.Net Developer Shortage

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/tech-job-site-dice-reports-shortage-of-net-developers/

by lapost1979 • 15 years ago

87 97 15 years ago

nestlequ1k2• 15 years ago

This will be an interesting one to watch. I know a ton of great .NET developers who have bailed on the platform and switched to open source. This is anecdotal for sure, but if this is a huge trend then you're left with a bunch of companies with huge investments in a platform, and an ever decreasing number of developers who can actually code effectively for it. The salariesrates should go up, but these typical corporate .NET clients are cheap motherfuckers. I'd predict a resurgence of offshore consulting to meet demand.

However it does seem like devs for every technology are in high demand and low supply. It could just be as simple as that.

daeken• 15 years ago

I'm a .NET fanboy, but the likelihood of me ever working for a .NET shop is next to nil. The work is just not interesting. Sure, if I just wanted to collect a (almost decent) paycheck, I'd do it, but given that there are a dozen other niches I can work in, I'll pick any of them over the .NET world. The only way I'd be converted is a massive paycheck and at least some interesting problems, but neither of those seem to exist in the .NET world, by and large.

icey• 15 years ago

I'm on the other side of the fence: At my last place we actually had some moderately interesting problems to solve, but had a hard time hiring because the vast majority of the applicant pool couldn't do anything that they couldn't look up on Google or StackOverflow.

Even with a moderately easy tech-screening process we could only realistically do second interviews with around 1.5% of the applicants we got. For as good as .net is, I think it's doomed to be relegated to accounting apps for the foreseeable future.

misterbwong• 15 years ago

Add me to the chorus of .NET devs saying that many of the .NET jobs out there just aren't interesting.

I'm lucky enough to work for one of the few .NET shops where I'm not just stuck pumping out commodity CRUD apps but the market looks pretty bleak.

untog• 15 years ago

Amen. I got lucky- I'm a .NET developer now working for a small startup in NYC, but spent a long time in .NET shop hell.

That said, we're starting to look for another developer, and it's a nightmare. So many resumes of people that (without wanting to sound rude) belong in a .NET shop- I interviewed one guy that didn't even know SQL, because all he'd ever done was use prebuild factory methods for database access. He had a Masters.

TallTalesOrTrue• 15 years ago

I doubt that is the case. With employment at record highs and good jobs not available I don't think people would rather sit idle than take up a job in .Net. The article can also be rephrased as "Demand for .Net developers surges." Of course it won't be as newsworthy then :)

nestlequ1k2• 15 years ago

Sure, there's always going to be a mountain of job applicants for each position, it doesn't mean they can do the job. Finding qualified .NET developers is the real challenge, someone who can architect and build a functional system.

These are the very type of people who are bailing on the platform.

okaramian2• 15 years ago

The 2 .NET shops I was in had a pretty bad way of commoditizing the developers working there (and thus started believing offshoring was the way in this, the year of our lord, 2011).

This also led to them working in bringing the code to the lowest common denominator level and was a frustrating nightmare. I was a lone wolf and when I mentioned that I had implemented a couple systems using MVC and jQuery on the front end it blew some of the developer's minds. It's a shame because the framework is capable of a lot, it's just the enterprise shops are terrible of taking advantage of it.

Needless to say, I'm not a .NET developer anymore.

rodh2573• 15 years ago

out of interest, what language/framework are you working with now?

patio112• 15 years ago

This article is a fairly valueless press release for Dice, but be that as it may: there are no shortages for developers, there are only shortages for developers at the wages employers are willing to pay.

mey• 15 years ago

In addition to being unable to pay what the market demands, companies (from my anecdotal perspective) also don't have any desire to train new developers into positions.

thematt• 15 years ago

It's not that they're unable to pay -- they choose not to.

I see so many companies that want something for nothing. They want the automation and savings from the systems that developers are building, they're just not willing to pay for it. But then ask them if they'd rather go back to the manual business process they were doing before (that doesn't require paying developer salaries) and they look at you like you're crazy.

euroclydon3• 15 years ago

Part of the problem, for these .NET and Java jobs, is the job itself, not necessarily the pay. I get a half dozen calls per week for crappy internal .NET SharePointy positions at near the same salary I'm making. I wouldn't want to do those jobs for 150% of the salary.

