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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry
- qualudeheart 4y agoI’m good at it but I simply don’t enjoy it.
- mvc 4y agoThere's plenty of C++ programmers. But they're really smart so they know the time to work with with crypto has been and gone.
- WFHRenaissance 4y agoTell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article
- fwsgonzo 4y agoI guarantee that higher quality pay will give you access to a higher quality talent pool.
- eschneider 4y agoThis.
- joezydeco 4y agoThese are financial firms griping about the lack of developers. They're some of the highest paid developers in the world. But working for these companies is also insanely stressful. Long hours, high pressure. Maybe that reputation has caught up to them.
- coliveira 4y agoExactly. They pay well, but the job is absolutely stressful. If you survive long enough to enjoy some of this money, good luck for you, you deserve.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoWhich industry are we talking about — gamedev? ;-)
- AlchemistCamp 4y agoNo, the parent poster said they pay well!
- speedgoose 4y agoObviously not.
- dehrmann 4y agoThat's a funny industry because good enough code is perfectly fine, and people will line up to work on games, so you can pay them less.
- bdw5204 4y agoThe best thing they could do to attract talent would be to offer a choice of 3, 4 or 5 days for 60%, 80% or 100% salary. Many people would probably choose 3 days at a high paying finance job over 5 days somewhere else and 60% of the money they tend to offer at those companies would still be really good money.
- galangalalgol 4y agoDo people actually use c++ for HFT? I thought it was all verilog and cuda.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe glue code is C++ still. It's also a much less glamorous job than when the C++ programmers were the "hot shit" instead of the people who specialized in accelerators.
- galangalalgol 4y agoSo they are complaining that they can't find people who want to be second class citizens while still dealing with the pressure and hours using language skills they acknowledge are in high demand...
- macjohnmcc 4y agoThe jobs that I have been approached for in HFT have been for C not C++.
- dragontamer 4y agoCUDA is C++ I imagine some work is also useful on CPUs, and C++ is one of the most efficient languages.
- galangalalgol 4y agoYeah, kinda, CUDA is c++ that I can't run cppcheck or clang tidy on, and the important bits are either calls into the cu* libraries which are c style, or kernels, which are really their own thing.
- dragontamer 4y agoYes, kernel code is GPU style rather than CPU style. But the CPU-drivers of CUDA are all C++. Albeit a C-like API (cudaMalloc, lol), but its a clang compiler for the CPU code nonetheless. If you have complex GPU + CPU interactions, you'll need to be a C++ expert. Even if you aren't doing GPU work and sticking "only" with CPU-side CUDA, its all C++.
- jchw 4y agoLast time I looked at the finance industry, which was admittedly a while ago, I saw a C++ job that listed the salary as being around $100k. Sounds reasonable. In New York City. Oh. Compare to Google salaries, on levels.fyi for example. I know they're not theoretical or inaccurate because I worked at Google for a while. If you really want to do C++ professionally, that and maybe other FAANG companies seem like they'd give you much higher quality of life. But the truth is, if you're a C++ developer, you may as well just take up another programming language and get paid more. The data doesn't lie: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-top-paying-technologies https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-top-paying-... C++ was basically the first programming language I really learned, but I seldom use it in the industry, because I don't know why I would intentionally pick a pay cut to do harder work. (I consider C++ to be "harder" than many of the languages above it in pay grade even when doing the same work, for most tasks.)
- emidln 4y agoSalary at an HFT doesnt tell an accurate story. I'd be shocked to learn any quality c++ dev at an HFT pulled down less than 500k last year, and I'd expect most to be well above that.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoMaybe they’d have more luck hiring if they told a more accurate story.
- emidln 4y agoHiring C++ isnt especially hard because our pay is opaque. Recruiters will tell you immediately what total comp you can expect and they'll let you know what you can contractually guarantee year 1. Hiring for C++ is hard because C++ is hard and most people are quite bad at writing even somewhat reasonable code.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoI was told $300K about a decade ago and I told them no. I was already making more than that at a big tech company with a much easier pace of work. $500K would have peaked my interest, why didn’t they tell me $500K if that was an option? A quick google search is suggesting that $200K for the top end of experience, when I was told $300K they said it was as high as they go. Where is the rest of this compensation coming from? Maybe they could give stats for bonuses but when enquired it seemed that the bonus pool was being eaten up elsewhere and the C++ devs were in the back of the line for that.
- spamizbad 4y agoHaving worked with several "veterans" of this industry, I'm inclined to agree. Also weirdly C++ devs aren't making that much more than the fullstack devs who build FOH tooling for traders.
- eru 4y agoWhat's FOH?
- stevesimmons 4y agoFront office = trading desk
- sharemywin 4y agoFont of the house
- 95014_refugee 4y agoFoH = Front of House, i.e. directly supporting customer activity.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agojust a side note: long before a small part of the programming world took over this acronym, it used to mean the sound engineer (and sometimes other staff) that were in the venue, embedded in the crowd, working on live sound while the talent was up on stage. "back of house" was behind the stage, "front of house" was the room/venue itself, and the people working in it.
- conductr 4y agoIt's also from the restaurant industry. Dining room vs kitchen staff. I think "the house" part comes from hospitality in general.
- pgwhalen 4y agoI’m not sure the programming world took over the acronym, I think OP just confused them. In finance at least, the terms Front Office and Back Office are used. I’ve never heard anyone use the restaurant/entertainment variants used.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- magic_man 4y agoAlso crazy non competes. Like 2 years.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoIf paid by a "high quality" salary, why not?
- ohyoutravel 4y agoIt’s anticompetitive, stifles innovation, and boxes people out of career growth in their niche industry.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoThat's why they better pay $$$ for it.
- ska 4y agoAt a certain level, this tends to be balanced with severance. "Garden leave" is different from "I can't get a job".
- aidenn0 4y agoIf they pay double, then you just need to suffer for at least 2 years to break-even and get 2 years of vacation.
- smabie 4y agoYou get paid during your NC
- dcchambers 4y agoYup. What's the point of all that money if you have no time to spend it and the stress will send you to an early grave?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 908B64B197 4y ago> Maybe that reputation has caught up to them. It did. Comp is nowhere near FAANG and the work culture is still stuck in the 90's. Go to any college and talk to students looking for internships. Finance firms are nowhere near the top of their list.
- joezydeco 4y agoCurious - what's at the top of their list now? Do they still want FAANG jobs after all the layoffs?
- andsoitis 4y agoI don’t think layoffs change people’s desire to work at a top hi-tech company.
