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Top Developer and Engineering Skills Employers Will Look in 2012

66 points by alexwilliams 15y ago

kls 15y ago
You will have to forgive my ignorance on the matter as I have not been paying close attention to the popularity of NoSQL databases but has MongoDB taken the crown. Cassandra seemed to be widely popular for a while but this article seems to imply that MongoDB is the skill to have, which would lead me to believe that more people are adopting it than the other offerings in this space. Can someone enlighten me to the state of the NoSQL industry, has it picked the winner and losers yet? Or is MongoDB just enjoying it's moment in the sun?
- scarmig 15y ago
  Well, with the caveat that the differences between NoSQL solutions can be as big or bigger than that between SQL and a given NoSQL solution... A quick glance at Stackoverflow careers and SF craigslist show Redis coming up a wee bit more than MongoDB, though I doubt it's statistically significant. Those seem like the top two, with most others giving significantly fewer hits. Regardless, MongoDB is far from undisputed king of the hill.
  - kls 15y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate the info, it is an area of computing that I just have not had time to get into. I have used Cassandra before, but never taken the time to look at the other offerings.
josegonzalez 15y ago
Is Puppet actually "winning" the DevOps battle for server deployment? Just curious as I was under the impression that both Chef and Puppet were top-tier, and you really couldn't go wrong either way.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  People certainly blab about Puppet more. (Which suggest to me Chef is the one "winning". It is being used by the people who don't have the time to argue about which is better.)
  - simpleloss 15y ago
    It's true that Puppet Labs is doing some serious marketing with their enterprise stuff. I do think their product is better. I have used both.
  - scottm01 15y ago
    Puppetlabs has certainly stepped up their marketing; 6-8 months ago you could have flipped the words puppet and chef in your post and it would have been completely true. I'd argue puppet is winning any time there are operations staff, chef is winning when pure developers are also doing operations. Either is fine and both are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition (which is generally "no configuration management" or "a hodge-podge of homegrown scripts").
ericb 15y ago
Really? Puppet over Chef? Mongo over Redis? No Ruby, no Erlang, no EC2? I am skeptical of these choices. I suppose if that is what the data says...
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Ruby may be the darling of the startup industry, but how about the greater industry as a whole?
  - ericb 15y ago
    Ruby is used professionally at Coldwell Banker, Seachange, Mathworks, IDG, and other "non-startups" that I know of in the Boston Area. There is a kernel of truth to what you're saying though.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    Ruby was cutting-edge and trendy for startups several years ago, but it's definitely mainstream these days.
- hello_moto 15y ago
  No Ruby, No Erlang? Yes... why not... They're no longer the most important thing/deciding factor these days. Hadoop, Hbase, Cassandra, Lucene are all written in Java and require some Java integration. I'm pretty sure there are bridging/interfacing library in other languages but I suppose most people don't really care about those languages. Stick with Java and move the train forward kind of attitude perhaps. Spring Framework, Spring MVC, JAX-RS, JAX-WS, Hibernate/JPA2/Spring-Data and some Java-based DB migration library (Flyway) seem to fill the sweet spot that Rails had to offer a few years ago. I used to hate Maven but now I think Maven is one of the killer apps/frameworks/tools in Java.
alexwilliams 15y ago
MongoDB is killing it in the NoSQL space. 10Gen proves it. Cassandra is still in the game but Apple and others are on a steep adoption curve for MongoDB. Results for this list came from Indeed.Pretty reliable source.
tl 15y ago
> The Ubermedia team wants developers to build Java-based iOS apps. There are a few ways you could explain this sentence, but its existence makes me distrust the article's premise of scouring Indeed's listings for "valued" skills as a whole.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Nah, it is properly some snafu by the journalist -- they properly said Java backed iOS apps. (Which is still weird -- why choose Java for the backend of a green-field project?) and the journalist 'improved' on it.
diego_moita 15y ago
Can someone explain to me what "top 10" means? The same source (Indeed) shows that the "top" HTML5 trend is a baby close to Sharepoint: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=html5%2C+sharepoint&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=html5%2C+sharepoint&l=
icco 15y ago
I wish I could cause physical harm to people who write and post these types of articles.
- aMoniker 15y ago
  You don't have to wish. You literally have that ability.
  - icco 15y ago
    lol, so true. I guess I should say "without consequences."
aforty 15y ago
These are trends and while important a bit misleading. Yes HTML5 has seen 350,000% increase (yes, I typed that correctly) in job postings over the years, but it is still only in 0.3% of all job postings. Meanwhile C# is in ~1.6% and Java in ~3.3% of all postings. Not saying you shouldn't get some HTML5, MongoDB, Android or iOS knowledge but these are hardly the "most looked for" skills.
droithomme 15y ago
I keep on top of tech news and I haven't even ever heard of a couple of those. I'm sure they exist and are important in some very small niche, but if they were the "top" skills currently sought, I would have heard of them, seen them posted in articles, etc. Based on this my conclusion is that the article is up to something. Perhaps they need technology H and P people and thought that posting an article with several "real" top skills along with their pet fringe tech would result in people going back to school for training at no additional cost to the hopeful employer facing a shortage of people competent in their fringe technology.
jroseattle 15y ago
In D&D style, I strike back with a Brad-Feld rebuttal: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-top-10-lists-suck.html http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-top-1...
jtchang 15y ago
For a competent developer the difference between not knowing an obscure technology and being proficient in it is about 6 months. Smart employers concentrate on finding smart people.
- happywolf 15y ago
  Generally true, but due to the cut-throat competition among Internet companies, we (and I guess almost all other employers) want smart people with the right skills _now_.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    But it might take you more than six months to find them. Are you working on plan B as suggested as well?
    - happywolf 15y ago
      No need, we just limit the expansion pace if there is not enough people.
- lucisferre 15y ago
  Smart employers concentrate on finding smart people Is there some bot that posts this whenever someone submits a jobs/hiring post?
- jodosha 15y ago
  Smartness is a must have for a proficient developer, but this is an out of topic remark. Given a new technology, you can quickly learn the 80%, but the remaining 20% is got acquired by experience and it's the only way to really master it.
wei2012 15y ago
Knuth just told us, most of the Trend/Hot techs are bullshit.
minikomi 15y ago
Forgive a naive question. When posts like this (or actual job listings) say "HTML5", is what they're really saying "sites which use a lot of front end js and feel more app like"? I'm assuming there's not that much of a demand for people who can shorten a doctype, leave off closing tags in tables, re-encode audio files to ogg, wav and mp3 and who know how to make pretty canvas based demos...
- spydum 15y ago
  A million times this. I work in the enterprise space, and I see people asking for HTML5 for all sorts of things, even though none of the details they spew out require use of HTML5. They can all be sufficiently done in HTML4, without concern for backwards compatibility. I think people just list HTML5 because they assume it will be some big thing. They have no idea what it actually encompasses.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  I am not so sure about the canvas thing. Basically everywhere you currently see flash being used, you need HTML5 (and canvas) so that it will work for people with an iPad.
benawabe896 15y ago
I'm thinking something like this could be more relevant: - html / javascript / php - ability to read code - ability to read poorly written code - charisma / good communication - personal appearance - relationship with someone in the company - ability to create a decent resume / cv

