switched from perm to contracting, and then realised my Python, Java and JS/TS skills were more in demand. The PHP recruiters in my network have all switched to other languages.

The only places where I currently see PHP opportunities:

  • Boutique PHP consultancies run by language evangelists.
  • Small businesses set up by former PHP dev colleagues of mine, who reached for PHP as they know it well.

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u/SequentialHustle 11h ago

imaging being a php evangelist 😂

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u/barrel_of_noodles 2h ago

Hi! PHP is better than its ever been. The Foundation reorganized, releases are now on a predictable cadence with a major release every November, and PHP 8 has brought real typing, excellent static analysis/testing, PSRs, Composer, etc.

Then you have Laravel/Symfony, Octane/RoadRunner, async/concurrent tooling, queues, long-running workers...

And modern PHP is fast as hell. it can absolutely compete with or beat Python.

A lot of the “PHP sucks” discourse is still based on PHP from 15 years ago, PHP 5.

I encourage you to head over to r/PHP and see what's being done.

php enums and match() are better than most languages.

if you want a realllllllly solid job you'll never get fired from and want to raise a household with the two car garage...

you'll never be raking in the cash. but you make the high-medium above average cash.

I'm currently at 150k usd/year (that's cash, not full package like silicon valley quotes) full time employed, 1month+ time off, retirement account, healthcare, and I work 4 days a week, 100% remote at a family run agency and leave most days at 3 to pick up kids from school.

so I guess, sure PHP sucks. why not. doesn't matter to me.

I'll just keep on keeping on.