- boshalfoshal 4y agoI'd say HFT/prop trading/market making/hedge funds, since those are the only places that are hiring right now and pay good money. The usual destinations for smart and motivated new grads are (not counting very early startups/making your own company): 1. Top tier HFT/prop firm (Jane Street, HRT, Jump, etc.) 2. Meta, larger unicorns like Stripe, Databricks, etc. 3. Google 4. Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Obviously im leaving out a lot of places but this is generally what I've seen. Id say for most people FAANG is still the top option, and for people that want to shoot beyond FAANG, trading firms are probably the next target. If you were including very early startups in this list, I've noticed that the smartest people often join promising startups as an early engineer, or make their own company. I'd put them above trading firms, but the risk is way higher.
- noisenotsignal 4y agoHFT, prop trading, market makers and the like are also finance firms right? They are still pretty coveted by those who are aware of their existence. Jump Trading, Citadel, Jane Street, DE Shaw etc are considered highly prestigious and competitive. There are certainly financial firms that people are less interested in though, namely banks.
- 4y ago
- wwweston 4y agoThis speaks to the point in the article "The real problem is that C++ is neither easy nor loved," which they offset with "The language may be hard. But it's also worth it." The problem is that there's a law of diminishing returns to compensation. If you can work with a tool you like that helps you meet milestones and general expectations for $X00k generally leading to pleasant days, or can work with a tool that makes your life harder and leads to higher stress fewer pleasant days for $2X00k... sure there's going to be people who take the extra money. But there's also going to be people who say to themselves "yeah, it turns out I'm plenty well compensated at $X00k I'll take the extra quality of life." "Worth it" is a value judgment. How many people managing the financial firms decided it was worth it to invest in C++?
- bfung 4y agoTo further the idea, C++ can be loved if the firms invest dollars, invest marketing (open source, other ways) of it. They should support/invest in the community they want to hire from.
- klyrs 4y agoThey're focused on the language. The language isn't the problem. Of the people I've met in finance, there are some really strong and offputting trends: they're uniformly dismissive of work/life balance, they're almost uniformly the worst stereotype of tech-bro, and aside from the rampant cocaine use, they're hugely socially conservative, and every single one values profit over ethics. It's not the language, it's the extremely toxic culture. Any programmer worth their salt can march into a nasty codebase of whatever language, and make it dance. But financial folk don't want to employ humans with all their complexity, they want robots who will run themselves into the ground for cash. So they get young men who burn out quickly and retire ASAP. The problem isn't the language. The problem isn't the pay. The problem is the extractive culture. Finance folks focus on short term profits to the detriment of their future. And now they're wondering "where can we find programmers" after they've been burning them like so many trees. Go figure.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago> Any programmer worth their salt can march into a nasty codebase of whatever language, Correct, I wonder why people both technical and non-technical focus on this aspect a lot. ( my guess is that they are incompetent themselves). Agreed, if you want someone for two or three months you probably want someone who knows the language and it's ecosystem pretty well. Any work that is more than six months should be nearly language independent.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoI wonder (with no supporting data) if they are griping because in C++ they've created horrid technical debt that they have a hard time hiring people to maintain.
- bitL 4y agoFinancial firms in London pay peanuts to C++ devs.
- dahfizz 4y agoThe key to being a developer in finance is to work in a software shop. Working at a bank / prop firm is going to be extremely stressful. Working at the shop that all the big banks buy their trading software from is like 80-90% of the pay but none of the stress. I love it. I get to do real, hard engineering for big pay without working on ad tech or javascript.
- lolpython 4y agoWhere is this?
- User23 4y agoThe only comp structure that would get me doing that job would be a market rate base and points on the algo earnings.
- Invictus0 4y agoThe pay is 500k and up
- PenguinCoder 4y agoI wish. I've never received an offer that high for C or C++ job. Then again I haven't applied at any trading firms, and I wouldn't be considered Senior.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- intelVISA 4y agoProbably closer to $1M these days
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoC++ quant jobs were already some of the highest-paying jobs in the technology market. A step above FAANG in many cases. There's more to the story than just comp. Even increasing comp wouldn't immediately generate new developers, as it takes a very long time for the increased comp to incentivize new students and junior engineers to move in that direction in their career. High performance C++ takes a lot of time and effort to learn, and even longer to master. Maybe the real issue is that there has been a surplus of high-paying jobs that are much easier and require a lot less effort to master.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago"Already" doesn't mean it couldn't be raised further. Have you seen C-suite salaries? Also you don't have to only incentivize grads. Getting experienced devs to jump ship is the primary goal. Which a $100k+ raise would certainly incentivize.
- acdha 4y agoThe company they based the story on appears to be a cryptocurrency firm, too. That'll exclude a lot of otherwise qualified candidates due to ethical or business model concerns — especially since C++ developers tend to be older, they're more likely to understand the risks of jumping into a bubble and have higher expectations for things like work/life balance.
- com2kid 4y agoYou can't pay me enough to go back to writing c++ code. I despise the language, 80% of my time is spent figuring out how to beat it into submission to get it to do what I want, which leaves very little brain power left over for designing well architected software. Modern languages get easy access to a large number of powerful design tools, C++ I have the same tools but it's stuck behind an interface (headers, the build system) originally made in the 70s.
- kazinator 4y agoTo a point, but it's still just an example of throwing money at a problem, which has limitations.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago"Rewrite it in rust" trading systems edition. But also, these companies have a lot of weird modern C++ shibboleths in their interview processes. If they compromised on those and went for low-level engineering, performance engineering, and software engineering skill instead, there would be many more candidates.
- sidlls 4y agoThis, among other reasons, is why I avoided applying to these places when my C++ skills were much more current. Certain shibboleths might have been applicable, but these were things any junior developer could have learned and made use of with a few minutes' study: they shouldn't be used in an interview process.
- devnull3 4y agoI guess C++ is the new COBOL. When fresh out of college, I used to pride myself knowing C++. I used to revel in its complexity because it made me feel a cut above the rest. How naive & stupid I was. I have not worked in C++ for a long time, I cannot climb the mountain of complexity again.
- htrp 4y agoMaybe the new FORTRAN
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WorldMaker 4y agoPython seems to be showing that FORTRAN still has a great present. It's amazing what is current in the Python ecosystem and written in FORTRAN. Python still has a lot of C extensions and C code but Python has never strictly cared about C++. From a Python perspective, at least, C++ is more like COBOL than FORTRAN.
- mistrial9 4y agolots of expensive California C++ coding got outsourced to the Ukraine and other places, faster than you can say 'dollar conversion' a long time ago. What is this trend, similar to "shortage of truck drivers" and "this airline stewardess job pays up to $300k per year" ?!