66 points by alexwilliams 15y ago

kls 15y ago

You will have to forgive my ignorance on the matter as I have not been paying close attention to the popularity of NoSQL databases but has MongoDB taken the crown. Cassandra seemed to be widely popular for a while but this article seems to imply that MongoDB is the skill to have, which would lead me to believe that more people are adopting it than the other offerings in this space. Can someone enlighten me to the state of the NoSQL industry, has it picked the winner and losers yet? Or is MongoDB just enjoying it's moment in the sun?

scarmig 15y ago
Well, with the caveat that the differences between NoSQL solutions can be as big or bigger than that between SQL and a given NoSQL solution... A quick glance at Stackoverflow careers and SF craigslist show Redis coming up a wee bit more than MongoDB, though I doubt it's statistically significant. Those seem like the top two, with most others giving significantly fewer hits. Regardless, MongoDB is far from undisputed king of the hill.
- kls 15y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate the info, it is an area of computing that I just have not had time to get into. I have used Cassandra before, but never taken the time to look at the other offerings.

josegonzalez 15y ago

Is Puppet actually "winning" the DevOps battle for server deployment? Just curious as I was under the impression that both Chef and Puppet were top-tier, and you really couldn't go wrong either way.

sliverstorm 15y ago
People certainly blab about Puppet more. (Which suggest to me Chef is the one "winning". It is being used by the people who don't have the time to argue about which is better.)
- simpleloss 15y ago
  It's true that Puppet Labs is doing some serious marketing with their enterprise stuff. I do think their product is better. I have used both.
- scottm01 15y ago
  Puppetlabs has certainly stepped up their marketing; 6-8 months ago you could have flipped the words puppet and chef in your post and it would have been completely true. I'd argue puppet is winning any time there are operations staff, chef is winning when pure developers are also doing operations. Either is fine and both are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition (which is generally "no configuration management" or "a hodge-podge of homegrown scripts").

ericb 15y ago

Really? Puppet over Chef? Mongo over Redis? No Ruby, no Erlang, no EC2? I am skeptical of these choices. I suppose if that is what the data says...

