The last time we looked at the best programming languages to learn in 2015, JavaScript, Java, PHP and Python appeared good options when you analyze popularity on sites such as GitHub and StackOverflow.
Alternatively, perhaps we can determine the "best" technologies to learn from job-related metrics such as demand and salaries? Career planning company Gooroo examines more than 500,000 IT vacancies throughout the US, UK and Australia to produce their 2015 salaries and demand report.
Top Ten In-demand Technologies
The following technologies feature most strongly in job vacancy advertisements:
- Java -- featured in 18% of adverts with an average salary of $100,000 USD
- JavaScript -- 17%, $90,000
- C# -- 16%, $85,000
- C -- 9%, $90,000
- C++ -- 9%, $95,000
- PHP -- 7%, $75,000
- Python -- 5.5%, $100,000
- R -- 3%, $95,000
- Scheme -- 3%, $65,000
- Perl -- 3%, $100,000
These are worldwide statistics which will have a US bias owing to its larger market. C# hits the top spot in the UK (32%) while JavaScript wins in Australia (13%).
Top Ten Technology Salaries
The following technologies all pay more than $100,000, with Erlang developers earning an average of $125,000 USD per year:
- Erlang
- Clojure
- Haskell
- Lua
- Lisp
- Groovy
- Scala
- F#
- Ruby
- Python
Interestingly, only Python appears in both lists. Does that make it the best option?
Gooroo Caveats
Before you knock down your boss's door to demand a pay rise and Python re-training, Gooroo discloses:
- Not all jobs are advertised, nor can they capture every vacancy.
- Salary information is sparse and, when available, is often quoted as a range.
- The data includes temporary contract and full-time permanent roles, which can offer wildly different salaries.
- Jobs often require more than one skill. In those situations, Gooroo divides the salary by the number of skills to obtain an average for each.
- It can be difficult to extract skills, e.g. Microsoft SQL Server could be referred to as "SQL Server", "MSSQL", "SQL 2014", etc. (On personal note, I'm yet to meet a recruiter who understands Java is not JavaScript!)
The report is interesting, contains useful information and reaches reasonable conclusions. Unfortunately, demand and salary statistics are misleading unless you appreciate the underlying data. The following issues should be noted…
Large Corporations Have a Larger Influence
Recruitment is expensive. Agencies typically charge 25% of first year salary to find suitable applicants so they can can afford to purchase adverts in online and offline media.
This explains why Java (18%) and C# (16%) feature prominently. Neither is better than competing languages but large corporations invest in them because:
- they have long-term business goals
- they employ many developers and cannot switch platforms quickly
- the technologies are available with support from Oracle and Microsoft.
Smaller companies may have more vacancies and similar salaries for PHP, Node.js or Ruby. However, they will be less willing or able to pay hefty recruitment fees. Their adverts are less noticeable, so the results are skewed accordingly.
Continue reading %The Best Language to Learn in 2015: Job Demand and Salaries%
by Craig Buckler via SitePoint
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