Stop posting WordPress Developer roles on Indeed, LinkedIn or anywhere and requiring someone who can engineer custom MVC structures, build reusable PHP architectures, write everything from scratch, and avoid page builders entirely.
The original purpose of WordPress was simple: make website creation accessible and manageable without requiring deep engineering expertise. It was built to empower business owners, marketers, bloggers, and freelancers to create and maintain websites without touching complex code. The entire ecosystem of themes, plugins, and user-friendly tools grew from that vision.
Yet today, many companies seem to have completely forgotten this.
It’s now common to find job listings on Indeed, LinkedIn or anywhere demanding “WordPress Developers” who can engineer custom MVC structures, build reusable PHP architectures, write everything from scratch, and avoid page builders entirely as if the role were a software engineering position disguised under a CMS label. These expectations don’t reflect how WordPress was designed to work, and more importantly, they don’t reflect what most businesses actually need.
There is a growing misconception that if a developer doesn’t build custom themes from the ground up, they are somehow “less” of a WordPress professional. But that belief ignores the reality of modern WordPress development. Building complete, functional, high-performing websites using tools like Elementor, Bricks, Gutenberg, Kadence, or other visual builders is a legitimate and highly skilled discipline. It requires strong design judgment, UX understanding, responsive layout expertise, plugin architecture knowledge, SEO consideration, and the ability to deliver a system clients can easily manage. None of that is “less” development, it is development applied in the way WordPress intended.
In fact, many of the most successful websites in the world are built with page builders because they prioritize speed, flexibility, and maintainability. A business rarely benefits from a fully hand-coded theme that only one developer understands and that the client cannot update without breaking. WordPress thrives when it stays true to its roots: enabling efficient, reliable, and editable websites.
This is the part companies often misunderstand. If your business genuinely requires deep backend logic, custom dashboards, API-heavy systems, or full software engineering workflows, then the solution isn’t to force WordPress into becoming something it was never built to be. The solution is to hire a software engineer and build a custom application using Laravel, Node, Next.js, Django, or any framework designed specifically for complexity.
But if you want a WordPress website, a system that is fast to deploy, easy to manage, and cost-effective then embrace the strengths of WordPress itself. That means trusting developers who specialize in themes, plugins, page builders, optimization, and clean implementation. They are exactly the right professionals for the platform.
The Reality: Overcomplicating WordPress Developer Usually Means Misunderstanding
The real problem is rarely WordPress.
The problem is that many companies misunderstand what they actually need. They want a simple website but they also ask for enterprise-level engineering.
They want cost efficiency but require a developer team to maintain custom systems. They want WordPress but demand features that should be built with a full-stack framework.
It becomes a contradiction.
The wake-up call is simple: stop overcomplicating WordPress, and stop expecting WordPress developers to behave like full-stack engineers. WordPress was created to simplify the web, not to turn every project into a custom-coded software system. When companies understand the purpose of the platform and the value of the developers who build within it, the results are faster, cheaper, more scalable, and far more aligned with what WordPress was created to do.
Choosing the right approach isn’t just good development.
It’s good business.
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