- klaussilveira 4y agoHeh. I'm pretty proficient in modern C++, and it is my favorite tool for a lot of things, but my PHP job pays way more than any C++ position available. Did an interview once for Senior C++ Engineer, embedded software in the medical device space. All went good, until the offer: $100k. Articles like this are nothing more than a desperate attempt at getting younger generations to learn said topic, so companies can pay them crappy salaries.
- badcppdev 4y agoEmbedded roles pay less than almost any other role... I feel there should be some sort of diagram possible that explains which industries and technologies pay more or less.
- lnsru 4y agoHardware is just slow and ugly. It’s not scalable and really profitable. Write C and C++ code all day for embedded devices and decided, that slowly I want to do something different and more profitable.
- danuker 4y agohttps://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#salary-and-experience-by-language https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#salary-and-experience-... Note the C/C++/C#/SQL cluster at $70k/12years of experience.
- bitL 4y agoNot just embedded, robotics or automotive have pretty low C++ salaries while much higher for Java or even JavaScript... C++ devs are punished for being more capable.
- coliveira 4y agoIt's not an issue of capacity, it is demand. C++ developers cannot write websites in C++, so big companies will have to pay somebody else.
- teeray 4y agoC++ is the only language I know where you can think you’ve learned it, then stumble upon a completely alien codebase. The decades-long history of the language has spawned all kinds of dialects and template-powered Lovecraftian horrors.
- afrohorse 4y agoThis. The horrors of some 80’s C codebases mixed with C++ over the years at my work (defense contractor) haunt my dreams.
- switchbak 4y agoMy dream is to have an AI that automatically unwraps and de-clever's a codebase to something super simple. Completely unrealistic, but even a semi-manual tool I can use on complex chunks would be amazing.
- kilgnad 4y agoThis can happen. But when it happens, AI at that point has already replaced us.
- bitL 4y agoScala is worse, people tend to invent their own DSLs in it and you end up with two libraries unable to work with each other without wrappers, like in the old days of C++...
- aidenn0 4y agoAs someone who is a fan of Common Lisp, this state of the world kind of grinds my gears. "Lisp isn't suitable for large teams because it's too customizable" while it takes me an order of magnitude more time and effort to come up to speed on a new C++ code-base (day job) compared to doing the same on a new CL code-base (hobby). Some of it is tooling: It's trivial to walk through expansions of Lisp macros, while the tooling for C++ is ... less ergonomic to say the least. Some of it is a weird combination of technical/cultural. You can do a lot more in Lisp without reaching for macros as compared to C++ and templates. In addition, every CL style guide ever says "don't use a macro when a function will do." There's also the culture of "Read *Let over Lambda" (a book on Lisp macrology), now don't ever do any of that unless you absolutely have to"
- hnthrowaway0315 4y agoI guarantee you the pool will be larger if you hire me and train me for a year.
- bogwog 4y agoI don't know if finance people would consider me "talented", but as a developer who has been using C++ for over a decade, not once in all that time have I ever wanted to work in HFT. I don't know if that's a solvable problem (maybe higher pay? But I hear they pay well already). Or maybe my perspective is an uncommon one. I just think it's silly to say there's a shortage of C++ devs because a specific industry has hiring difficulties. The article says that it's not a HFT-specific problem, but doesn't go into it.
- eddsh1994 4y agoNormally it's because you need C++ & OS/Networking & Quantitative skills that makes it a fairly narrow subset
- whywhywhydude 4y agoUnless you are doing latency sensitive high frequency trading, why would you use C++? Wouldn’t Go or Java suffice?
- layer8 4y agoMost demand for C++ developers is for existing codebases, presumably. The kind that you can’t just rewrite.
- speedgoose 4y agoAnd if you are doing latency sensitive high trading, please stop now and find a better job. Take a look there if you are looking for a useful role in the society: https://sdgs.un.org/goals https://sdgs.un.org/goals
- neatze 4y agoWhy stop there, any one who spends money on internement is unproductive human being, it is immoral to pay for Netflix instead of helping kid in Africa, right ?
- 4y ago
- bunnyswipe_com 4y agoDoes your junior job requires ten years of experience ?
- forgetfulness 4y agoI found 10 years back that getting into C++ jobs that would give you valuable experience were the ones that already required you to have that experience, or have very good connections. The ones that were easier to get into were the C-with-classes balls of mud that only were written in the first place because they were early for Enterprise Java to be invented, I doubted that entering from the latter would give you a pathway to the former. I decided it wasn't worth pursuing, went from doing Clojure to Big Data in Scala. Ten years later, I hear that there's not enough "C++ developers", read, "C++ developers with the desired qualifications". Seems straightforward to figure out why.
- commandlinefan 4y agoYes, and it pays 1/3 of what a similar Java or JS job pays.
- photochemsyn 4y agoWriting new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase is probably something that Dante would have included in his Inferno as a punishment for pride and hubris.
- commandlinefan 4y ago> Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase ... with deadlines measured in hours.
- spoiler 4y ago> Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Uh, but it still kinda sucks, if only because the nice way that looks idiomatic is usually the incorrect way for either performance (anything newly added like std::variant or std::optional) or safety (operator[]). The correct way is usual the ugly way, because it seems like the committee puts C++ arcanum knowledge above all else, instead of developer satisfaction or maintainability
- s9w 4y ago[dead]
- bluGill 4y agoC++ puts you don't pay for [at runtime!] what you don't use above all use. However that often means you have to know the arcanum bits to decide if need to pay for something. You can save a bit of CPU time if you don't check if a pointer is null - which is a great thing to do if you have knowledge that the pointer cannot be null - and also something that is very easy to screw up so most languages don't give you the option. (which is the right thing for them to do - a lot of people are writing C++ where they could write something else)
- gary_0 4y agoThe "correct" way is also template-heavy so enjoy long compile times followed by utterly incomprehensible error messages.
- flerchin 4y agoI've got plenty of flying C++ code, but I've since skilled up in other languages, and I see no reason to deal with FinTech's abuse.
- snozolli 4y agoHe seems to be talking about some specific type of C++ programming. Starting in the mid-2000s, C++ started feeling like a different language at each company I worked at. Different libraries allowed, c-style versus STL coding, even completely different ideas about how classes should be written. I looked at some recent language proposals and didn't even understand what the code was doing. Saying "I know C++" is too vague and almost certainly incorrect.
