Is Sharepoint good or bad from the career perspective?

Question

I'm currently updating my resume. In order to avoid confusion this time I decided to explicitly state that I don't do VisualBasic. Now it comes to Sharepoint. I haven't seen or worked with it. I also heard something about it, nothing good or exciting, however. Just yesterday I read some frustrated opinions here with regard to Sharepoint. We have some small application for internal use where I work, it looks and feels ugly.

I understand the working with Sharepoint basically means making something of existing components with drag and drop, not much programming, not much exciting and creative work. I don't want to be loosing skills doing something stupid. But I might be wrong.

So the question to experienced community: Should I be willing to work with Sharepoint? Is it interesting or not? Is it career-promising or rather nothing special? What can you advice me on this subject?

P.S. I'd rather continue developing with ASP.NET, hopefully MVC, and all related things, but I definitely don't want to become a mouse-driven-developer.

Answer 1

Believe me, sharepoint is not about drag-and-drop programming, you will write lots of code, especially in ASP.NET technology. The problem is it is very developer unfriendly, so If you want to stick to the "latest bits", I would avoid it.

Answer 2

SharePoint is as annoying and stresful as it is rewarding. You can do amazing things with it but it does take some work and know how. I've only been doing it for a year now but I hear there's lots of money in the field for good SharePoint developers so financially it's a good route to go down. Technically, there are lots of moving parts and entry points to develop on in SharePoint so it's fun once you get over the steep learning curve.

Answer 3

I think you got your understanding of Sharepoint wrong. It is an extendable application in every way. There can be much or little programming involved, it's basically up to you what you want to do with it. Don't fear the application, embrace it and find out if it is something you'd like to get involved with.

A lot of people work with sharepoint so that knowing something about it will definitively not damgage your skills.

In the end you'll have to make up your own opinion about what to do.

My only advice to you is be (always) open about new technologies :)

Answer 4

We use SharePoint internally for our intranet. So far I've avoided being sucked in, but I fear that it won't last long. I have looked around at it a bit, though, since I expect to integrate our Help Desk system (which I am responsible for) with it at some point. To me everything basically looks like a spreadsheet -- a spreadsheet disguised as a document list, a spreadsheet disguised as a wiki, a spreadsheet disguised as an RSS feed. I haven't gotten in very far yet so it may be that I'm wrong, but from what I've seen the main challenge seems to be how do I fit my needs into its paradigm rather than how do I get it to do exactly what I want.

My perspective: don't avoid it as an experience, but based on your post I don't think you'd be very happy with it as your main development platform. I know I wouldn't be.

Answer 5

Sharepoint is very vast platform and quite an interesting one too. We have built a multi-tenant huge workflow processing application on it using different mixes of technologies on top of it. The 2 good things about sharepoint i can write from the top of my head -

• you can achieve quite a lot with it in a very short span. we built over 40+ forms for financing workflow application within a span of a week, all working absolutely without any errors at all. now, you cant imagine doing that with normal ASP.Net application.
• the workflow was built independent of the forms and bound to the "lists" making it really easy to modify the workflow as per the changing requirements.

some of the downsides

• The interface is clunky and not at all user friendly. we had to build our own interface [css, images, etc] for our application and changed the complete interface.
• does not provides a developer friendly environment. you will literally have to develop in sharepoint designer which is nothing better than front page designer.
• errors & debugging - it throws up very generic error messages and you have to struggle hard to find the real cause of the errors. there is no debugging support at all. we used the dirty "response.write , response.end" to actually debug the issues.
• most of the documentation is available only from personal blogs, experiences. there is barely any good official technical documentation to get you moving.

having said all that, if i had an option of re-building the application, we would still prefer to build it in sharepoint though with little different approaches at places.

from the resume perspective, i think its definitely hot and pays really well. from career perspective, i would highly recommend to keep yourself open to new technologies and decide for deep-diving only after you have seen some of it.

Answer 6

I guess that SharePoint is drag and drop programming the same way as e.g. MS SQL is drag and drop: You can get only so far using the management tools that goes with the application, and then the real work begins :-)

I have previously been doing client server apps in C++ and for me SharePoint have NOT been drag and drop, it has been hardcore development against a large object model and a lot of web services. On top of that I also have to get proficient in scripting (PowerShell) in a hurry, so I haven't been bored yet.

I would like to think that your job opportunities is far better being proficient in SharePoint/Exchange/MS Project or VSTO then being a ASP.NET guy, but I am biased and might be wrong.

If you would like to work in the ASP.NET MVC field perhaps you should also look into Rails in order to broaden your horizons.

Answer 7

My advice... do what makes you happy. Why not pickup a a book about SharePoint development and see if it is something that captures your attention. I highly recommend Ted Pattisons Book Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 If it doesn't then stay away from it... there are PLENTY of opportunities out there for development jobs with various technologies. Good Luck

Answer 8

See this other very similar thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/832465/how-good-bad-is-sharepoint-programming/832902#832902

Answer 9

SharePoint can be very good for a career. There are many many people who get paid well for knowing SharePoint and there are a shortage of people who really know it.

However, it is a product that you may consider banal. It is often used to help chair bound office people to shuffle information and documents around a little faster.

However, if you think the idea of online collaboration and content management and it's relevance to the productivity of most businesses interesting, you will understand it's appeal.

If you want to make a career from solving peoples business problems, SharePoint is going to be a very useful tool. If you are more interested at this point in your career in getting into some hardcore C# coding, SharePoint developement will definitely be somewhat of a disappointment.

Answer 10

Sharepoint should be good for a career perspective. Here in London, there are loads of jobs requiring Sharepoint!