Advice to the young: in addition to learning French or Spanish or Chinese, consider also learning Java / J2EE, .Net, and C++.
Summary post by David Weldon in FierceCIO; original article by Sharon Florentine in Info World; research results posted on Dice.
Emphasis in red added by me.
Brian Wood, VP Marketing
——
Hiring software developers will cost you dearly
Software developers continue to be the dandy of IT, with high demand and top salaries, according to new research from Dice, the online job and careers site.
As noted in an article at InfoWorld, “software developers are in high demand, as employers double down on the need for foundational technologies and core systems and ramp up for future technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and wearable technology.”
Dice evaluated its job posting database and found that 40 skills top the list of most wanted software skills.
“Many of these searches revealed employers’ need for longstanding, core technologies and a continued focus on providing basic services and maintaining existing infrastructure,” said Shravan Goli, president of Dice.com. “At the end of the day, these skills are essential to the success of any company, regardless of industry–whether they’re in retail, IT, finance, education, and healthcare.”
Goli noted that the Dice statistics do not reveal top emerging skills, but the highest volume of searches for those skills by employers on the site.
“These top 10 are measured by volume of searches only–based on the number of available positions within each company. Combined together, yes, skills like Java, .Net and C++ will make the top 10, but we also have to consider where the technology is heading and determine what the hottest skills are, even if talent is hard to find at this time,” Goli said.
Meanwhile, recent statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm the high demand for software developers, says an article at CIO Insight.
“The current job market has been very good for software developers, especially those with experience in several programming languages,” the article states.
—–
Demand for software developers remains high
There’s a huge demand for software development talent for core technologies like Java and .Net as well as emerging tech like IoT and wearables, says Dice.com
Software developers are in high demand, as employers double down on the need for foundational technologies and core systems and ramp up for future technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and wearable technology, according to recent research from Dice.com.
Java still tops the list
Dice examined searches of its candidate database and found 40 skills topped the list of desired software skills. “Many of these searches revealed employers’ need for longstanding, core technologies and a continued focus on providing basic services and maintaining existing infrastructure,” says Dice.com’s president Shravan Goli. “At the end of the day, these skills are essential to the success of any company, regardless of industry — whether they’re in retail, IT, finance, education, healthcare.”
Emerging software skills in demand
But these statistics can be misleading, as they don’t reflect the hottest emerging tech skills, says Goli, only the highest volume of searches. Recruiters and hiring managers are also looking for developers to address new challenges in IT, including embedded systems and IoT, robotics and wearable technologies, just to name a few, he says.
“These top 10 are measured by volume of searches only – based on the number of available positions within each company,” Goli says. “Combined together, yes, skills like Java, .Net and C++ will make the top 10, but we also have to consider where technology is heading and determine what the hottest new skills are, even if talent is hard to find at this time,” he says.
Goli says that according to Dice.com, the hottest and most in-demand skillsets are for candidates with Hadoop and/or big data experience; those familiar with mobile technology and the Android operating system, wearable technology, IoT and robotics, but since those technologies are much newer, talent is more difficult to find.
“Some of these skills are going to take the market by storm, just like mobile and big data did,” Goli says. “It’s important not just to focus on core foundation technologies, but also emerging tech so that companies can either attract and retain this talent or identify and grow those skills internally before it gets too expensive,” he says.
http://www.infoworld.com/t/it-jobs/demand-software-developers-remains-high-243908
—–
May 2014: The Creators
Before there’s the need to hire sales, digital marketing and finance professionals, companies need creators. And, there’s no doubt this job market has been good to tech’s chief creators – our software developers.
In the first quarter of 2014, the unemployment rate for software developers was 2.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares to five percent in the second quarter of 2009 (the quarter in which the recession ended) and 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2010.
To put demand in some perspective, employers searched Dice thousands of times(1) to start the year just looking for software developers, engineers, architects and leads. A look inside those searches reveals the combination of skills and experience hiring managers search for along with those titles.
The number one request by a large margin: Java/J2EE. For a programming language that started to be commercialized about 20 years ago, it’s stranglehold on modern development is unshakable, including as a framework for the emerging – Hadoop – and of course, java plays a part in Android (#31) and many other requests on the list.
Experience is clearly of value, with many hiring mangers seeking senior developers (#5). In my own hiring, I’ve taken to matching less experienced developers, with a more experienced counterpart as a way to build our team in a tight market. And, I’m not the only one. New grads shouldn’t fret, hiring managers searching for “computer science” (#33) should equate to demand for those with recent diplomas.
Today’s biggest needs surround the core, but it will change as the next generation of technologies realize their promise. Visit here for America’s Hiring Managers Top 40 Software Development requests.
Shravan Goli
President, Dice
*A single job posting may reflect more than one skill, location or type of position; therefore total figures for those attributes may be greater than total jobs posted.