Folks that like to program, usually don't like to write back office apps.

ghurlman2• 15 years ago

That's part of the problem... a good chunk of the .Net shortage is a SharePoint developer shortage... real, actual developers, not draggy-droppy ones.

Developers with a good head on their shoulders can get 6 figures easy doing SharePoint... but who in God's name would want to?

patio112• 15 years ago

There is probably a number at which you or I would write back office apps, though. People don't do I-banking out of love, and there is a lot of headroom between well-paid devs and them.

I kinda like my job right now but for a million bucks I'd kinda like your Sharepoint installation, too.

blacksmythe• 15 years ago

This seems to sum up the article (and your response) pretty well:

"Why the shortage? ....NET developers earn around $83,000 per year, but Java developers typically make more than $91,000."

euroclydon3• 15 years ago

It's not the eight thousand dollars. Trust me. Most schools teach OO in Java. HR departments and often times hiring managers just play keyword bingo. A good developer who knows Java will pick up C# just fine.

Java, and it's ecosystem, are a little more difficult to use and master than C#, and IMO, warrant the extra average pay.

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

I'm not sure those figures tell you much. Java and .NET jobs tend to be in different parts of the country depending on the culture of the city. .NET jobs are concentrated in the east, where cost of living is much lower, and Java jobs are more concentrated in the west.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

It seems the enterprisey .NET shops interviewed already hired all the crappy .NET developers who are willing to work for that kind of money and now they would have to move to more expensive ones than the ones they had before. Their reluctance is easy to explain.

Programmers are interesting animals - the good ones work for fun. As long as their bills are getting paid and work is interesting, they stay. Give them a brain-dead job, like anything Sharepoint-related, and they leave.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

Programmers are interesting animals - the good ones work for fun. As long as their bills are getting paid and work is interesting, they stay.

I disgaree. They do work on interesting stuff, but getting bills paid isn't sufficient. There's no shortage of interesting work. If you can't find an interesting job at pay you find compelling then there's a problem.

roel_v• 15 years ago

"Programmers are interesting animals - the good ones work for fun. As long as their bills are getting paid and work is interesting, they stay."

LOL. Only the idiots. The others find places where they get to do stuff they love and where they get paid well.

StrawberryFrog5• 15 years ago

Good developers are hard to find at any price.

CWuestefeld2• 15 years ago

Patrick, this is almost a tautology. The statement is true about pretty much any commodity, in the absence of rationing.

earl• 15 years ago

Put another way, employers hope that whining instead of paying the market clearing wage will find employees.

quanticle3• 15 years ago

Dice believes that developers are worrying that if they specialize in .NET development, they won’t be able to branch out to other platforms.

That's a valid concern, in my opinion. I don't know why, but even talented Microsoft developers I've spoken to have been woefully unaware of developments outside of the .Net/ASP sphere. It's almost as if innovations don't exist until they've been incorporated into the CLR. I've seen similar attitudes in Java developers, but it appears to be far worse in the .Net community.

That was, in fact, one of the reasons I chose to keep practicing other programming languages while I was employed by a .Net shop. I didn't want to end up "stuck" knowing only .Net like so many of my co-workers.

acabal• 15 years ago

I worked in .Net shops for a few years, back in the days before .Net MVC. Part of the reason people ended up (and maybe still end up) stuck in .Net might be because back then, as soon as you tried stepping outside of the .Net webforms box (i.e. tried to do anything remotely interesting) things because exponentially complex. Keeping all of the .Net classes and foibles in my brain during my day job was enough for me not to want to learn the intricacies of a different system in my off time.

That was years ago though... and since then I've happily moved on to being self-employed and using OSS.

marshray• 15 years ago

Yeah Microsoft tends to deprecate and replace frameworks every few years. Usually it's an improvement, but they really keep you on an API treadmill.

