Developer Job Trends and Market in 2022
The Great Resignation is a boon for Software Developers, here's why:
Right through the pandemic and shooting across the Great Resignation, let’s face it, from security pros to developers to analysts, the battle for the best IT talent wages. The battle for talent is felt more than ever for development roles, programmers and software engineers.
With inflation and a Great reshuffle and talent jumping for brighter opportunities, I think it’s safe to say that so far in 2022, demand for developers is perhaps (and I’m no expert) at an all-time high, with tech salaries rising faster than almost every other industry. Here's what you need to know.
These past two years will stand as the weirdest and wildest any software developer, engineer, architect, or their managers have ever lived through. What will 2022 bring for the tech workforce — for salaries, for hiring, even for where we work? Is it some mysterious 4-day work week?
The Datascience & Developer Hunger Games
The world is your oyster if you have the skills and that thirst to keep learning right now. The role of the software developer is as central to an organization's success now as those right at the top. Good engineers beats the competition, hands down!
Those pesky A.I. engineers, data scientists and developers might not be involved in corporate decision making, developers are crucial to steering growth within the enterprise in a market in which software savviness is increasingly a marker of commercial success. That’s your most important and young talent base, and most startups and organizations know it.
The work done by Devs and Ops is arguably, more crucial than ever. If the Cloud and Software is eating the world, we need cloud architects and software developers in droves.
It’s Digital Transformation Fantasia
Think about the changes we are witnessing at scale! Running technology in a business has become a business in itself. As commerce goes digital and consumers spend more time working, shopping and managing their lives from home, companies are spending billions of dollars to showcase their technology and maintain a lead on competitors.
From Cloud Kitchens to doing our banking online, there’s a lot of code required in how our lives are changing. As a result, software creators find themselves in enormous demand. It’s an exciting time to work with data, be an engineer or partake in the astounding amount of innovation today.
If this article (and topic) inspires you like it does me, share it with a friend that might appreciate it too!
Software Developer Salaries are Skyrocketing as Demand Soars
So do you know your own worth? How does a $54,000 increases in wages in four years sound? That’s going to cover rises in inflation, at least I hope so.
According to CompTIA's February 2022 Tech Jobs Report, software developers are the biggest driver of tech-hiring activity within US organizations. The average salary of US tech workers in 2018 was $84,300; today, it's closer to $120,500, with those in decision-making positions able to earn an average salary of $138,200, according to CompTIA.
Dice's 2022 Tech Salary Report recorded a 6.9% increase in the average technologist salary between 2019 and 2021, reaching $104,566. "That's the highest salary ever recorded by the Dice Salary Report, and a positive sign for technologists in terms of the current and potential future value of their skills and experience," the authors noted.
So if in 2022 consumers have gotten used to unprecedented levels of convenience, and that demand likely won’t recede when the virus does. Business models are evolving. Software developers are society’s wish makers and divine minions!
The fact that some of the best-paying jobs are in tech is a testament to the value that these professionals bring to businesses, and as such, having one or more programming languages under your belt is going to make you extremely appealing in the eyes of recruiters.
Steve Nouri, a Chief Data scientist influencer type on LinkedIn (I put his notification Bell on). Some of his polls have really caught my attention. They bring some excitement to the field!
Click on these images below of the Polls - to see the post and comments.
and
Anyways I digress. One day I’ll make a list of AI personalities to follow on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Specialized Developers Win the Props
According to O'Reilly's 2021 Data and AI Salary Survey, developers who work with niche programming languages are likely to take home higher average salaries than their more common counterparts, largely owing to the fact that they are in such short supply.
So think about it, is there a niche language or intersection you are really passionate about? Think about making your salary expectations a reality.
Companies are Scrambling to Replace IT and Tech Talent
The think about tech and IT jobs in 2022 is companies need to catch-up on higher than average turnover levels. Think about it, recruiting in the tech industry is on the rise — with companies reporting they are hiring “at or beyond pre-pandemic levels,” according to the report. Of those surveyed, 52% said they planned to add new positions in the coming year and 80% said turnover has increased in their company over the past year.
