Where are all the skilled developers?

adidas said:
I personally think that in the last 15 years IT in general has gone more main stream as a career choice. I kid you not, 70% of IT professionals (both technical and software engineering) should have done something else. Hence the over flooding of useless people and shortage of skilled developers.
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Are you referring to the huge amount of MCSE / Server qualified / IT Support technicians out there?

Tend to agree with you - it seems like the "default" choice for a lot for a lot of guys.
 
Tander said:
Oh, wow. That bad?

Would our education system to be to blame for this?
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Personally I dont think you can teach a bad developer to be a good developer, so I wouldnt blame that. I dont know what you can blame.

Brain drain due to AA? Definitely part of it.
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
Standards have certainly dropped. When you start getting CV's in for JEE developers beyond 700K and they could not code themselves out of a wet paper bag then you know. Most good developers I have come across are happy with their position and could not be lured away for any incentive. It's mostly the mediocre ones I stumble across. Latest hiring run (no limit on salary, provided that salary and skillset match) produced zero. You struggle finding developers who do front-end and back-end. The ones who say "I specialise in backend" are incapable of developing anything without syntax completion, Google and detailed design specifications.

All my new hires are now highly driven people with the right attitude (skill/experience is secondary, you can learn this is if you want to). If you have a nice enough work environment attrition is not a big problem. Some new staff are new entries into the job-market (post graduates) and others are in their 40's (BEE hit and guys get retrenched). People will occasionally move on but in most cases its not related to money or work.
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I can too! Glad to know those salaries are being floated around if I'm ever in the market ;-)
 
What is a "bad" developer vs a "good" developer in your books?
 
TelkomUseless said:
IMHO...

1) Salary. They want to pay little as possible but expect you to know everything inside out. You must know a-z , but don't want to pay at for the skills.
2) I had gone for interviews in the past (bec of restructing) , and they want a C# dev. Passed 2 test that took hours. 3rd test (with the last interview).. "your job will be a SQL developer, writing sql reports etc". I was WTF... you said C# etc.. not SQL dev.
3) Just because they look for someone with specific skill (example .net remoting) and the candidate doesn't have it (but has all others) then the candidate gets rated "not skilled enough"

But agreed. Companies don't invest in people anymore too.

You get mediocre devs too. That is why I hate the "drag/drop" books... because someone reads the books, does a course and now they are a "senior" developer.

edit x2: And all these compatibility Test etc companies want to do these days. So you pass all technical questions etc.. but you "fail" their compatibility test.. creates a "demand".
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As far as number two is concerned. I've applied to a recruiting agent as having JSP, Java and J2EE (as it was at the time) skills; only to be tested on Swing components! I told them I have no clue about desktop development in Java, it's not what I'm applying for...

(Of course I've done a lot of JavaFX development lately, so I'm definitely in that arena too!)
 
roguemat said:
I've been hearing from a lot of companies recently that they just can't find any good developers. They've got lots of positions open, but everyone they see is just useless.
So my question is, where have all the good coders gone? Do you all have jobs?

Or is it maybe because our education systems don't go far enough? I was shocked to be asked what JSON was from a 3'rd year IT student recently.
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To be honest, up until nine months ago I couldn't have been bothered to use JSON. I've used XML for near on 15 years and I'll be damned if I'm going to change. Then I built an application highly reliant on JavaScript scripting and I could kick myself for not using it before!

The point is: the older guys aren't willing to try it, the junior guys don't know it and, as such, you have a bit of a small group to pick and choose from.
 
Some hints for all the employers: I have been in IT way too long and have given up on agencies as a job-seeker early. I found that having a good CV online, paired with a LinkedIn profile resulted in me not needing an agency for all the contracts and jobs I did in the last 13 years.

Agencies (and it does not really matter which one, they all work on the same principle) are really just interested in dumping candidates at a company at the highest possibly placement fee. Those placement fees are between 18-27% at the moment - think about it: If your CTC is 500K and the agency charges a company 20% placement fee, they will earn 100K. What is their effort? None - they make you rewrite your CV "in the format the client wants it" (honestly I don't give a crap in what format it is, as long as you list your skills and experience) and then shotgun your CV out to all companies (disregarding your preferences, salary expectations etc).