- mywittyname 4y ago> Where are all the C++ programmers? People are seemingly scared away from the language by a terrible stigma: the notion that it is a legacy program. I think this is because the pool of jobs for C++ programmers is so small. I took a position as a web dev at a company whose main product was a CAD application. Most of my work was in NodeJS, but occasionally, I'd have to dip into the C/C++ layer to make some API changes to facilitate my JS development. When my project was cancelled, I was given the option to move to a team doing all C++ development for the desktop app. I gave it some thought and realized that this was probably the only company within 100 miles who needed C++ developers, and that most of the people I worked with were hired out of college. I left immediate afterwards. I didn't want to be stuck in my 40s-50s with a unless skillset and have to start back from the beginning. I'm sure other people considering fintech work feel similarly. We live in a world where people keep their jobs for 2-5 years, meaning we live in a world where workers need to consider the needs of the entire job market, not the needs of an individual company.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago> I didn't want to be stuck in my 40s-50s with a unless skillset and have to start back from the beginning. This is absolutely nonsensical. In 20 years no one will remember about NodeJS (or it will not be the mainstream tool for web dev), but the C++ CAD application will definitely still be here, in both use and active development, and it will very likely still be in C++. Just think about it. The last C++ CAD application I worked in was started in 1987. In 2023 it was still C++, and not only still sellable, but also incredibly profitable. They are practically a monopoly in their target market. A market which is highly likely to continue to exist for the next century or so. How did NodeJS look like in 1987 ? A single skillset that can carry for 30years+ in computing is _nothing_ to scoff at.
- janalsncm 4y agoThe basic fact that the current internet uses so much NodeJS means that in 20 years it will continue to be in-demand.
- 4y ago
- inamberclad 4y agoA lot of experienced Google engineers are now going to be looking for work. This includes people with decades of C++ experience.
- kova12 4y agoGood devs are probably not the ones being laid off at Google
- inamberclad 4y agoWell my whole org was axed, including a combined 50+ years of C++ experience on my team of 6.
- ggambetta 4y agoC++ at Google is almost a different language (and nonstandard tooling and libraries and workflows). It's entirely possible to have decades of experience that don't translate to anything useful outside of Google. To give you an example: I joined Google when SVN was a thing, and by the time I left* I was a senior software engineer with zero experience using git. * I have since re-joined
- AshamedCaptain 4y agoI really don't see that as strange. E.g. Perforce exists.
- markbnj 4y agoI wrote a ton of C++ back in the early 90's. Should I dust off my chops and spend the last few years of my career consulting like the Cobol and Fortran people? [Only half kidding]
- habibur 4y agoGuess the 90s C++ vs 20s are completely different. When someone says they are looking for C++ developers I wonder which one are the looking for.
- aeturnum 4y agoThis is the capitalist version of Vonnegut's "everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." The kind of programming HFT firms want to do has vanishingly low diminishing returns basically everywhere else. They're used to lazily offering high pay and bad working conditions to self-driven people who learned C++ because it was the only tool available. Now other languages are mature and they are being caught flat-footed without a development pipeline for junior devs. Strategically I understand - it was a pretty good bet that you could use the same "get gud" philosophy that still powers their trading desks, but they just got unlucky because we're in a moment where the net opportunity-cost for not-learning c++ is basically a reward (better work experience, often better money).
- passwordoops 4y agoHeadline makes me think of RPG (the language, look it up [0]). It's basically disappeared, but it was one of the key languages used to develop much of the banking system waaaaay back. For a variety of reasons, it's still very much present but the experts are in their 70s and anyone competent enough to debug is well into their late 50s at the youngest. Attempts at upgrading to, say C++ or Java usually fail for the same reason any massive system-defining upgrade fails, so they have to trot these guys out every now and then to the tune of $100-500K per day whenever there's a problem. Moral of the story - sometimes it could be a better very long-term strategy to be an expert at just one language that has enough mission-critical functions in an industry that doesn't like investing in IT. C++ could turn into one. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG
- switchbak 4y agoI'd wire wrap circuits on the Colossus for 500k a day! Do you actually mean 100-500k per day?
- passwordoops 4y agoYes, a day. When you're dealing with a bug that could disrupt all international transfers at your bank for several days, and the kid you have on staff who learned RPG on YT has reached his limit, it's cheap. I learned about it from a friend who worked at an IBM partner with a tool to help translate RPG to something else. Rarely worked because of the decades of nuanced patches to deal with evolving business rules, and when it did they usually came in several million above budget.
- commandlinefan 4y agoPrediction: employers will respond by offering even less money (and absolutely no training at all) for these positions.
- smabie 4y agoReality: these jobs pay better than pretty much any other dev job in the world and in the last 2 yrs the salaries have skyrocketed even higher.
- danny_codes 4y agoUnfortunately HFT is a cancer on the earth, which makes it less appealing.
- smabie 4y agoIt's pretty unlikely that you even know anything about it
- xiphias2 4y ago,,former quant of Citadel'' Maybe if you quit Citadel to create your own company you have to be prepared to pay like Citadel for the same quality of people.
- college_physics 4y agoOne solution would be to ask the "rainmakers" to replenish the drying pool with some "liquid means". Developers are known to be attracted to the highest bidder / latest master of the Universe.
- amelius 4y agoCan't we have an automated C++ to Rust converter (with full correctness), and then add a pass of GPT3 to transform it into something readable (only correctness-preserving transformations allowed).
- ReflectedImage 4y agoThat's basically impossible since Rust is on a different paradigm of single ownership.
- meindnoch 4y ago* at the price point we're willing to pay for them
- jdlyga 4y agoPersonally, I would love to code in C++ but most projects are Python these days. I spent most of my career as a C++ generalist, along with doing a bit of graphics work.
- planetis 4y agoIdeally I would prefer working using a language that I am most comfortable with like Nim. The interface with C++ is pretty good. It's also easy to learn and onboard into a team. Wish it was more popular.
- harles 4y agoMeasuring growth or shrinkage by % seems like an obvious mistake. While I agree from my own anecdotal evidence this is true, the article doesn’t make any substantial case for this (and the quality is overall pretty poor).
- pipeline_peak 4y ago> The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry > However, only 9.3% of respondents used Rust at all and only 8.8% did so professionally. C++, meanwhile, languished at 48%. Oh, and don't forget the classic tweet these clickbait bloggers love to quote from official Microsoft Cloud Man, Mark Russinovich......."C++ bad, Rust good".
- jstx1 4y agoI would happily write C++ if someone is willing to hire me without C++ experience and pay me enough for it.
- FullyFunctional 4y agoI'm stunned that the OP doesn't come to the obvious conclusion from his own data: migrate to Rust. What better way to attract new talent? And from personal experience, it's guaranteed to result in a more stable, less buggy, and more responsive system.
- gaws 4y ago> The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry So now's the time to learn C++?
- giantg2 4y agoPeople aren't scared away from it. It's simply that there are few jobs relative to other languages. Why would I commit to learning C++ when there's at least 25x the jobs in JS/TS, Python, or, Java? It sounds like these trading companies are complaining but don't want to train.