Eventually I got tired of it and went back to primarily Win32 development for customer-installed apps and Linux for everything else. I feel like I can focus on quality rather than quantity much better now.

pbz3• 15 years ago

In my experience, looking at it from the other side is even worse. In fact, it's so bad that as soon as they hear Microsoft their brain shuts down. They get this emotional reaction that makes any rational discussion difficult if not impossible.

quanticle3• 15 years ago

If it was merely zealotry, then I'd be okay with it. As you point out, there are zealots on both sides of any divide. No, the problem I'm talking about is ignorance. On the Unix side, people have at least heard of other frameworks. If you're a Django dev, you've probably at least heard of Rails, Plone, etc. If you're on the Microsoft/ASP.Net side of things, however, it's routine to encounter developers who haven't even heard of Django or Rails.

It's that which is mystifying, not the zealotry.

vailripper• 15 years ago

I myself am a ASP.NET MVC developer by day, and play with Node.JS by night. I agree with you on the difficulty in moving outside the .NET world, but I will say ASP.NET MVC isn't nearly as bad as webforms. Webforms abstracts so much of how the web works away that that it's extremely difficult to wrap your head around anything else. And like you said, because the abstraction is so deep, it's very difficult to make room in your mind for anything BUT webforms. With ASP.NET MVC, I've found very little difference. The majority of the coding for most modern CRUD apps is on the client-side anyway, so the majority if your knowledge is transferable to Node.js. Express and ASP.NET MVC both follow a restful model, and I already had experience working with closures, async calls,from client-side javascript, so I haven't found the conversion to be very difficult at all.

quanticle3• 15 years ago

Ah, okay. I moved away from .Net just after ASP.Net MVC was released, so I didn't get a chance to see what impact it would have on the community.

The reception to ASP.Net MVC, though, confirmed my original point about the .Net community. I heard lots of talk treating the MVC pattern as revolutionary, when, in fact it was something that was rather common outside of the .Net community.

city41• 15 years ago

I was in that position. I professionally used .NET since its inception up until about 4 months ago. I switched to a JavaScript job at a company that doesn't use any MS tech at all. Not wanting to get stuck shoehorned as an MS-only developer was a major motivation for me making the switch.

eropple3• 15 years ago

You might be well-served to differentiate between "Enterprise .NET" and ".NET". I'd agree with a lot of what you're saying if it's applied to folks who "think in ASP.NET", but outside of that? Not so much. You've got Mono developers, who tend to bounce between Windows and OS X pretty regularly and a bunch of other folks who are at least aware of the stuff on the other side of the fence. And then you've got folks who use it as a tool--appropriate in some situations, not appropriate in others.

(As noted in a sibling comment, it's also very common to see people turn their brains off rather than entertain .NET as a sometimes-appropriate tool.)

dbattaglia• 15 years ago

I didn't want to end up "stuck" knowing only .Net like so many of my co-workers.

I'm in the same boat. It's a shame too, in my mind at least, because I really do enjoy working with the better parts of the platform (MVC, WCF, C# 4, VS 2010, etc).

I'm currently working in a .Net shop and the work is not terrible by any means (it's a fairly large scale web application used by school districts), but I'm starting to fall out of love with the MS lock-in and general attitude of the folks I've worked with so far. I'm pretty sure 95%+ of my current and past co-workers have no idea what hacker news is (or even /r/programming for that matter). The general reaction when telling someone about my side projects learning Scala/node/rails/etc on my (gasp) Mac at home is along the lines of "huh?".

jcromartie• 15 years ago

See: ASP.NET MVC... it took years until the "official" framework came along for anything even close to sane became more mainstream in .NET web development.

Yes, there were other "Rails for .NET" frameworks out there. But, you are correct: the vast majority of .NET developers are waiting for the official Microsoft seal of approval before adopting anything. It's part of the culture that comes with choosing Microsoft for your stack: you want support, or at least somebody to sue when it goes wrong.

jinushaun2• 15 years ago

Part of the problem is that in Enterprise .NET, it's hard to convince your boss to use a non-MS solution. Unfortunately, a lot of .NET is done in the Enterprise environment, which results in a population of programmers that live in a very big bubble.

BadassFractal• 15 years ago

You what there's a shortage of? Proper remuneration for that kind of experience requirements.

rmc2• 15 years ago

21% were looking for .NET developers with 8-10 years experience.

