Tony Wright

This will be a small post, but I stumbled onto some interesting data that I thought I’d share. As a background, we’re currently searching for a great C++ dev to work at our startup here in Seattle. I decided to do a bit of research to see other job postings, compensation packages, etc.

I was startled to find that (in Seattle) C#, C++, and Java jobs are hotter than everything. Period. By a monstrous margin. Take a look (numbers in parentheses are the results counts as I write this):

Jobs with C# in the title (759)
Jobs with C++ in the title (537)
Jobs with Java in the title (307)
Jobs with ASP in the title (209)
Jobs with Ruby in the title (85)
Jobs with PERL in the title (50)
Jobs with PHP in the title (46)
Jobs with Python in the title (26)

Wow. C++ jobs almost end up being more plentiful than all of the major scripting languages combined. C# jobs are even more plentiful. Toss the word “startup” into your search query and it reduces all of the results, but the big-iron languages still win by a wide margin. Really interesting to contrast these numbers with San Francisco, where you see fewer C++ and C# jobs (predictably as you move away from Microsoft-country), more Java jobs as well as a few more Rails and PHP jobs (but Java wins in SF by a landslide).

So if you could snap your fingers in Seattle and be a rockstar/ninja programmer in one of these languages, which would you pick (from a career perspective)?

(nota bene: recruiters who use the word “rockstar” or “ninja” in a job posting deserve to be flogged. While we’re at it, anyone using the phrase “FAIL” or “EPIC FAIL” deserves a healthy thrashing as well.)

http://www.marinamartin.com MarinaMartin

Is “EPIC FAIL” not allowed at all, or not in job postings?
http://www.rescuetime.com webwright

Tragically, I'm going to have to go with “at all”. I think the phrase has jumped the shark. If you're going to use it, you might as well slap on some rainbow leg warmers and say, “Don't have a cow, man!”.
abscondment

Being a “rockstar” in a particular language is like being a good mechanic for particular brand of car. The goal career-wise is to be a good mechanic, period, not to bind yourself inextricably to the success of Honda, Ford, et cetera. There are computer science principles in the software world that are analogous to engineering principles that exist in the mechanical world; these principles are independent of particular languages or engines.

In both cases, the best engineers should have understanding far deeper than the specific brand of car or language, and will perform well regardless of the medium. And that point, one can look at jobs regardless of the associated language.
http://www.rescuetime.com webwright

Great point! There are rapidly diminishing returns on experience with any language, I think. I recall the last Rails team I worked with barely had a single dev with any professional rails experience and they cranked out some serious code (because they were great coders).

We'd much rather hire a programming generalist than a C++ virtuoso who knew nothing else (though we'd obviously prefer some experience).
http://mikedesjardins.us MIke Desjardins

Has anyone ever created a mashup of Google Maps w/ a job hunting service to show which languages dominate a particular geographic region? I'd *love* to see that. It seems like a LOT of the greater Boston startups ask for Rails experience, so I was surprised ot see Ruby so low on your list. I wonder if it's a geographic thing? Likewise, I've all but abandoned my C++ skills because they're in such low demand around here.
yolfer

I'm glad I'm a rockstar/ninja in the languages I enjoy using the most, irrespective of what some dude's EPIC FAIL of a blog post says
http://www.rescuetime.com webwright

Oh noes! Now everyone I know is saying EPIC FAIL to get under my skin. Dammit. Backfire!

Yaw, I agree with the sentiment– who cares what is in the most demand or what pays the best (says I, the guy who is perennially unpaid/underpaid at his own startups!). Still, I thought it was interesting data!
Alex

ASM, C, C++, LISP and Python( or Ruby)
ASM – to know how it works,
C/C++ – to know what can you do on top of ASM
LISP- to forget about these horrible ASM, C and C++ stuff and concentrate on lambdas and context free
Python(or Ruby) – to relax after all these ))))))) thing

And all together to enjoy the freedom to choose!
McCarthy

Not surprising: mainstream programming languages use mainstream recruiting mechanisms. Today, that's Java/C#/C++ and online job boards.

I know lots of people looking for Ruby programmers, but they'd never bother posting online. They go to the Ruby meetup, and ask around.

On “indeed.com”, searching for “title:lisp” turns up only 2 hits in the whole country, even though I know for a fact that several other companies are hiring Lisp programmers. They're just not stupid enough to post to general-purpose job boards, because that's not where Lisp programmers hang out, and there's no benefit to getting 10,000 resumes with “Lisp” as a keyword from people who just add whatever keywords the job description asks for.

Java is still a very popular language, but online job boards don't reflect the proportions in which a language is used. They reflect the proportions in which hiring managers want it to be used.
Rafael

Then why most ads still seek specialists?
kmerritt

There's definitely some self-selecting bias in the data. Posting a job ad on Monster, Dice or any other similar site is so ineffective any more that the only ones doing it are “legacy” shops. We've put together a strong engineering team at blist, largely from two sources: 1) us sending outbound inquiries to folks whose profiles we've found on LinkedIn, Facebook or their blogs; 2) inbound inquiries from people who've found our blog and have discerned enough of our culture to send us an expression of interest.
http://www.humbleblogger.blogspot.com/ RogerV

In 2003 I joined a Seattle company and went on to write a distributed, messaging-based software system that drew on my decade of experience in C++ (certain Windows client components), my recently then acquired year of experience in Java (middle-tier), and .NET C# (the flagship language of the client implementation). Even a wee bit of x86 assembly language, plus some of the build process used perl scripting.

My very first job out of college in mid 80s utilized Object Pascal, C, and Motorola 68000 assembly language.

I don't know – multi-language fluency is something I've always regarded as a natural requirement in this profession and I find it strange to get fixiated on a single language.
http://www.rescuetime.com webwright

Agreed! Don't take this post as advocating for specialization– it isn't! Our company is built on a healthy combination of Ruby on Rails, Python, JavaScript and C++ (for our client app). If someone was a rockstar (<cringe>) in only ONE of those, I'm not sure we could keep them busy.

As Robert Heinlein said (via Lazarus Long), “Specialization is for insects.”
http://quadhome.com/ Scott Robinson

I'd want to be a “rockstar” / “ninja” in whichever languages were experiencing the most growth.

Something these statistics don't show.
http://www.rescuetime.com webwright

Actually, that's a really good point (that hadn't occurred to me!). Medium/long-term growth is the key, though. If you made your decision on short term growth, there were probably times where you'd have been convinced that the future was Cold Fusion and Java Applets.
http://blog.rajgad.com Amit C

You have to add startup to get the real number, it is about 35. Add to that platform things which matter, openings which just contain C++ in addition to java technologies such as Spring, etc or domains such as networkingrouting and it is much lower.
C++ is dying, http://blog.rajgad.com/work/2008-03/top-program…

My view from the other side, which is also anecdotal like yours is the reverse. C++ is really dying in many domains.
http://blog.rajgad.com Amit C

You have to add startup to get the real number, it is about 35. Add to that platform things which matter, openings which just contain C++ in addition to java technologies such as Spring, etc or domains such as networkingrouting and it is much lower.
C++ is dying, http://blog.rajgad.com/work/2008-03/top-program…

My view from the other side, which is also anecdotal like yours is the reverse. C++ is really dying in many domains.

Startup Programming Jobs: C++, C#, and Java Reign Supreme?

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