- dietrichepp 4y agoWhen I talk to people about careers I see a lot of people with the implicit assumption that because something is technically difficult, it should pay well. Of course, when you say it out loud, it doesn’t sound true any more. The correlation between job difficulty and pay is relatively weak. I do think that one of the contributing factors here is that it’s hard to be as productive in C++ as you can be in other languages. People talk about how amazing C++ is all the time and how it’s got great performance and you can build great applications, libraries, and services with it… but it still seems like the amount of work and expertise it takes to build an application in C++ is usually larger than the amount of work it takes to build the same application in another language. The same may be true of embedded programming. The embedded programmers I’ve met seem like a smart bunch, but I know that the fact that embedded programming is hard is a double-edged sword—you need to hire expertise to get it done, but it takes more work and expertise to get anything done.
- lazypenguin 4y agoI agree, your comment nails it for me. As an average developer who maybe is above average in C++ I’m just more productive and can produce better results in other languages in a shorter amount of time with less pain.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoA job being hard doesn't mean it'll pay well, but a job being quite easy usually means it won't pay well, because it's easy enough to replace whoever's demanding more pay. Of course, you'll get people here insisting that web dev or whatever pays well and is easy, but try asking actual hiring managers and recruiters how easy it is to find competent experienced devs. The reality is probably that it is indeed fairly easy for some people who have a knack for the kind of thinking required. But for most people, it's not easy at all, and demand is, of course, very high.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoIdeally, you find a job that’s easy for you and hard for everyone else.
- justinlloyd 4y agoI've been writing high-performance C++ since the late '80s, and C a few years before that. I've got three choices; I can earn crap-tastic barely breaking six figures TC writing C++ for a run-of-the-mill application with reasonable work/life balance, or I can write C++ for a fintech earning $400k TC where I'm regularly pulling 70+ hour weeks and abused. Or I can get both bad pay and bad WLB making video games. Alternatively I can go earn $300k TC writing Python with occasional dips into C++ for extra juice with good WLB and my weekends off. Let me think about that. There's also big, legacy C++ code bases with their own idiomatic way of doing things and every faddish poor practice you can imagine from the past 40 years that'll make you curl up in a ball and cry when you face them.
- pauljurczak 4y ago> writing Python with occasional dips into C++ That's my recipe now, after decades with C++ continuously looking to dump it, the moment I find something better. Dipping into C++ is mostly a backup plan: Numba, Numpy, various GPU targeting tools make it rarely necessary.
- t3estabc 4y ago[dead]
- weinzierl 4y agoI don't doubt that the pool of capable C++ developers is running dry. I was never full anyway. But talented? I'm not sure if talent is that important to become competent in C++ - masochistic tendencies are much more important for sure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MetallicCloud 4y agoI started writing C++ about 15 years ago. It's still my strongest and most enjoyable language. However, at the moment I mostly write Swift\ObjC because I couldn't find any decent paying C++ jobs. I'd love to get back to it.
- elforce002 4y agoI'm thinking on learning a system language. Do you recommend C++ or Rust? I now mostly TS, Python, R, Dart, and currently basic/intermediate in Swift.
- MetallicCloud 4y agoI like Rust and think it's got a good future. However I've not seen too many job postings that actually use it, but as it catches on more that will probably increase. I guess it depends on if you're thinking near term or long term.
- tinfoilboy 4y agoI feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for Unreal Engine applications. Most of the C++ jobs I see when I look are things that I just honestly do not want to do. I don't really mind working with the language and wouldn't mind sticking with it. But I don't want to work on financial software, as I don't want to mess with people's money. I work in a game development context right now, and may for the foreseeable future, but I also know that I get paid less than others at my same level in a different context. That part hurts with the way inflation has been lately. I think in the end, those factors drive me away from trying to further my career in C++ and instead move toward something that would at least pay the bills in the future. I didn't start with C++ and could pivot to other languages and stacks as needed. But it would be a bit painful to know that I put a lot of time into this language to just not use it and let the experience rot. This also doesn't factor in the numerous jobs that I have seen postings for that I am not qualified for, according to their description. It's hard to become a Senior C++ Engineer when no one is hiring a Junior to Mid C++ Engineer. Probably part of the lack of "talent" is not wanting to invest in cultivating that talent.
- Justsignedup 4y agoyeah im starting to get into the mindset of "fuck doing what you love, just get hobbies" Ultimately, working in these high paying jobs lets you have a lot of great hobbies and enjoy life. Get a job with a decent work-life balance, and use the rarity of your skillset to make the crazy cash, retire early, make your own game company if you want.
- galangalalgol 4y agoI think both ends of that spectrum are fine. If you really do mostly love your work, and you can afford necessities, then that is just as good as getting paid oodles to do a job you don't hate that gives you time and money to do exactly what you love. The traps are convincing yourself you love your job more than you actually do, or that you don't hate your golden handcuff job and the hours won't always be this crazy...
- JohnFen 4y agoI'm a talented C++ programmer, but I do try to avoid jobs where I'm doing very much C++ anymore. I used to love C++, but it has become such a pain to work with that I prefer to work with most other languages when I have the choice. My home projects are mostly embedded systems things, and for those, I use C++ -- barely. I use it in the old "as a better C" style.
- jedberg 4y agoThere are plenty of talented C++ programmers. They just don't want to be abused by trading firms or work in that culture. Even paying them more won't work, because no amount of money is worth that abuse. I interviewed at a trading firm once, while I was working at Netflix (because Netflix encouraged us to interview for outside jobs at least once a year). The comp would have been double my Netflix salary. But I would have had to work in their office in Manhattan, be in by 8:30am every day and not leave until after 5 at a miniumum. But that wasn't the part that scared me off. It was the fact that I would not be allowed to share my work internally. I would not even be allowed to brainstorm with people doing the same job in other areas of the business. I wouldn't be allowed to take my laptop home, so if I had a hard problem to solve, I'd have to stay in the office the whole time. So basically they expected us to never see our family nor collaborate with anyone. Basically, they were so worried about secrecy of their trading algorithms and people sharing them with other companies, they didn't even let people share internally for fear that one person would learn too much about their business. I decided to stick with my FAANG job because even the ridiculous money wasn't enough to make it worth the stress and isolation.
- jensensbutton 4y ago> It was the fact that I would not be allowed to share my work internally. I would not even be allowed to brainstorm with people doing the same job in other areas of the business. This is what Apple does as well. So not all FAANGs are equal here.
- jedberg 4y agoMy understanding is that Apple will let you collaborate after what you're working on is public. They just don't want people accidentally sharing unreleased stuff with people who aren't cleared to know about it.
- jensensbutton 4y agoI've been told by folks who work on infra there that they need to file requests to even talk to the previous owners of code if that person has moved to a diff role. So I don't think it's just for unannounced products.