Wikipedia tells me that .NET 1.0 was released in February 2002, 8.5 years ago. Good to see recruitment companies and HR depts have such realistic requirements. (Still, at least they aren't asking for anyone with 10+ years experience)

ghurlman2• 15 years ago

That's 9.5 years, 10 if you were working with the beta stuff, but yeah... I've seen recruiters wanting 10+ years for 5 years now at least.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

at least in the case of MS technologies, the developers were exposed to the most of the components (or their previous incarnations) of the platform well before official .NET packaging. I'm still wondering what good candidates were placed into one position i came across in 2005 that had 10-12 years of J2EE experience requirement. Somehow i was scared to apply to such a place - as i only worked with Java since 97 and with J2EE since 99 :)

dsolomon3• 15 years ago

5 years experience with SQL Server 2008

http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302...

pagekalisedown• 15 years ago

They probably have an h1b lined up and don't want locals to interfere with that person's labor certification.

jmatt• 15 years ago

I started coding .NET around 1.0. Completely anecdotal but out of the dozen+ people I knew that dove in at the time - zero are still actively involved in .NET.

I rarely take a .NET contract. But what I can say is 1) They always pay my highest rates. 2) Generally it's a bad / scary experience in comparison to python or Clojure (where I do the majority of my work and contracting).

cpeterso• 15 years ago

> 21% were looking for .NET developers with 8-10 years experience.

They could be looking for developers with 8-10 years of experience as developers but who also know .NET.

dsolomon3• 15 years ago

Citing Dice as a source gets about as much credibility as using a ouiji board.

john_horton• 15 years ago

Out of curiosity, why? Wouldn't they have pretty good proxy data on the demand for different skills?

dsolomon3• 15 years ago

Unfortunately it's an HR system, managed by HR, for HR.

If the marketplace really wants to know what is in demand, contact the people actually doing the work.

vparikh• 15 years ago

I know I'll get down voted for saying this but I just have to do it - could it be that developers no longer want to work for boring corporate assembly-line level "lets make yet another database front-end for yet another inventory management system"? Could it be that people who like to code actually care about the code and tools that they are using? Could it be that developers are seeing the writing on the wall about Microsoft and are leaving in droves?

jinushaun2• 15 years ago

I work for a .NET based startup doing fun and interesting things, so I know that C# and .NET can actually be fun to code in. However, most, if not all, of the .NET job listings I see on Twitter are boring soul-killing enterprise jobs. Or worse, Sharepoint!

Fortunately, there seems to be a renaissance going on at MS. They realise they no one likes working with their shit tools. Sure MS technology may "run the world", but all the cool/fun stuff is being done in the OSS stack. When was the last time you heard of a hot startup using .NET? MS wants in on the party and a lot of their new stuff has a deliberate non-enterprise angle with a focus on developer enjoyment.

jackfoxy3• 15 years ago

>When was the last time you heard of a hot startup using .NET?

Does Stack Exchange qualify?

jackfoxy3• 15 years ago

I run a .NET shop where we do pretty interesting stuff, and it is sooo hard to recruit decent .NET developers. The first step of my recruiting process is a simple, but moderately challenging algorithm in C# to complete at the candidate's leisure and send to me. 80% - 85% don't come close to getting it right even though acceptance criteria are part of the very simple instructions.

haasted2• 15 years ago

Can you reveal the algorithm you are asking them to implement? Your anecdote is interesting in the context of the recent stories about a lot of programmers not being able to solve the fizz-buzz problem.

DrJokepu2• 15 years ago

I'm not the parent but we're in very similar position (finding it very difficult to find decent .NET developers, candidates can't answer even the most basic algorithmic questions), so I'll answer your question for you.

I typically ask candidates to implement a function that calculates the nth element of the Fibonacci sequence, write a program that prints the values in a binary tree in ascending order and finally to implement an algorithm that finds the value of the element in the middle of a linked list. These are just "introductory" questions, but very very few candidates make past this stage so I very rarely get to ask serious / deep programming questions to candidates.

