
Ask HN: Is Demand for Developers Exploding? - marktangotango
At my current job, we&#x27;ve been trying to fill a couple of positions for about 6 months. We&#x27;re trying to get mid&#x2F;senior level people. We&#x27;ve interviewed a few entry level types, but only a couple of suitable candidates. We have one coming on board next week. So 6 months to find a candidate isn&#x27;t too bad really.  It definitely feels like the people with jobs aren&#x27;t looking.<p>Also, I&#x27;ve been interviewing around since December, and every company I&#x27;ve talked to, and several previous companies I&#x27;ve worked at, are all trying to hire mid to senior developers (java mostly, a former manager is trying to fill several .net positions).  I&quot;m getting hit up constantly on linkedin by recruiters.  Through contacts, I&#x27;ve heard of no less 150 java&#x2F;.net positions coming up, and this is a medium sized mid western city.<p>So, is anyone else seeing this? This is a demand for developers I&#x27;ve never seen before.  And salaries are going up accordingly. I do know that some of these companies aren&#x27;t competitive on pay.  One offer I got recently, I was told they had to get sign off on my proposed salary from a senior exec and still low balled it.  Just seems like a weird time in the job market.
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johnzabroski
I can tell you that developer salaries are growing. I have tried telling my
senior management that the average senior developer salary in Boston will go
from 120k in 2014 to 140k by 2017. I don't think that 16% can be called
"exploding", since it's just 5% y-o-y, but it's definitely growing faster than
the rest of the economy, and one of the few jobs where "real income" is
growing.

Finally, my observation is that the biotech boom in Boston has created unique
housing pressure in Boston, particular South Boston, Cambridge and the North
End (East Boston is the only affordable place). So many biotech IPOs in the
area have created newfound millionaires over night, and helped support a
housing boom in the area. Combine this with DraftKings, Wayfair, Buildium,
Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems, Samsung acquiring LoopPay, and other major tech
companies coming into the area over the last 5 years, and you suddenly have
markets where there is huge competition for labor but really expensive
housing. This necessarily entails salary hikes or relocation. Relocation
requires the board to negotiate with other states to relocate talent, which is
always treacheous for high end white collar jobs.

If you want metrics to validate your assumptions, I recommend using
CareerBuilder rather than these newer places like Hired.com. CareerBuilder has
great analytics tools which show you where your salary offerings rank
competitively.

Also, I can say that I don't think our problem is really salary, so much as
the fact that so many developers lack adequate training in _engineering_,
which entails solving real problems related to total cost of ownership,
stability/uptime, throughput, etc. If you work for a _product company_, it is
very hard finding these kinds of engineers, for two reasons: (1) they tend to
become specialists or architects, but your replacement reqs are generalist
roles like full-stack developers (2) 60% of all developers are contractors,
and never acquire sufficient depth to solve real hard engineering problems.

End note: I work for erecruit, enterprise staffing software. I have tons of
data about the market.

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wsc981
The EU expects a huge shortage of developers in Europe in the nearby future
[0]. And we already have a shortage currently. But perhaps there's just a
shortage of cheap developers.

Just 2 weeks ago Ordina was looking for a mobile dev for certain position at a
bank, so I got a call. I said the price they asked wasn't agreeable for me so
I could not accept. Now, 2 weeks later they do want to contact me. I'm tempted
now to raise my hourly rate for this particular opportunity.

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[0]: [http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240225794/Lack-of-
coding...](http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240225794/Lack-of-coding-
skills-may-lead-to-severe-shortage-of-ICT-pros-in-Europe-by-2020-warns-EC)