- Animats 4y ago"This was the consensus in a webinar from ProfitView, a crypto trading tools developer". Er, maybe people don't want to work for a crypto company. There's the downside potential of going to jail. Like Madoff's programmers.
- TheDesolate0 4y ago[dead]
- smm11 4y agoAnother five years or so and C++ might as well be Fortran.
- jerf 4y ago"The good news, though, is that 34.7% of respondents learning to code are using C++, placing it in the top 6 programming languages of that category." One of the problems C++ has is that this doesn't mean much. In the late 90s when I was an undergrad at college, the main language in the curriculum was C++... ... except it really wasn't. It was a dialect subset of C++ that was what undergrads could wrap their minds around. It was basically C with classes, and even then, the undergrads did a lot of copying and pasting around that whole class thing. I remember when I was a TA in an early class for the majors, and the central staff updated GCC to a version with namespace support in the middle of one my labs, and suddenly every person in the class had their programs break simultaneously, because this version of GCC had namespace support, and now everybody needed "using std;". Fortunately I could read the resulting error message and worked the problem out in about 10 minutes, but none of the "people learning C++" knew what namespaces were. I occasionally glance at C++ learning programs the schools are using. They haven't meaningfully changed. So, a lot of those people "learning C++" really aren't. I expect your average bachelor's degree holder in a programming degree couldn't tell you about move semantics, or explain what exceptions really do in C++, or any number of the sorts of details you need to call yourself a C++ programmer in 2023, let alone a skilled one. C++ is so big.
- jdmichal 4y agoI feel like C++ is not just big, but in arcane ways. Like needing to know move semantics, but for being such an important concept, there's very little in the way of the language helping you understand it. Also, it's changed a lot. I learned C++ as my first language, but haven't used it nor kept up with it for the past 15 years. I'm pretty sure that idiomatic C++ is just a different language now than the one I learned, despite the name and basic syntax staying the same.
- skizm 4y agoEvery time I try and get into C++ development I get hung up on build systems, compiler choices, and IDEs. For some reason I just can't build up enough steam (motivation, determination, whatever) to get past that initial hump, even though I know once I get rolling it will be fine like every other language. I've tried lazyfoo's tutorials several times and can never figure out how to get the SDL libraries working correctly >_<. Maybe it's worth another shot...
- JonChesterfield 4y agoAvoid cmake. Install gcc or clang from your distro. Call the program called g++ or clang++ from the command line. That'll work out of the box.
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoIf there's truly a need, raise salaries until it is met. It's just business, right? It's telling that: 1. they can whine and get an audience 2. that we tolerate such whining when it is rooted in their feelings of having less leverage in this situation 3. it is spun to be an industry-wide "issue" rather than one that can be solved at an micro-level by using pre-existing incentives of pay. Simply put, they don't want to, which is why they're in the position of complaining that the world is not to their liking.
- xchip 4y agoMost probably the salaries in financial careers are not competitive or their work culture sucks.
- varispeed 4y agoI used to know C++ very well and I loved it, but there was no jobs that would pay money adequate to the skill. Last time I looked typical job of Senior C++ dev would pay between £35-45k. Now it seems a little bit better, but still sounds like a pittance. Maybe they need to up the offers to the region of £300k to get people interested.
- bluedino 4y agoIsn't the pool of people who could even become a quant coder very, very small? You can't just take Joe Blow and send him to a C++ bootcamp and expect him to be useful.
- didgetmaster 4y agoWhich C++? C++ is not a static language. There have been many revisions to the language standard over the past 30 years. I started using the language in the early 90s and continue to use it today. I try to keep up with the new standards and incorporate features that I find useful in my code, but the majority of it would probably compile with a C++11 compiler. If I were to suddenly be introduced to a code base written by someone proficient in C++20 with some C++23 features sprinkled in; I would likely require some time to figure out what some of the newer code actually does. Looking at job postings in my area (flyover state), I seems kind of rare when a job is posted that is primarily looking for someone proficient in C++.
- kazinator 4y ago> People are seemingly scared away from the language by a terrible stigma: the notion that it is a legacy program. Probably more like, they are turned off by how large and complex the language is, and how it's accumulating features like a giant rolling ball of mud. The discouraging legacy lies in the code bases. "You can just write code with new features" is a hollow sentiment, because a lot of work is maintaining legacy code, which might using all the features, from C++98 to C++17 and beyond. Old code that successive generations of workers partially modernized here and there. There is a constant increase in how much you have to know to be a competent C++ maintainer of a legacy code base, under a modernization mandate, as long as the old parts of the code never completely go away. Also, in the engineering disciplines we have many people with a personality that wants to know something completely. You don't know C++ if you don't know all the old parts too, and that's a turn off for someone who takes pride in being competent. You'd rather master something smaller and simpler completely, than to partially know something huge and complex. You also don't know C++ if you don't know the new parts, and that's a turn off for long time C++ programmers who have switched to something that isn't constantly adding new unknowns. Speaking of which, some of the C++ job ads turn away competent long-time C++ programmers by requiring proficiency in modern C++. The C++ community has harmed itself by creating a negative perception of older C++ and older C++ skills, even though those are needed in C++ work. Newcomers pick up on that and get the impression that C++ is a language that they not only cannot master, but which has parts that are frowned upon. The engineering mindset is repelled by something like that.
- kazinator 4y agoScott Myers' last sentence in his retirement-from-C++ page is telling: https://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2015/12/good-to-go.html https://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2015/12/good-to-go.html The top-most entry in his long-suppressed to-do list? "Stop trying to monitor everything in the world of C++ :-)" I.e that retirement from C++ basically was the execution of that top-most to-do entry. Being a C++ expert means constantly monitoring what is spewing from the fire hose. By contrast, I can be a Lisp expert and improve in that by what could be described as crystalizing. Filling the interstitial spaces.
- kibwen 4y ago> Hickling pointed to Java, which has long “seemed to be replacing C++ itself,” but hasn't. Just like I said when this article was originally posted last December, this is totally ignorant of history. Java obliterated C++ in the enterprise space. All of Java's marketshare today would belong to C++ had Java (or any other language of its ilk) never been produced and/or popularized.
- jensensbutton 4y agoMost of the core infrastructure at big techs like Google and Meta (and I can only assume Microsoft) are written in C++. Many of the folks working on said infra escaped from finance to get there.
