About a year ago, I posted some analysis of what we can learn from job posts. Since then, the job outlook for at least the American economy has substantially declined, but there are still opportunities available if you have – or can develop – the skills in demand. A year ago, according to job posts on Dice.com, the hot job skills were Java, SAP, and Oracle. How about today?
Well, with a slight change to methodology, things look pretty much the same, but the changes are interesting. Last year, I only looked at terms that appeared in job post titles; this time around, I searched on terms that occurred anywhere in the job post. I can’t say I used a totally comprehensive set of terms, or that the queries don’t produce some false positives and negatives, but without further disclaimers, here are my findings.
The top 20 IT skills in demand on Dice.com:
- SQL
- Oracle
- Java
- Windows
- Unix
- Linux
- XML
- SQL Server
- HTML
- C#
- Dynamics
- C++
- SAP
- Perl
- IBM
- AJAX
- PL/SQL
- BASIS
- PHP
- MySQL
(For the rest of the list in the analysis, see the end of this post.)
A little surprising that Dynamics came in above SAP on this list, and perhaps there were some “false positives” putting BASIS above PHP, but probably nothing really shocking there. There was strong demand for many skills, but very little demand (relatively) for iPad (just 13 jobs!), HTML5 (34 jobs), Fortran, Azure, and eBay — all under 100 job posts mentioning these skills.
Overall, your best bet is to learn Oracle, SQL Server, Java, and XML on your choice of platforms, and
you’ve got job security ’til the end of time (or at least for the next few quarters).
Some additional findings:
- SQL is a great skill to have. Oracle and SQL Server are the best databases to learn in terms of job openings [NOTE: no analysis was done on salaries, so your mileage may vary if you care about earning potential. There was one job on Dice for a TPF programmer, and I bet that pays pretty well!]. DB2 and Sybase also had strong demand.
- Java, C#, and C++ are all continuing in strong demand. Perl, PHP, Ruby, and Python also have strong demand. There is some, but significantly less, demand for Flash, COBOL, and ABAP development skill.
- XML skills are greatly in demand. There is significant demand for AJAX skills as well.
- Dynamics came in very strong on the Applications front, with SAP also very strong. There is some continued demand for Peoplesoft and Siebel skills. Salesforce.com is significantly less, but there is still substantial demand for Salesforce.com skills.
- There is not a lot of demand for Mac, iPhone, or iPad developers, with none of those platforms cracking the 500 job posts mark. Blackberry was the only mobile phone platform above that mark, with some significant demand. Android is in slightly less demand than iPhone, but growing much faster.
- Amazon and Azure, two leading cloud platforms, had very little demand for candidates.
Overall results:
| Skill Sought SQL |
# of Posts Mentioning 17525 |
| Oracle | 12533 |
| Java | 12104 |
| Windows | 9877 |
| Unix | 8872 |
| Linux | 7703 |
| XML | 7600 |
| SQL Server | 7196 |
| HTML | 6198 |
| C# | 5773 |
| Dynamics | 5066 |
| C++ | 4937 |
| SAP | 4713 |
| Perl | 3943 |
| IBM | 3306 |
| AJAX | 3244 |
| PL/SQL | 2656 |
| BASIS | 2306 |
| PHP | 2085 |
| MySQL | 2061 |
| DB2 | 1996 |
| VMWare | 1776 |
| Python | 1629 |
| Peoplesoft | 1603 |
| Embedded | 1466 |
| Sybase | 1379 |
| Mainframe | 1342 |
| Siebel | 1153 |
| 837 | |
| Ruby | 786 |
| Flash | 604 |
| Blackberry | 580 |
| COBOL | 537 |
| Salesforce.com | 521 |
| ABAP | 479 |
| iPhone | 387 |
| Mac | 372 |
| Android | 316 |
| 283 | |
| 248 | |
| Amazon | 236 |
| Assembler | 191 |
| Widget | 174 |
| Yahoo | 165 |
| Informix | 153 |
| Palm | 133 |
| PowerBuilder | 111 |
| eBay | 62 |
| Azure | 53 |
| FORTRAN | 52 |
| HTML5 | 34 |
| iPad | 13 |
You may want to check out a small app engine application some wrote…
http://www.hotskills.net/
the details are not quite there… but.
Great post to read. I just drop here to read.
I believe PHP is doing great as a web development language. however you should have through knowledge of SQL, HTML, XML, Javascript, CSS as a professional php developer.
cheers.
Guys can u please please tell how one can learn so many languages to be a developer(like e.g SQL, HTML, XML, Javascript, CSS ). my brain gets overheated the moment i finish reading one page of tutorial for one particular program .please avise id love to be a programmer
Paul D –
There are many tutorials on the web – use your favorite search engine to find them. Try to do all the examples in the tutorials, but also think of additional things you can do and go beyond just what they ask you to do in the tutorial. Change around what it does so you can really get to know how to use the language. Build something similar to the tutorial example, but do it from scratch on your own as you finish each section. Pretty soon you’ll know the language well enough. Good luck!
– Dennis
Gr8 post!
I have 3 questions.
1. Oracle acquired sun. Will it effect usage of Java by companies using open source
technologies? and thus the numbers of jobs in java?
2. Sun owns MySQL. What will be MySQL demand in future? Will oracle neglect it’s further
development?
3. Which is in more demand – PHP/Ruby/Python/Perl?
Kindly, reply.
Many Thanks,
Siva
Siva –
Great questions! Let me address them one at a time:
1. Oracle promoted SQL before anyone else did, at least commercially. Oracle drove standards for SQL, making it into the dominant language for database definition and management. Oracle shepherding Java is not likely to result in any reduction in jobs in Java anytime soon. In fact, according to SimplyHired (http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-java%2Cc%2B%2B%2Cc%23%2Ccobol%2Cphp%2Cperl%2Cruby%2Cpython), Java jobs are up about 60% since January 2009, during a tough recession. By contrast, C++ jobs are up 16% in the same period, and C# jobs are up 42%.
2. MySQL is big enough that it will continue one way or another, regardless of Oracle’s actions. I think MySQL will not advance in the same direction it was heading before Oracle’s acquisition. Oracle talks about MySQL as though it is a low end database for small databases competing with SQL Server (or at least, with SQL Server in Oracle’s opinion). Yet, many web sites use MySQL to deploy databases much larger than Oracle is generally used for, by scaling “out” (horizontally, across many instances) rather than “up” (where Oracle expects its namesake database to go, with bigger and bigger single instances). I think it is very likely that the MySQL community will take itself to one of the many MySQL forks, bypassing Oracle. MariaDB and Drizzle are likely winners in the future.
3. According to SimplyHired, Perl is in more demand than PHP, which is above Python, followed by Ruby. However, Python is growing the fastest (well over 100% since 1/1/2009), more than twice the growth rate of any of the other three. Also important to consider is that pay rates may differ widely between the languages, and things are different in different geographies – Bangalore India may be wildly different from Bangalore Maine, and Silicon Valley may be very different from Seattle Washington. BTW, Dice.com shows 4352 jobs mentioning Perl, 2239 mentioning PHP, 1954 mentioning Python, and 1064 mentioning Ruby – consistent with SimplyHired in terms of rough ratios and popularity. Interestingly, sfbay.Craigslist.org has 73 jobs for PHP, 20 for Python, 20 for Ruby, and 12 for Perl in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thanks for the questions!
– Dennis
Dear Dennis,
Thanks for the fantastic insight ! I appreciate your analysis and firmly believe that the information you put above is valuable for any job/career seekers. Also, one can see an element of caution/direction in it.
Many Thanks,
Siva