Niche programming languages did you say? How about…
Rust, Julia, Erlang? Wow….
If you don’t believe digital transformation is a thing, just remember. The technology that enables remote work — distributed networks, video streaming — will continue to require support and innovation. So will new kinds of businesses that cater to new emerging economies.
What is at the center of it all? Developers and software engineers.
ML engineers, DevOps, Data scientists and programmers seem to have a good future i the post-covid economy and recovery. Just remember the most popular software languages often get middle of the pack type salaries.
This included Python ($150,000), SQL ($144,000), Java ($155,000), and JavaScript ($146,000). Web languages, such as HTML, PHP, and CSS, were at the bottom of the range, at around $135,000.
Most Lucrative Software Development Languages?
Conversely, less common languages were associated with high salaries, the highest of which was Rust (over $180,000), followed by Go ($179,000), and Scala ($178,000). Other more niche languages associated with high salaries were Erlang, Julia, Swift, and f#.
The Talent Shortage Fall-Out
To persuade new talent to join and to help retain current talent, companies are offering signing bonuses and cash incentives, upgrading hardware and software, offering perks such as unlimited paid time off and offering remote or hybrid work arrangements.
Signing bonuses
Cash incentives
Free hardware and software upgrades
Perks, WFM, 4-day work week, etc….
You don’t to be a software engineer though to prosper in such a labor shortage and great reshuffle of people wanting to work where and how they want:
The tech industry is booming again and will continue to grow, so why not find a job that you can grow with. Companies are looking to hiring more long-term positions and want to find candidates who are willing to work.
Top IT Jobs of 2022
DevOps Engineer
Cloud Architect
Product Manager
Programmer Analyst
AI Architect
Systems Analyst
Network Administrator
Software Engineer
Blockchain Engineer
Information security analyst
Data scientist
Basically as you can imagine and know I am sure, workers in all fields are flexing their negotiating power, and tech workers, already in high demand, are demanding more money and better conditions. That trend is likely to keep gaining momentum.
I think in reality though it’s a bit tricky to determine the relationship between salaries and programming languages with exactitude – a lot of the time, developers who work in niche languages already have a solid background in older, more traditional languages, meaning they already bring vital skills and experience to the role that makes them more valuable to employers.
The Cake Goes to - Clojure?
The 2021 Developer Survey by Stack Overflow surveyed 80,000 developers worldwide and found that Clojure coders took home the highest median salary of $95,000 per year. This was followed by f# ($81,037), Elixir ($80,077), Erlang ($80,077) Perl ($80,000) and Ruby ($80,000).
Clojure is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system.
The correlation between programming languages and salaries can also be tied to the type of roles that are currently seeing high demand in the tech industry.
A.I.’s Impact on Code
Clojure, f# and Go are commonly used in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) applications; both fields are seeing increased investment by organizations undergoing digital transformation, and as a result more companies are seeking candidates with analytics skills and a deep understanding of data.
The tsunami of investment money pouring into tech companies — coupled with the demand that those businesses scale up fast and go public — is likely also fueling outsized demand for developers and engineers. With high pandemic earnings comes more VC money and the Fed’s boost of liquidity all-around, raising the salaries for the most key workers in the era of digital transformation.
Other jobs that show no signs of slowing down are:
Database administrator and architect
Cybersecurity professional (e.g. Information Security Analyst)
Network and compute systems administrator
Software developers and IT both are very crucial here together.
Datascience Skills are in Demand
Take DevSkiller's 2021 IT Skills Report, for instance, which recorded a 295% year-over-year increase in demand for data science skills amongst recruiters on its platform. Demand for Python – another programming language used heavily in data science, albeit one that is far more common than Clojure, f# and Go – also rose sharply, at 154%.
Creativity in New Positions in 2022
This past year, in 2021, we saw a record numbers of people across industries quitting their jobs — in the U.S. alone, more than 4 million per month in August, September and October, the majority of job leavers heading to new positions.