- tw1984 4y agoUnless you are in gaming or HFT, setting out to learn C++ in 2023 is a major career limiting factor. Why would someone burn a sizable chunk of their energy & free time to just entertain those C++ standard committee members sitting on a pile of their RSUs who intentionally delayed almost every single reasonable additions to the language. We are talking about a language that took almost 40 years to get networking support into its standard library! It is a modern museum of bureaucracy in Computer Science. Some people mentioned the term "modern C++", let's be honest, that is mostly C++11 or C++14, you'd be lucky to get C++17. I won't call 10 years old C++14 modern. Just check where were golang and rust back in 2014 and how much they've changed & created. Modern is the term reserved for languages driven by its user community, like golang, rust, zig etc. New ideas get from open proposals that can be directly commented on by everyone to production in a few quarters, not a few decades. I mean come on, why would someone with reasonable plan for his/her career choosing to put himself/herself onto that sinking ship called C++? Let's be clear, learning C++ in 2023 is like migration to Russia/China/Cuba - you give away all your reasonable freedoms & funs to submit yourself to the mercy of a close group of "elites" who try so damn hard to dictate your life & work.
- warmwaffles 4y ago> ... setting out to learn C++ in 2023 is a major career limiting factor. No it is not. > Let's be clear, learning C++ in 2023 is like migration to Russia/China/Cuba No it is not. > you give away all your reasonable freedoms & funs to submit yourself to the mercy of a close group of "elites" who try so damn hard to dictate your life & work. No you do not. It is not a slavery operation. Learning C/C++ now is a good foundation as to why things like Rust and Zig are popular. Understanding the underlying mechanics is good. To say it's a major career limiting factor is hyperbole at best.
- tw1984 4y agoPlease stop mixing C and C++ together. Learn C gets you to know all the underlying mechanisms. Learning C++ gives you nothing else but some overmarked concepts like OO.
- shadykiller 4y agoI started C++ firmware development last year coming from Ruby/Java background. Boy, I was so impressed - completely shattering the previous impression built in my college - 2005 or so. The C++ compiler seems so advanced and lets you do so many things like compile time checks. Built a framework for all our embedded development with thing like compile time checks, type safe abstractions over freertos threads/queues etc
- jzox 4y agoLink to the webinar, in case anyone is wondering: https://profitview.net/events/cpp-python-algo-trading https://profitview.net/events/cpp-python-algo-trading
- ggambetta 4y agoI used to be a die-hard C++ dev. Started learning when I was 13, loved it. Later I ran my gamedev company [0] for 10 years, released 18 titles across Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android - which required writing my own STL-like library, because when I started this the S in STL was aspirational (in particular, VS6 was terrible). I later wrote some C++ at Google. But now... I don't even recognize the language anymore. The syntax looks alien and clunky. I've also gotten used to writing Java and Python with IntelliJ and PyCharm respectively, to the point that writing C++ feels painful now. I don't like this. I wish I could find the joy of C++ again (I also like high-paying jobs). Any suggestions of books / courses / tutorials to learn modern C++? [0] http://www.mysterystudio.com http://www.mysterystudio.com
- lucidguppy 4y agoWhen you write C++ you have to know that you don't know the language. If you think you know the language - you are aiming that shotgun right at your foot. C++'s attempts to modernize usually mean adding features with maintaining backwards compatibility. It's like adding new paint to a bucket of brown paint - things never really get better. I think the percent of programmers who can keep the language in their head all the time is very low. There are minefields everywhere. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/map/operator_at https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/map/operator_at If you try to search for something in a map - and its not there - it adds it for you. If you want it to error you have to use at https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/map/at https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/map/at That is just in the very well engineered standard library. What kind of code is in your company's repos? What do programmers need to keep in their heads? Writing good C++ requires good testing, good tools, good education, good colleagues and a quasi green-field because legacy C++ is segfault... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wLYzRJt3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wLYzRJt3s
- pelorat 4y agoTo be honest, I'm a C++ programmer and I hate than in C# if I do Dictionary[x] that it doesn't add a default if possible.
- gpderetta 4y agoAnd python. There's a reason I often reach for defaultdict!
- pcthrowaway 4y agoC++'s attempts to modernize usually mean adding features with maintaining backwards compatibility. It's like adding new paint to a bucket of brown paint - things never really get better. I think the percent of programmers who can keep the language in their head all the time is very low. There are minefields everywhere. This is sounding a surprising amount like Javascript at this point. Not hating on JS, but it has significantly changed over the years while maintaining backwards compatibility. Looking at a codebase I can pretty much pinpoint when it was written (± 3 years). I shudder at the thought of people who onboarded in JS in the last 2 years coming across a 20-year-old codebase though.
- pelorat 4y ago> crypto trading tools developer, on high frequency trading using C++ Not a job a lot of people want to do, even if it pays well.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- moosedev 4y agoPay me $1MM/year, and I'll jump right back in that pool... Edit: Oh, and let me stay on the West Coast.
- nurblieh 4y agoI see some comments comparing C++ to COBOL, given similar articles in the past. However, this is where I think COBOL is much better than C++! Most developers could jump into a 40 year old COBOL codebase and safely make changes. This is probably less true for even a 20 year old C++ codebase. Sure COBOL looks old but its complexity is so much lower. Similarly, I haven't written COBOL in 25 years but I suspect the language hasn't changed much, unlike C++.
- acdha 4y agoI think you’re right: COBOL is boring, C++ is exciting in terrible ways! It would take time to understand why COBOL was written the way it was but you’d need to understand that with any legacy app, but C++ also introduces a lot of arcane language complexity to learn just to understand the business logic.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kmoser 4y ago> Anthony Peacock, formerly a quant at both Citi and Citadel said “it’s impossible to find people with a really high level of C++ skills which is exactly what every trading company wants.” When you're looking for devs with a "really high level" of skill, that's at the far end of the knowledge curve where you'll find a smaller number of devs. I'd imagine the same holds true for pretty much every language, not just C++.
- stefanos82 4y agoI cannot tell how many times I have heard this story, over and over and OVER again, yet their complain remains the same and the issue is still unsolvable! I have said this before and I will say it again (until you HR people embed it in their minds): if you cannot find C++ developers, start training people and persuade, let alone motivate them to embrace it, learn it deeply and learn its rough corners. I have lost counting how many interviews I went through and wasn't the right match for them, but loved my zeal for C++ as they have exclaimed with surprise. When you get rejected so many times, you say "C++?! why bother anyway?" and you give up and follow a different route, using a different toolset that does not asking for the unimaginable, whatever that is they are looking for, and you get respected for what you can offer to them! If I had the way to gather all HRs around the globe and ask them all at once what is it they are looking for exactly, it would have saved us all from wasting our time. The whole situation has gotten way out of hand and needs to end, at last!
- MarkusWandel 4y ago"The reality is that there are plenty of C++ jobs available in finance, and that compared to other languages there are comparatively few people to fill them. The language may be hard. But it's also worth it." It's the new COBOL!
