Hired.com released the 2019 State of Software Engineer Report and the followings are worth paying attention to.

Job Market

• Global demand for blockchain engineers is up to 517%

As companies focus shifts to create personalized and predictive customer experiences over the past 12 months, the demand for engineers in different categories has changed.

- Demand for security engineers has increased by 132%

- Embedded engineers by 76%

- Data engineers by 38%

- Machine learning engineers by 27%

• Search engineers in San Francisco are paid the most, earning $157K on average

According to the survey, the highest paid engineer varies by areas and categories. In S.F. Bay Area, the highest paid are search engineer with $157,000, while their counterpart in New York, $129,000. If you are interested in knowing more about the salary difference, refer to https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/hottest-jobs-software-engineering/

Programming Languages

• TypeScript is the most in-demand programming language in San Francisco, London, and Toronto, while Ruby is #1 in New York and Go #1 in Paris

According to the report, the respondents primarily work with the programming languages as shown below. Although Go is one of the most in-demand programming languages, only 7% of developers use it currently. However, candidates with GoLang experience are most likely to get an interview request.

• Python is the most loved programming language, and PHP wins most-hated

The reasons why developers choose one programming language over the other can be found in the screenshot below.

Developer Learning

• 1 in 5 software engineers is self-taught

Although most respondents state that they have a computer science degree (46%), over 1 in 5 respondents claimed that they learn how to code by self-teaching. However, the bootcamp training a double-edged sword. The survey also reveals that lack of experience is the #1 concern of the employer who would not hire a boot camp graduate..

• Machine learning is the #1 technology engineers want to learn

The report also reveals that the company demand does not always match the developer interests. As blockchain engineering is the most in-demand skill in the market as shown in this survey, it ranks the third most-wanted with only 12% of the respondents claim that they want to learn it. The # 1 skill that developers are most interested in learning is machine learning. The #4 to #8 skills are mobile, hardware, AR/VR, gaming, and search.

Working Style

• Half of the engineers prefer to work at a company that does pair programming

Pair programming is "an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation". It is seen as with clear benefits to developers. Pair programming is also adopted in ZenTao team, which improved the teamwork efficiency and coding standards.

According to the survey, pair programming is especially useful for junior team members (42% of the respondents), while it could leave work done by one person (20% of the respondents).

• 43% of developers prefer to work for companies that contribute to open source projects

Open source is well known for the loyalty of its community. According to the survey, 30% of developers who contribute to it for it is fun. While the contribution to open source at the company level does not affect the decision whether a developer would like to work for it, "43% of the respondents stated that they do prefer to work for companies that contribute to open source projects". If you would like to work for a company like that, think about ZenTao team which has been contributing to open source community for over 10 years.

Reference

1. https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming