I can't speak for any other region, but having worked with Domino for a few years in Australia and then later in the UK, I saw the product go from obscurity to now almost absolute irrelevance. Sure, there is work out there, but like you say, its the kind of "non-strategic" development or worse, application support, that you don't really want to admit to let alone put on your CV. You know things are bad when ISVs are resorting to grunt contract work and even supposed Domino experts are accepting rate cuts.
Whats interesting is that the product now is in a lot better shape than it has ever been since I first encountered it. There is a powerful standards based rich client, but nobody with skills to write Eclipse plug-ins. There is finally a half decent web framework in XPages, but no top-notch web developers are touching it. The problem is that there is no way to attract the much needed development talent with no real demand for work.
Like yourself, I have always been technology agnostic, so transitioning to other development platforms in their ascendancy hasn't really been an issue.
I can't speak for any other region, but having worked with Domino for a few years in Australia and then later in the UK, I saw the product go from obscurity to now almost absolute irrelevance. Sure, there is work out there, but like you say, its the kind of "non-strategic" development or worse, application support, that you don't really want to admit to let alone put on your CV. You know things are bad when ISVs are resorting to grunt contract work and even supposed Domino experts are accepting rate cuts.
Whats interesting is that the product now is in a lot better shape than it has ever been since I first encountered it. There is a powerful standards based rich client, but nobody with skills to write Eclipse plug-ins. There is finally a half decent web framework in XPages, but no top-notch web developers are touching it. The problem is that there is no way to attract the much needed development talent with no real demand for work.
Like yourself, I have always been technology agnostic, so transitioning to other development platforms in their ascendancy hasn't really been an issue.
No, Domino isn't dead, but its dead to me.