And believe me, I'm very forgiving on interviews and try to take into consideration that the candidate is probably very nervous, especially when they are fresh off the school, but what can I do with a candidate who can't figure out how to get the number of elements in a bloody linked list, even after carefully explaining how a linked list works? Or the ones who get the idea that they should be counting all elements but have no idea how? How could I discuss the finer details of type covariance or ask them how they would go on about implementing a face detection algorithm if they can't even come up with the naive solution to the Fibonacci "problem"?

jackfoxy3• 15 years ago

I don't want to publish it, only because I like it so much for its simplicity, yet efficacy in weeding out candidates. I don't want it to become too popular. I will say it has to do with processing a single array in a way that could come up in a business application (although I have never seen it). An important part of the assignment is to understand the simple instructions, which include the statement //sample test case (your solution should pass any test case), followed by a sample test case, an array of a particular length.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

In other news, there is an excess of agencies who aren't offering real jobs, but are just collecting resumes to hand off to clients without even reviewing.

matrix• 15 years ago

It's unfortunate that all non-software industry companies are getting tarred with the ".NET Shop" brush, because much depends on the company culture and who is running the development group. I've worked in some great gigs (and one or two awful ones) in settings you might not expect to be interesting and fun.

I'm hiring at the moment, and it's definitely in the "great gigs" category. Bonus, as part of this gig I occasionally get paid to ski and climb. Not that this has helped me find good candidates yet.

mgkimsal2• 15 years ago

Perhaps off topic a bit, but here's a recent run in with a .net shop.

I was brought in to work on a project. They'd installed a PHP-on-Windows setup for me because I was introduced as a "PHP guy" (which I mostly am, but I do other stuff as well). I indicated I could do the project in ASP.Net, but it would take me a bit longer because it's not my main platform. No... they needed it done ASAP, and were prepared to be a mixed shop. They were already running another PHP app on Windows already, so this was a natural progression. They were already having trouble finding .net people in the area - freelance or otherwise, so it seemed a concession they were willing to make. Find available talent, get job done faster, move on.

Project was done in July and August, then went up the approval chain. I was expecting to come back at end of Sept with a list of changes to make.

"Well.. our developer ported it to .net because that's what he's more comfortable maintaining."

So... rather than spending some time getting comfortable with PHP, they spent time reworking something in to ASP.Net, negating my work, and meaning there was a couple of weeks of other internal .net work not getting done either.

What does this have to do with .net developer shortage? Maybe nothing, or maybe those companies could be more productive by having staff that could work with mixed tech stacks more effectively. I'm stereotyping a bit - we've all met developer X who only knew one technology, and every problem had to fit within that one tech worldview. I've found it with zealots of all stripes, but perhaps it hurts a bit more at the enterprise level?

rodh2573• 15 years ago

A lot of talk here about the types of businesses that normally do .NET work and how they aren't very good to work for, so I figure here's a good place to ask for some advice.

I've been working full time as a .NET dev and doing my degree part time for the last 5 years, graduating next month hopefully around the top of my class. I enjoy .NET, particularly ASP.NET MVC, and my current job has let me have full control over the development workflow, I use TDD,Git,MVC,Jquery etc. Looking at what I should do next if I was to change jobs it kind of feels like russian roulette trying to find a company here in Brisbane, Australia that hires good devs to do interesting .NET (or any development work) while paying well and without being a sweat shop.

My question is, where should I branch to if not in .NET? Java seems like the other big area around here but its all enterprise stuff as well. I've done some mobile development in my own time, got a couple of apps on the iOS app store and some Android on the way. One of which uses a NodeJS/MongoDB back end, but I'm not sure there's that many jobs around here for that (iOS/Android development may be a good option, though I do like web dev). I'll be looking to relocate in a few years, but for now, does anyone have any suggestions for what framework/language I should learn next?

To all the people here who said they moved away from .NET due to the kinds of employers and fellow developers that use it, where did you move into and how did that work out for you?

dekz• 15 years ago

If you're looking for particular non-mainstream framework/langues jobs in Brisbane (Node.js being one of them) you should hang around in the Meetups (MeetupJS). Good place to get noticed and job offers.

rodh2573• 15 years ago

Thanks Dekz, I've attended a few different meetups in the past (including JS) but haven't had time this year due to a heavy uni workload, will definitely be heading to the various ones around the place. Unfortunately the .NET one (QMSDNUG) is more geared to hearing about new Microsoft products than improving programming skills, but I'll definitely be getting stuck into some meetups around the place.

.Net Developer Shortage

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