sliverstorm 15y ago
Ruby may be the darling of the startup industry, but how about the greater industry as a whole?
- ericb 15y ago
  Ruby is used professionally at Coldwell Banker, Seachange, Mathworks, IDG, and other "non-startups" that I know of in the Boston Area. There is a kernel of truth to what you're saying though.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Ruby was cutting-edge and trendy for startups several years ago, but it's definitely mainstream these days.
hello_moto 15y ago
No Ruby, No Erlang? Yes... why not... They're no longer the most important thing/deciding factor these days. Hadoop, Hbase, Cassandra, Lucene are all written in Java and require some Java integration. I'm pretty sure there are bridging/interfacing library in other languages but I suppose most people don't really care about those languages. Stick with Java and move the train forward kind of attitude perhaps. Spring Framework, Spring MVC, JAX-RS, JAX-WS, Hibernate/JPA2/Spring-Data and some Java-based DB migration library (Flyway) seem to fill the sweet spot that Rails had to offer a few years ago. I used to hate Maven but now I think Maven is one of the killer apps/frameworks/tools in Java.

alexwilliams 15y ago

MongoDB is killing it in the NoSQL space. 10Gen proves it. Cassandra is still in the game but Apple and others are on a steep adoption curve for MongoDB. Results for this list came from Indeed.Pretty reliable source.

tl 15y ago

> The Ubermedia team wants developers to build Java-based iOS apps. There are a few ways you could explain this sentence, but its existence makes me distrust the article's premise of scouring Indeed's listings for "valued" skills as a whole.

tomjen3 15y ago
Nah, it is properly some snafu by the journalist -- they properly said Java backed iOS apps. (Which is still weird -- why choose Java for the backend of a green-field project?) and the journalist 'improved' on it.

diego_moita 15y ago

Can someone explain to me what "top 10" means? The same source (Indeed) shows that the "top" HTML5 trend is a baby close to Sharepoint: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=html5%2C+sharepoint&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=html5%2C+sharepoint&l=

icco 15y ago

I wish I could cause physical harm to people who write and post these types of articles.

aMoniker 15y ago
You don't have to wish. You literally have that ability.
- icco 15y ago
  lol, so true. I guess I should say "without consequences."

aforty 15y ago

These are trends and while important a bit misleading. Yes HTML5 has seen 350,000% increase (yes, I typed that correctly) in job postings over the years, but it is still only in 0.3% of all job postings. Meanwhile C# is in ~1.6% and Java in ~3.3% of all postings. Not saying you shouldn't get some HTML5, MongoDB, Android or iOS knowledge but these are hardly the "most looked for" skills.

droithomme 15y ago

I keep on top of tech news and I haven't even ever heard of a couple of those. I'm sure they exist and are important in some very small niche, but if they were the "top" skills currently sought, I would have heard of them, seen them posted in articles, etc. Based on this my conclusion is that the article is up to something. Perhaps they need technology H and P people and thought that posting an article with several "real" top skills along with their pet fringe tech would result in people going back to school for training at no additional cost to the hopeful employer facing a shortage of people competent in their fringe technology.

jroseattle 15y ago

In D&D style, I strike back with a Brad-Feld rebuttal: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-top-10-lists-suck.html http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-top-1...

jtchang 15y ago

For a competent developer the difference between not knowing an obscure technology and being proficient in it is about 6 months. Smart employers concentrate on finding smart people.

happywolf 15y ago
Generally true, but due to the cut-throat competition among Internet companies, we (and I guess almost all other employers) want smart people with the right skills _now_.
- justincormack 15y ago
  But it might take you more than six months to find them. Are you working on plan B as suggested as well?
  - happywolf 15y ago
    No need, we just limit the expansion pace if there is not enough people.
lucisferre 15y ago
Smart employers concentrate on finding smart people Is there some bot that posts this whenever someone submits a jobs/hiring post?
jodosha 15y ago
Smartness is a must have for a proficient developer, but this is an out of topic remark. Given a new technology, you can quickly learn the 80%, but the remaining 20% is got acquired by experience and it's the only way to really master it.

wei2012 15y ago

Knuth just told us, most of the Trend/Hot techs are bullshit.

minikomi 15y ago

Forgive a naive question. When posts like this (or actual job listings) say "HTML5", is what they're really saying "sites which use a lot of front end js and feel more app like"? I'm assuming there's not that much of a demand for people who can shorten a doctype, leave off closing tags in tables, re-encode audio files to ogg, wav and mp3 and who know how to make pretty canvas based demos...

spydum 15y ago
A million times this. I work in the enterprise space, and I see people asking for HTML5 for all sorts of things, even though none of the details they spew out require use of HTML5. They can all be sufficiently done in HTML4, without concern for backwards compatibility. I think people just list HTML5 because they assume it will be some big thing. They have no idea what it actually encompasses.
tomjen3 15y ago
I am not so sure about the canvas thing. Basically everywhere you currently see flash being used, you need HTML5 (and canvas) so that it will work for people with an iPad.

benawabe896 15y ago

I'm thinking something like this could be more relevant: - html / javascript / php - ability to read code - ability to read poorly written code - charisma / good communication - personal appearance - relationship with someone in the company - ability to create a decent resume / cv