In the last few weeks, I've talked with a number of friends about career changes. Some are feeling antsy and just want to move, others are starting their own consulting, and others are starting and joining startups. While I've done all the above - to varying levels of failure success - I thought I'd share the things I've learned along the way.

He gives six things to keep an eye out for when considering your entry into the startup world:

• Everyone does everything
• There's no career path
• You never have enough money
• v1.0 never looks like the original Vision
• Every founder believes in him/herself
• Most startups don't explode, they fizzle

He's not saying all of this to push you away from startups, though - more to help you go in "with eyes open" and ready to ask the harder questions before you get into a bad situation.

I've come to several conclusions after making observations on several articles by successful founders, thinking back on the startups I've seen and interacted with, and seeing the common mistakes that have been made thus far in the businesses and projects I've been involved in and let me just state that it has been a most interesting journey.

He suggests a few things that could make up an "idea workspace" scenario including less (required) work hours and more time off, giving full benefits, promoting an open environment instead of a "cube farm" and the encouragement to always keep learning. He even suggests something that could help make it easier - replacing a lot of the usual means (like books and training courses) with a Kindle loaded and ready to go.

I'm hereby making an open call for people to argue with or contribute to my ideas, let's fix what's wrong with the current corporations and thereby making our economy and our lifestyles sick and dying.

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While there are lots of PHP jobs in the usual suspects like small start-ups, there also seem to be a number of jobs at established companies and developer shops. I'm also seeing a definite split in PHP jobs where there are both entry level jobs as well as jobs for more experienced people with titles like "Senior PHP Developer" and "PHP Tech Lead."

He notes that the requirements for the jobs are just as diverse as the companies looking for candidates. Some want framework developers (like with the Zend Framework or Symfony) and some are looking for the "jack of all trades" sort of PHP developer that is flexible and experienced.

If you happen to be looking for a job, you can also check out our jobs section to find recently added positions.

I'm very glad to announce that the Norwegian PHP User Group (PHP Norge) will have it's first user group meeting next thursday (March 22nd). Our main goal is to gather the norwegian PHP community and spread more knowledge about PHP.

We will be doing that by having a monthly user group meeting downtown Oslo. On each user group meeting we will gather around a specific topic and invite guest speakers for an in-depth presentation. Afterwards we will have time for discussion and some informal socializing.

You can get complete information about the group and about where the next meeting is from their main website.

UPDATE: You can check out some pictures of the even that Knut Urdalen has posted on his Flickr account.

The even is sponsored by the Israel Venture Association and includes other finalists like: Amimon, Discretix, Deep Breeze, Mazor Surgical Technologies, and Itemfield.

For more information, you can check out this month's edition (on stands June 19th) of Red Herring.