I have been working both extensively on my coding, and trying to come up with the “next steps” after I get done with Free Code Camp’s Front End Developer certification. Something I should hopefully have done in the next several days. Looking forward I come back to a question I asked in an earlier post about picking Ruby or JavaScript for continued learning for back-end/full stack development.
There has been a lot of great discussions with developers and local groups about the options. I have experience with both languages, although it’s more of just getting my feet wet with Ruby about a year ago. Even if I do go with Ruby I can see the importance’s of JavaScript meetups, as a lot of them focus on front end libraries, not just stuff like Node.js.
I’m actually set to go to the indy.rb meetup group (and the new bloom.rb next time they meet) to meet the local community and to see what it’s all about. The guy who runs the groups has told me about how he just got done mentoring 5 guys who knew very little programming to Ruby on Rails developers because a local company needed developers so badly but can’t find any.
This is interesting because, while I see more JavaScript jobs on average, Ruby is reportedly growing in the area. I was stuck in the mind set of, more jobs equals a higher demand for programmers. I didn’t stop to think that the programmer base might be so low, that while jobs are not as plentiful companies are in so much more of a desperate need for the developers. Making entering the job market with only sample projects to serve as experience might be more than enough to land a job, and be an asset right off the bat. I have been listing to the audio book Soft Skills, in the book John talks about specializing to make yourself needed. He started as a programmer that specialized in printer languages, this gave him an amazing advantage in the job market because of the low employee pool of programmers that specialized in programming for printers.
Looking at the job trends in Indiana for both Ruby and JavaScript on Gooroo’s site I found some interesting things.
JavaScript
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A good amount of month jobs advertised and pay[/caption]
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Job posting is down almost 1/2[/caption]
While one sites job posting might not be the best place to “confirm” overall posting and industry trends it’s still something to note. It’s also shouldn’t be surprising with places like Free Code Camp and so many others teaching people to code in JavaScript the pool of people trying to become a Junior JavaScript Developer is increasing. With this demand is being met and job numbers are coming down, in this can by almost half. However, 178 jobs / month is still a fantastic number if you ask me and makes JavaScript still a great choice.
Ruby
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Low job posting, but higher pay[/caption]
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Job posting up by 25%[/caption]
Ruby is a mixed bag, There are only 35 postings / month, although the pay is better, though not by much. Job posting has also gone up by almost 25% over the past year. While it’s still below JavaScript in over all posting by quite a bit it’s still a good prospect that jobs in the field are growing locally. As well if I move my job search to Chicago, as I am willing to move to Chicago for jobs, not only can you find 181 jobs / month in Chicago alone but some Junior Ruby Developer jobs have starting pays just below 100k a year.
While I am still reviewing things as I’m very analytical and always second guess myself. I have to say the road is looking Ruby lined to me. While I’ll never give up on JavaScript as you can do some great things client side with it my overall goal is back-end or full stack development, so I’m more worried about the backbone of application development. I’m sure sometime next week or the week after I will have my mind made up for sure. However, if what the indy.rb attendants are telling me the truth about need, ruby will be the easiest way to find my first development job.
More to come, thanks for reading and keep on learning.