
Top Developer and Engineering Skills Employers Will Look in 2012 - alexwilliams
http://servicesangle.com/blog/2011/12/29/top-10-developer-and-engineering-skills-employers-will-look-for-going-into-2012/
======
jtchang
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
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
But it might take you more than six months to find them. Are you working on
plan B as suggested as well?

~~~
happywolf
No need, we just limit the expansion pace if there is not enough people.

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minikomi
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
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.

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tl
> 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
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.

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josegonzalez
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
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.)

~~~
scottm01
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").

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ericb
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
Ruby may be the darling of the startup industry, but how about the greater
industry as a whole?

~~~
ericb
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.

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kls
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
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
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.

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aforty
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.

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

~~~
aMoniker
You don't have to wish. You literally have that ability.

~~~
icco
lol, so true. I guess I should say "without consequences."

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diego_moita
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=)

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benawabe896
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

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droithomme
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.

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jroseattle
In D&D style, I strike back with a Brad-Feld rebuttal:

[http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-
top-1...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/top-10-reasons-top-10-lists-
suck.html)

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wei2012
Knuth just told us, most of the Trend/Hot techs are bullshit.

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alexwilliams
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.

