This seems to be a common view of a web developer around our shop particularly in respect to technical skills. Our IT department includes application development as well as the operational and infrastructure elements.

However, our web services team reported to Marketing, the senior analysts and the programmers. As well, they were a self contained unit - budgets, hw & sw acquisitions, server configuration, business plan etc. Our IT department just gave them a network port to plug into.

Recently the web services team was moved to the IT department and two thirds quit, including the senior analysts. We are now faced with an undernourished team with arcane and outdated technology and presure from marketing to maintain the levels of productivity they previously enjoyed. It has become a strain on the rest of the team - progammers and server techs - to keep this thing running, never mind ehancing and upgrading our web precence.

Sometimes, be careful what you ask for - you might get it!