Looking for a job these last couple of weeks, I have come to the conclusion that I should have spent more time working with PHP or .NET. There are a number of jobs in my area looking for those skills but not so much the plain front end developer I would qualify for. I don't want to drive to Santa Monica for a position because of traffic and it seems like that's where most of the jobs are. We'll see as time goes by if I am still unemployed if that far a distance changes. Job listings can be so misleading some times. Employers will put a lot of stuff on there that they don't really need like the job I just saw nearby looking for somebody with senior level PHP/LAMP/e-commerce skills and a 'Love of sci-fi/action/horror movies would be awesome'. If they didn't really need a senior level PHP/LAMP, e-commerce person I would be so applying for that job. The more I stare at the this job listing the more I think I should apply anyway. I have a feeling it is going to be the 'Adult-oriented Internet company' position I have seen on a couple of other job sites. It is interesting that when applying for jobs you don't hear back from potential employers but the job still shows up for weeks on job search sites. Only a couple of times have I seen job listings get updated to say the position has been filled. A lot of companies are requiring Agile/Scrum experience now. A couple of years ago Agile was not something you would see on a job listing but pretty much everybody is doing it now. Even some people that may not realize it like the producer on the side job I did recently. He checks in with his remote developers first thing in the morning and then at the end of the day to make sure they don't have any road blocks. It's not full blown Agile but it is kinda like a daily standup.
On a side note, I did improve my PHP/MySQL skills by working on a side project which required some PHP/MySQL by building two sweepstakes pages that store guest entries in separate MySQL databases. I recently converted the DOH! Network Movie trailer page to pull titles from a database but it uses an admin interface to enter new titles. The sweepstakes pages I built are inserting the guest info into the database which was all new to me but surprisingly easy to figure out. Hopefully my methods of securing what is submitted works and the sweepstakes don't get hacked.