Are there employment opportunities as a...

I have noticed that a few people posting on the forum offer to pay for scripting advice (but usually receive it for free) but out in the wider world, do businesses that use Creative Suite ever pay people to come in and look at their work procedures and write scripts to improve efficiencies?

I get the impression that most business people, and probably many graphic artists who use CS, are not that familiar with what can be done with scripting. Certainly where I work nobody has any idea about it, and there are half a dozen professional computer programmers on staff (but not in the publishing department).

Has anyone had any experience working as, I guess, a consultant to a business, to rework their procedures using scripts? If so, what is the value of such a service? You would think that it would be much more valuable than the time of a graphic artist, because in the long run it could save so much money.

Are there employment opportunities as a...

I do write scripts for customers from time to time. And I guess the payment is okay, no idea what a graphic artist charges. But my experience is that very often the people actually working with InDesign are not always happy to use scripts. Even if it is very boring stuff that is done by script it means they have less work. Luckily (from their perspective) the decision makers have (very often) no idea what a script could save.

So most of the scripts I write are part of a complete package, new workflow, editorial system, database access etc., very seldom I am asked to write a script to speed up an existing workflow.

Ralf

Are there employment opportunities as a...

Thank you, Ralf.

Considering how many people around the world use Creative Suite, it seems strange how little prominence scripting has, but I think you have explained why. The users do not want to either lose their jobs to a script or have to do more work (using scripts) for the same pay, and the managers have no idea about what scripting can do anyway, so never investigate it.

With those factors at work, it doesn't seem like going out and knocking on doors selling scripting services is likely to be very profitable.

Brian