Most agencies will also harvest CVs (there are 2 prominent agencies in Joburg who "have thousands of jobs and CVs on the books" and apply this technique) - the harvesting is simple - they will list fictional jobs on their website and job-portals to fish for skills in the market. Then the use those CVs to shotgun (and with that "earn" the right of first introduction, allowing no other agency to place the same candidate at the same company). Job agencies are no better (and perhaps worse) than ambulance chasers. I find it shocking that those companies have no accountability and ethics, considering they are dealing with people's future.

In any case, the above 500K scenario (and the resulting 100K placement fee) opens up something awesome: Why pay the agency the placement fee in the first place? I now go and post a job on LinkedIn (costs 1K per month) and offer successful candidates a signup bonus (the money I would otherwise pay an agency). It's an awesome bonus - I get the people who are really driven (they land 50-100K for working here) and everyone is happy (except the agencies of course).

I think the really good developers will contact companies themselves and are very selective who they want to work for. The good developers make their decision based on type of work, company culture, commute - in most cases a super high salary is secondary. To be honest would you rather be stuck for 80K a month at a dead-end corporate job (where you hate every minute) or rather get 50K and you love every minute of it - gotta be an obvious choice - or?

BTW: I have only ever come across one solid agency in SA (which went bankrupt back in 2005) - they placed their perm- and contract staff and then over the months and years followed up with staff. Simple question: Did an agency who placed you actually given a crap after your probationary ended (and they collected the placement fee) about how you are doing (and instances where they try and place you somewhere else don't count).
 
My experience with recruitment agencies have always been horrible. They couldn't care less about you nor your actual requirements. As long as they can successfully place you, their "job" is done.

I've had agencies submitting my CV for jobs that aren't even remotely related to what I was looking for.

I've also noticed a few companies offering a "Sign-up bonus" - I think this is a much better approach - although, I am sure it also yields crappy results from candidates just looking to make a quick buck?
 
At school you got a few kids who did well at academics and the rest were average. Get to athletics, and there's a few fast kids and the rest are average.

Programmers, there's a few good ones and the rest are average. I think it's just like everything else!
 
Maybe - but, it seems the general consensus is that in SA, the good ones are definitely few and far between - more so than say in 1st world countries, like UK, USA.
 
Tander said:
Maybe - but, it seems the general consensus is that in SA, the good ones are definitely few and far between - more so than say in 1st world countries, like UK, USA.
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Given the opportunity a lot of good developers will flock to greener pastures. Not like good developers will immigrate to South Africa :D
 
Tander said:
Maybe - but, it seems the general consensus is that in SA, the good ones are definitely few and far between - more so than say in 1st world countries, like UK, USA.
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worked in IT in SA and UK. Both have good and bad devs. The UK just has more of both good and bad. I would guess the USA is the same. Its more a question of scale, rather than that UK and USA has more good devs.
 
zippy said:
worked in IT in SA and UK. Both have good and bad devs. The UK just has more of both good and bad. I would guess the USA is the same. Its more a question of scale, rather than that UK and USA has more good devs.
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I think that's an accurate assumption.

Also, a lot of the times, the grass isn't greener on the other side.
 
Tander said:
I think that's an accurate assumption.

Also, a lot of the times, the grass isn't greener on the other side.
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I disagree for the following reason: America in particular gets tons of immigrants that are among the best. It's harder to get in if you are mediocre. Surely this skews the curve that in the end they have proportionally a greater number of good developers.
 
Brenden_E said:
I disagree for the following reason: America in particular gets tons of immigrants that are among the best. It's harder to get in if you are mediocre. Surely this skews the curve that in the end they have proportionally a greater number of good developers.
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I doubt that's the case.
 
zippy said:
JSON is one of those IT thingy's that everyone says you should use, but very few bother with.
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I highly disagree. In a proper SOA enterprise application, JSON is the cornerstone of web-based AJAX communication. About 90% of our solution's UI uses it.
 
Tander said:
I doubt that's the case.
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If you are talking about the immigrants, then stop doubting. It's fact.
The absolute creme de la creme stands ques to get into American universities and silicon valley.

Compare that to South Africa. We have the opposite, where many of our top talent leaves. So it would go to reason that we would have a proportionally higher amount of poor developers than they do.
 
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