Datascience Demand Outrips Supply in Many Countries!
Yet demand for data scientists currently outstrips supply. A survey of nearly 14,000 developers and recruiters by CodinGame and CoderPad in January found that data scientists and machine-learning specialists were amongst the roles companies struggled to hire the most, owing to the small pool of experienced developers with the necessary skillsets. A report by the UK's Royal Society in 2019 warned that demand for data scientists and data engineers had more than tripled over five years.
What does a DevOps Engineer Even Do?
While working as a DevOps engineer, they help and look after the development team taking part in the deployment and network operations.
DevOps Engineer skills work on oversee coding, scripting, and processes development.
This type of engineer looks after the development team taking part in the deployment and network operations. In this position, you are responsible for designing and updating a deployment infrastructure. The average salary package of this position is $95,000 to $140,000.
Some of the DevOps Engineer skills include:
Coding and scripting
Tools like Git and Jenkins
Skilled in Linux or UNIX system administration
Strong communication and interpersonal skills
Deep understanding of DevOps best practices
Does that sound like you? Are you front end or back end?
Stack Overflow's 2021 Developer Survey found that full-stack developers, front-end developers and back-end developers continue to account for the majority of the global developer workforce. And yet, according to the CodinGame/CoderPad survey, full-stack engineers and back-end engineers remain the most in-demand technical professionals amongst hiring managers.
Software Developers Just Want to be Loved !
The recruiting company Hired released a study in October that collected data through June 2021. Among the findings:
Average tech worker salaries rose just over 9% in San Diego, 5% in Seattle and Austin, Texas.
Remote workers also saw average pay rise by nearly 5% — and around the globe, the average tech salary jumped by just over 6%.
Of all tech workers surveyed by Hired, 35% expected their salary in their current role to increase up to 10% over the following six months; 22% expected their pay to jump as much as 20%.
Python traded places with SQL to become the third most popular language in Stack Overflow's survey, whereas CodinGame/CoderPad's survey suggests that JavaScript, Java and Python will be the top three languages recruiters will look for in 2022.
Why the DevOps Craze Again?
DevOps has garnered increased interest and investment by businesses amid the shift to the cloud and automation, taking it from a technical buzzword to a role that companies are suddenly desperate to fill. According to the Puppet State of DevOps Report 2021, "today, 83% of IT decision-makers report their organization is implementing DevOps practices."
Labelling DevOps as a 'role' is something of a misnomer: really, DevOps is an emerging set of practices adopted by organizations who wish to speed up their development lifecycle by integrating software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) functions. "DevOps is whatever you do to bridge friction created by silos, and all the rest is engineering," and a worker in the field. Is the DevOps person the project manager of the dev teams?
Well technically, DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary with Agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from the Agile methodology.
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What do they do again? That’s like My Manager
DevOps engineers manage the operations of software development, implementing engineering tools and knowledge of the software development process to streamline software updates and creation.
They are usually senior-level technology professionals who lead and coordinate different teams that create or use company software. They oversee code updates and may take on different roles as they help colleagues design, develop, test and release software to consumers.
DevOps engineers have a strong understanding of the agile methodology and industry standards alongside the specific networks and processes within their company.
Whatever you might call it, DevOps requires a broad technical skillset spanning software, cloud, automation and security to name but a few, as well as knowledge of software build cycles and Agile development principles.
Yeah, so little wonder that DevSkiller found that professionals who identified themselves as DevOps-skilled were amongst the highest paid in its survey. Dice's 2021 Tech Salary Report put DevOps engineer in a less spectacular 11th place: however, this was out of a total of 30 roles, and with an average salary of $119,201 – up 3.5% from 2020 – this is far from mediocre.
This concludes our short and wacky survey that’s right at the heart of topics I wanted Datascience Learning Center to be about.
I’m hoping this Newsletter can help, inform and inspire someone out there.
Thanks for reading!