Can anyone in the app development world speak to whether or not there actually is a shortage of Android devs?
Or is Google just trying to spark innovation by getting more engineers into the Android ecosystem?
Or is Google just trying to spark innovation by getting more engineers into the Android ecosystem?
I completed half of an android MOOC course and for the most part it was just Java + mobile design patterns. The android specific stuff (build tools/IDE, configuration, version partitioning, etc) can be learned on the fly I assume.
That's been my experience anyway...
Perhaps Google is worried about declining developer attention focus on developing for the Android platform. Network effects make markets like the app store a winner take all (more or less)
Latest article: iOS App Store Revenue Now 80 Percent Higher Than Google Play, Thanks To China http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/ios-app-store-revenue-now-8...
Demand for mobile developers in general is off the charts, and still climbing. It's kind of absurd, really - the going rate for mobile devs has increased 200-300% over the past 3 years amongst colleagues I know, which I think is almost entirely attributable to the demand growth in this sector and the relatively slow growth of the talent pool.
Looking at Android vs. iOS devs, both are in high demand but Android especially so. Overall demand for Android doesn't feel particularly pronounced, but the talent pool of experienced, competent Android devs is dramatically smaller than the counterpart in iOS-land.
The key here is experienced, competent devs. We've interviewed a lot of Java people with minimal Android experience trying to make the leap over - it rarely goes well. Mobile development is substantially more complex than "knows Java and can work Android Studio".
There are a few posts replying to yours that I want to respond to, but I'll just do it in one shot instead of littering a bunch of replies everywhere:
RE: simply hiring experienced Java devs. This doesn't usually work - good mobile devs are also at least partially UX people - we spend a lot of time knee-deep in UI, and consumer expectations for the fit and finish of apps are high. Someone who has completed the "Hello World" equivalent of Android learning has done exactly that - finished "Hello World". It in no way implies the ability to build apps that aren't an embarrassment to the Play Store. There is a vast amount of domain knowledge here, and the gap between an app built by someone who merely knows the API vs. someone who knows mobile apps is pretty darned wide.
RE: iOS gaining a larger share of revenue. This is true, but relatively inconsequential to most mobile devs. Outside of gaming the number of businesses directly monetizing apps is dropping. The bulk of attention for non-game apps go towards service-oriented apps (see: Uber, AirBnb, Facebook) for whom "app store revenue" is a nonsensical concept. There is lots, and lots* of work for companies that don't rely on direct monetization (i.e., app sales and in-app purchases) to live (and increasingly so).
RE: the market balancing itself according to supply/demand. Yes, this is happening, but it's happening more slowly than the demand is rising, so overall wages are still rising. Much of this is because it's non-trivial to learn the domain knowledge necessary to really do this well, and consumer expectations on app quality is high enough that (to be charitable) the value of beginner-level devs vs. experienced devs is non-linear.
Is there an Effective Android or Android the Good Parts type of book?
Why not hire and expect that people need to be trained and train them? There's a catch 22 situation here. Do most tasks really require amazing android specialized developers? Cant some decent developers get by with some guidance?
It's a weird catch-22 as folks just end up going iOS only first as a result.