Do employers know the difference between SharePoint Administrators and SharePoint Developers? Is there a difference?

The job market lately has had me a little concerned for the stability of my position where I work as a SharePoint Administrator.  (I also handle other IT duties, but SharePoint is my bread and butter.)  Because of the job market, I decided that I would look and see what other opportunities were out there.  I noticed something disturbing.  Firstly, there are a lot more positions for Developers than there are for Administrators.  That’s not so disturbing in itself, but when you look at the job descriptions for each, there are striking similarities.  Go ahead and check it out for yourself.  Go to one of the top job search engines like career builder or monster, and enter in “SharePoint Administrator” for a job search and look at some of the requirements of the positions.  Now do the same thing with “SharePoint Developer.”  The thing that I have noticed is that for almost all of those positions listed, it seems that the companies have no idea what they actually need.  I think that Microsoft, or some of the more well known SharePoint genius-gurus, should lay out specifically what the difference is between an admin and a developer for the benefit of these companies so that they can ask for the appropriate qualifications for the position they are trying to fill.

Even though I am not one myself, I have absolutely nothing against developers.  I have counted on their expertise on more than one occasion and I am ever grateful for their input and advice.  I would imagine that developers wouldn’t want to deal with the more mundane aspects of managing a SharePoint site however, and would rather focus on what they excel at, such as creating new webparts and features for the rest of us to use.  Without the developers, my job would be much more difficult.  Administrators, on the other hand, are often asked to do things that may be beyond their capacity.  Not that they don’t have the ability or desire; but rather they don’t have the experience and training.  I know I don’t, although I would love nothing more than to be a developer, and every time I learn something that I post here, I am that much closer to being able to consider myself a developer. (I have a long way to go.)  I thought what I would do is create a guide from my experience as to what the difference is between a SharePoint developer and a SharePoint Administrator, that hopefully someone will pick up and use so that instead of assuming that the two roles are interchangeable, there could be a clearer understanding of what the responsibilities are, what they should be and the tools that should be used.  If I miss the mark on anything, then please by all means, let me know.  Keep in mind, none of this is official, and I am not an MVP so don’t take any of this as “approved” or “certified.”   

Just to demonstrate the communication failure, below is a listing of the job responsibilities of a “SharePoint Developer” for an ad listing I found on Career Builder.

• Provide day-to-day support of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a highly collaborative team
environment. 
• Systems administration, maintenance, and synchronization of the MOSS 2007 Farm servers which
include:
o The Production environment which consists of a pair of load balanced web servers and a backend 
services server
o A Model Office (QA, Staging) environment which consists of a pair of load balanced web servers 
with the services integrated
• Candidate must interface well with IT and user management, in-house developers and 3rd party systems 
consultants
• Application of Service Packs and Updates within a predefined maintenance window 
• Provide end-user support and troubleshooting of all of these environments.
• Migrate custom development code to the platform servers
• Stay abreast of related technology and recommend future system enhancements, software purchases or
system upgrades.
• Provide technical input to assist in development of project plans for projects that intend to use these 
environments as development platforms.
• Provide technical input to assist in development of project plans through detailed work breakdown 
structures and timeline estimations
• Provide written and verbal status reports to IT management and be able to effectively set expectations 
with users
• Be able to multitask several competing requests by gathering or estimating task priorities

If you look closely, that developer position is actually not for a developer, but for an administrator.  I figured I would narrow the field a little bit and search for a position for a “SharePoint Administrator” and I found the responsibilities listed below.

3+ years of experience working with Microsoft SharePoint 2003 / 2007

MOSS technologies

Broad experience with the .NET Framework to include ASP.NET 2.0 / 3.5

Web services, XML, SOAP experience

Ability to interface with clients and gather requirements and facilitate meetings

Ability to develop and administer sharepoint systems

Strong competency in Visual Studio Tools for Office, Windows Workflow Foundation, Forms Server and Excel Services

Experience with DataSourceControl, DataSourceView, Membership and Personalization

Maybe it’s just me, but that looks an awful lot like something more suited to a developer.  (I am fully qualified to be a SharePoint Administrator, with a certificate and everything, and I couldn’t do most of what they listed without some serious back-up.)  There is obviously some kind of disconnect between what employers are asking for and what they need.  It seems that the only people who know the difference between the different types of SharePoint people, are SharePoint people.  That’s disappointing, and which is why I decided to put this little reference together. Below is how I see the job responsibilities should be laid out.

First I will go with what I know;

SharePoint Administrator

1. Responsible for Servers in SharePoint farm
   • Includes set-up and configuration of SharePoint Services on Servers, maintenance of Web Front End Servers, Indexing Servers, and some aspects of maintaining Database servers. (In smaller companies like mine, the job of SharePoint administrator also inherits the job of Database administrator, and this should be accounted for in deciding compensation.)
2. Creation and maintenance of Sites and Site Collections, as well as all associated databases and services, such as Shared Service Providers, and Extended Authentication providers if needed.
3. Set-up and maintenance of Outgoing and Incoming e-mail services
4. Qualification, Installation and Maintenance of any Plug-in, Feature, Web Part, Template or Solution, including 3rd party software or applications.
5. Responsible for back-up and recovery practices, and maintaining integrity and reliability of access to information.
6. Responsible for set-up and configuration of Excel Services and InfoPath services (If available).
7. Responsible or establishing and/or maintaining end user access policy and permissions.
   • This may also include the ability to delegate permissions authority to other users, as deemed appropriate.
8. Responsible for implementing and maintaining search services, including defining search scopes.
9. Responsible for implementing and maintaining user profile properties, including “MySites” functionality.
10. Responsible for coordinating and implementing best use practices, and communicating with company management best use scenarios.
    • Best use practices may include creating simple workflow processes and simple site customization.

Basically, from the way I see it, Everything that is on the Central Admin page of a SharePoint site, and some of things that can be accomplished with SharePoint Designer, should be the responsibility of the SharePoint Administrator.

For a SharePoint Developer, that could start with this simple phrase.  If you MUST use Visual Studio to create or design some aspect of SharePoint, you are a developer.  If it simply can’t be done by any other means, and Visual Studio is mandatory for you to do your job, I believe that would qualify you.  I’m not a Developer, so I will probably miss most of the below requirements by a long margin, but there does need to be some clarification, so here goes.

SharePoint Developer

1.  Responsible for design, creation and implementation of custom webparts, .NET user controls, custom Master Pages, custom Layouts, custom Event Handlers, features, solutions,  and templates to be used in a SharePoint environment.
2. Responsible for integrating non-SharePoint related services into SharePoint applications as needed.
3. Demonstrates a proficiency in any of the following; XML, CAML,  XSLT, HTML, DHTML, ASP.NET, C#, ASP, JavaScript, style sheet/CSS

Most of these I gleaned from the “SharePoint Administrator” job listings, so I’m sure that more needs to be added. I would very much like to see a standard applied to the title of SharePoint Administrator as well as SharePoint Developer so that companies have a better understanding of what their own requirements are. I would also like to abolish the term SharePoint Architect, or at least limit that to the select few who made the nuts and bolts of SharePoint, like the original programmers.  Hopefully, a little bit of clarification from the SharePoint community will help these companies find the individual who is the right fit for the positions they need filled also.