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Comment by saryant | Hacker News Reader

One of my friends is starting a programming bootcamp. He and his assistant have been calling recruiters and tech companies all over the region, cataloguing available jobs and figuring out where the demand is.

Their findings: PHP and .Net. That's what the vast majority of companies they spoke to are hiring for.

My point is that there's a whole world of tech outside HN.

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Was the survey conducted in India, by any chance?

Monster.com job listings in the US by keyword:

.NET - 1000+ positions

Java - 1000+ positions

PHP - 454 positions

Python - 295 positions

Ruby - 280 positions

Node.js - 55 positions

Lisp, Haskell, Scheme - 0 positions

It's not just the US (or India). Denmark is also, sadly, a Microsoft stronghold.

Quantity is not the same as Quality.

I expect to find a larger percentage of competent programmers for the python/ruby jobs than for the .net/java jobs.

Every job I've had so far seems to prove this true.

Personal examples hardly prove a point, but I'm a seasoned, nearly exclusive (11yr) .NET developer and I can probably code the pants off the average ruby/python developer off the street. As can many of my coworkers. See, we use this old-school knowledge of design patterns, MVC, and SOA instead of worrying about whether our code is clever enough. Do you sometimes have to interview people who learned a few buzzwords and somehow passed an MSCD test but don't understand what encapsulation means? Yes. Just like you get people in the Ruby world who opened a console and typed in "rails new" and now they have a new resume topic.

Competent programmers exist in all types of jobs with all types of platforms. In fact, I would argue that those of us who don't jump to every new fad language that comes out may likely be more productive by default. Instead of worrying about what frameworks we're going to use to supplement our Node+Json+Rails+Bootstrap+Coffeescript+blergh security nightmare, we just start coding.

One of the best programmers I've ever known and mentor to me is a .Net guy. (I'm not a .Net developer, FYI)

There are fantastic programmers in every language and lousy programmers in every language. Just the way it is.

Who is talking about quality? OP posted that the majority of development jobs are within .NET and PHP. Some guy gave the low-brow dismissal "was this in India by any chance?". I just supplied position numbers from one of the largest job sites in the US, confirming that .NET and PHP jobs (adding Java), really are the most plentiful in the US by far.

It is still pretty trivial to find a job in Python, Ruby, or JS in just about any metro area in the US. I do not know anyone in the node.js community that would even go to someplace like monster to find a job. Most of these positions are found through networking with the community, which tends to lead to finding better quality jobs anyway.

I think this says a lot more about the types of companies that post their job listings on monster.com than the types of jobs that people are being hired for generally.

Do tech companies even post on monster?

You mean tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Intel and IBM? Yes they do have positions listed at Monster. If by tech companies you mean week-over-week growth companies like fart.io and sfnavelgazer.com then no I don't think so. Probably Monster is not serious enough a platform for such companies, who only staff with top-tier talent. Or maybe they just can't afford the listing fees, since their 30k funding ran out.

Not everyone hires through Monster (or LinkedIn). Most of my hiring is done through networking.

Yes the majority of positions are never listed publicly, so numbers from Monster is only the tip of the iceberg. But that goes for all positions regardless of language. If you have 5 times the listed positions for one tech over the other, it would be logical to assume the amount of unlisted positions have roughly the same ratio.

It's impossible to verify this statement since the positions are never published. I have a strong feeling the most boring companies have to resort more to professional recruiters while the most fun to work for can rely on networking.

No, the US.

No. San Antonio for jobs throughout Texas.

Makes sense if you are aiming to disappear in the crowd. Just get hired because you learned the right language, not because you are good at your job, not because you are productive.

Yes, because everyone who learns .Net is a a no good unproductive drone who will disappear while every node.js/scala/weeklyhiplanguage dev is a superproductive genius.

Get a grip on reality.

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