- xboxnolifes 4y agoOne day, tech companies are going to re-learn the value of training up talent, with increasing compensation to match skill so they don't jump ship. Of course talent pools dry up when every company expects people to be trained by other companies.
- devnullbrain 4y agoThis feels like an ad invoking Cunningham's Law. There's a link to the job board at the bottom after paragraphs stroking the egos of oh-so-clever C++ developers and reminding them how well finance pays.
- e-dant 4y agoLots of comments here debating what’s legacy, what’s modern. Here’s my take: Never use objects with behavior. (Ban OOP.) Prefer monadic types. Functions should only take or return moved values or const references. (These form linear types when you need state and ensure immutable values for stateless types.) Never use a template without a concept. Prefer the stack and ban mutable memory. You end up with a functional language which resembles Haskell and competes with C. Not even rust has that level of generality.
- dw-im-here 4y agoSepples doesn't even have monadic operation for its optional type. It's just utterly destitute
- sergius 4y agoPlease define 'talented' first! Any 'talented' developer can code in most languages (well there are exceptions, VB comes to my mind :-) ) There are 'experienced', 'hard working', 'team player', 'junior' (aka cheap)and even 'senior' (a developer's developer) but 'talented'?
- none_to_remain 4y agoSome years back I was interviewing and some recruiter or HR says to me "so from your resume it looks like you're a C++ expert, right" and I was able to control myself and say something like "I definitely have C++ experience" rather than "listen buddy, does it say 'Stroustrup' or 'Sutter' on top of my resume?"
- nitwit005 4y agoCompanies seem to expect anyone that isn't a new grad to not just have recent C++ experience, but also in the right specialty. It needs to be game development, web browsers, or whatever. Even as someone with C and C++ experience on my resume, I just haven't seen that many jobs I meet the requirements for.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoDomain knowledge usually trumps programming language skills for more experienced positions, but C++ is so hairy they often want expertise there if they need it. But those domains are usually tied to C++ anyways, games, web browsers, operating systems, etc… are usually written in C++ right?
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThe real issue seems to be that C++ jobs pay 2-4x less than other jobs. Why would I suffer through arcane template compilation errors when I can make 3x more writing basic JS? I actually find C++ really fun but I don't see much opportunities in it right now.
- boshalfoshal 4y agoAt least at the companies that the article is mentioning (Citadel, for example) the pay for coding in c++ will likely be 3x _more_ than writing some basic JS. New grad packages are usually in the 4XX-5XX range.
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- remote_phone 4y agoI used c++ for 15 years but I haven’t touched it in over 10 years now. The language I learned is totally different to the point where I don’t want to learn it. It’s like an entirely new language. The C++11 was the last version I used and to me the modern version of C is trying to do too much.
- Pelayu 4y agoFrom my personal experience it seems that companies looking for C++ devs are far too picky. I have a few years professional experience in C for embedded systems and have written personal projects in C++ but have been rejected from every C++ position I applied for. It seems that companies only want someone with 5+ years experience and are unwilling to take less experienced people on.
- GoToRO 4y agoPutting 5 years of C++ in your last position on your resume will fix it. HR people have no clue about programming and they don't want to risk recommending somebody who is not a perfect fit. So you take that responsability on yourself. The time when qualified people did the hiring is long gone.
- dataflow 4y agoI'm guessing it might be because the years of embedded C experience (even if it's decades) don't necessarily show you're able to put aside what you learned and learn what's a wildly different language that happens to have some superficial similarities. In some respects it might be even harder to get someone with too many years in C to start writing C++-style code (or vice-versa!), given how difficult both languages are and how entrenched people are in each one. If you can show off any of your C++ code to any of the engineers interviewing you, I suspect it may go a long way—that is, assuming your C++ code looks like modern C++, and doesn't look like it used to be C code.
- captaincrowbar 4y agoYeah, this. One of C++’s biggest problems has always been the number of people who have spent years writing C and think that qualifies them to write C++.
- Pelayu 4y agoThis attitude is one of the main reasons of the C++ shortage though. You are dismissing anyone else's potential to learn and become a C++ developer. I didn't say that I'm a qualified C++ dev, just that I wanted to start learning to be one and get a foot in the door.
- sebazzz 4y agoI would love doing a C++ job, as the language is a proper challenge. However, being a C# Web developer pays much more, in The Netherlands. I've also missed the boat now, as I've gained more seniority I'm certainly not dropping in salary and benefits to become a Junior C++ developer and I will probably not be hired for senior functions.
- throwawayrti 4y agoWhere I'm c++developers are paid way less than web developers
- dwnvotthrwwy 4y agoIt doesn’t help that we’ve saturated the pool of programmers with JS and Python developers who are trained primarily to glue libraries together instead of actually writing code that isn’t third party library glue. That’s not a common job for C++ developers (and when it is, the gluing process is a bit more involved). This makes it pretty hard to satisfy our hiring needs with a huge number of the people who entered programming seeking fame and fortune with the data science and web dev waves. A lot of people aren’t good enough to pick up more complex and involved systems. I’ve noticed that it’s not so bad to get someone proficient in Java or C# or Fortran to pick up C++, so hiring people from those backgrounds helps us fill the C++ developer roles. The python and JS devs: not so much.
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- randomNumber7 4y agoI'm very good in C++. If you offer enough $$$ i might work for you (prefereably remote). But in all honesty. I would rather like a non C++ job, because i have ~30 years of work before me, and i don't want to end up like those dinosaur Cobol or C programmers today.
- Shorel 4y agoPay me and I will do C++. Nowadays, I get paid for PHP and Python, so that's what I do.
- odyssey7 4y agoOnce I learned safer and more advanced languages post-university, C++ just wasn’t fun anymore.
- FromTheSteppe 4y agoI'd love to have a C++ job. I didn't study for an A GPA to move data in and out of databases all day. But I currently live in a 3rd world country which has no software C++ jobs. And I can't get a foreign C++ job because I don't have C++ experience. Imagine wanting to leave all your networks, friends, family, and culture; get a lifestyle pay cut and still not get a C++ job. All skilled migrants must get a masters degree or PhD in their destination country just to get their get their CV viewed by an actual person.
- devwastaken 4y ago* corps don't want to fund education or hire anyone that hasn't already done what they're doing. They want to extract as much as possible out of workers and shove that money elsewhere, never back into the resources that allow their company to exist.
- phendrenad2 4y agoC++ has become a fantastically complex language. The pool of people with a "really high level of C++ skills" is narrowing because "really high level" has become more difficult to attain. I don't understand why trading companies settled on C++, or why they need a "really high level" of proficiency with it. But it seems like a self-inflicted problem.