from the need-more-embedded-scripts-in-web-pages! dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
More than 750 new job postings for software developers go live every day in the UK, with JavaScript leading the demand for programming language skills among employers.
According to developer recruitment platform CodinGame, a new tech job is advertised every two minutes in the United Kingdom, with over half of tech job postings commanding salaries of at least £50,000 ($60,900) and one in five (20%) promising £70,000 ($85,300) and above.
The UK is enjoying a boom in tech investment, with investors putting £89.5 billion into European tech firms in 2021, a third of which was directed towards UK firms. The majority of these investments were aimed at London firms, which, as a result, accounted for 47.5% of all new tech jobs posted in 2021.
The majority of tech vacancies last year were in software development and engineering roles, which increased by 88.2% between 2020 and 2021.
In an analysis of available coding roles, CodinGame found that JavaScript continued its reign as the most in-demand programming language, with 33% of all job postings requiring proficiency in the language.
JavaScript job postings eclipsed its runner-up language, Java, by 33%. Other popular coding languages include Python, C# and C++.
(Score: 3, Touché) by progo on Wednesday August 03 2022, @04:17PM (6 children)
Take a competent Javascript programmer. For them, how many of these "job" requisitions are not a scam and not a worthless losing proposition?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday August 03 2022, @04:34PM (1 child)
Yeah, I do get the impression many (most?) of these job ads are created by recruitment agencies--possibly either fake or very old ads--because all they care about is having potential employees to add to their database and offer the odd, probably much crappier, job to them. It's only an impression though, so perhaps we're being too cynical, just this once.
I suppose the best clue is in whether the ad gives the name of the company seeking the employee.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday August 03 2022, @07:43PM
Nobody today is looking for "Javascript developer".
Real existing and non-imaginery non-software companies who need IT staff are looking for "anyone with X years of experience in the field" because they don't even know what they want (and that is fine). They also always list the software products they have ("Oracle" etc.)
Real existing and non-imaginery software companies list jobs en-block like "front-end dev, senior front-end dev, project lead, QA specialist etc." Maybe somewhere there will be "Javascript" but always in a list of many other requirements. And that would be either startup or outsourcing software company because for anything bigger they are looking straight for "Angular", "React" etc.
I bet these ads are just "Established HR company is looking to hire seasoned Javascript developers to work for prospective customer".
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday August 03 2022, @04:50PM (2 children)
Any reason Javascript would have relatively more fake job postings than other languages? To be clear, I'm not saying it's not happening. I'm genuinely wondering what circumstances could create relatively more fake job posting in javascript that aren't motivated by an actual increase in javascript demand and are isolated from backends demand like php and python.
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(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday August 04 2022, @08:55AM (1 child)
If the people creating adverts are more familiar with a web browser than an IDE, it's not too surprising that they'd think of JavaScript first.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday August 05 2022, @08:47AM
This doesn't seem right. Like, if you're working in HR, have little to no knowledge in programming and are fishing for more resumes for your database, wouldn't you still do your look-ups by duping your whole existing popular job requests?
I mean, assuming there's segmentation between low-tier headhunters for the low-income programming gigs and high-tier headhunters that will incentivize such practices, I still argue it shouldn't be specific to javascript when there's other low-tier gigs at the same space unless there's actually a specific increase in javascript jobs. In fact, even if you consider javascript having unusually high-turnover, the current increase should still be a reflection of an increased demand. No?
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday August 03 2022, @05:13PM
I'm thinking they are a bit on the scam side. I have a subscription setup for some weekly digest of open opportunities in my field as it's always nice to see what is out there and so on, they are not javascript programming tho, and there have been a definitive uptick in obscure and new recruitment companies offering positions. I don't even live in the UK or want to move or work in the UK and I get them anyway so they are basically spreading like the plague all over the continent; I guess they offer "remote" work so they just search the continent or the world for candidates to fill up their imaginary roster. Positions that they don't have I might add as since you can by just reading the ads conclude that a lot of these offers are recruitment agencies just looking at bigger organizations and companies own recruitment page and copying a lot of it and then I guess they want to try and find candidates to pitch to the original job and companies so they can charge some kind of finders fee or whatnot. So there is less actual and real jobs then there are adverts for them.
Technically tho from the actual article it's not an open job position for a javascript programmer appearing every other minute, it's a "techjob" being posted every other minute. Hopefully they are not one and the same. Javascript is just the most common programming language current, which I find hard to understand really. How many frontend UX monkies do they really need? That said if there is say one real job and then X agencies that post about the same job the amount of actual jobs is still only one even tho there are now umpteen amounts of adverts for it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by OrugTor on Wednesday August 03 2022, @04:38PM (1 child)
Those salaries look low, barely entry-level. Are UK companies hiring foreign nationals cheaply as they have been doing in the US?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday August 04 2022, @10:02AM
Yes, they have been hiring people from India and China. I even experience going through the being outsourced to India process some years back.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday August 03 2022, @04:50PM (6 children)
I started with BASIC, then Z-80, 8086, C, awk, sed, C++, etc etc etc until Java a few years back. Some I liked, some I didn't.
But the only one I actively hated was javascript. Get it working, take it to production, bugs appear. Back to my machine, re-write the "buggy" stuff, back to production, more bugs. Get it working, do an update, new bugs.
And it wasn't just me, there were 4-5 of us and we all had the same issue. Switched back to Perl, all problems went away.
Then again, this was almost 20 years ago so YMMV. But I'll never take a job that wants me to do Javascript.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Wednesday August 03 2022, @07:05PM (3 children)
JavaScript 20 years ago is not JavaScript today.
Since at least ES6, it's rather good language now
https://www.w3schools.com/JS/js_es6.asp [w3schools.com]
And then you have TypeScript if you want to have static type safety on top of JavaScript
https://www.typescriptlang.org/ [typescriptlang.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2022, @07:47PM
A better language, and perhaps it attracts better developers too. The Netscape Communicator customization/installer stands out in my mind as a particularly bad piece of code. It was the opposite of DRY. IIRC, scattered throughout the code were a bunch of conditionals where it kept asking itself if it was running as an installer or a customization interface. We had been wondering why it was slow. Perhaps there were other reasons too, but that was a code smell if there ever was one.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday August 03 2022, @08:01PM
First impressions matter. I've worked with a lot of languages that were young (perl, Python, and Java come to mind). None pissed me off more than JS.
Personally, I don't care how much better it is. I hope to never use it again. As I'm retired I'm guessing I never will.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday August 04 2022, @06:59AM
Good language? Oh hell no. It's a rickety house built on loose soil on a flood-plain above an active volcano, with pretty-looking wallpaper and interior design. Here's a list of some of the WTFs [github.com] you get the joy of working with.
That said, it's sadly also a rather practical language. Just a shame it's rotten to the core.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Wednesday August 03 2022, @08:47PM (1 child)
I dislike JavaScript just as much as you do, and that's because us old timers are used to top down programming. You call a function and expect it to return something. Not with JavaScript, you call a function, it returns immediately without a result and the result is going to another part of your code whenever the function finishes.
I can't get used to that either, so I leave JavaScript to the youngsters, who didn't grow up with those old, straightforward languages.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday August 03 2022, @08:52PM
I had never really thought about it like that. I think you might be on to something. As the previous comment also stated -- first impressions lasts and Java and Javascript was a god damn mess when it came about (not to mention how horribly slow it was). Eons (or decades in reality) later that still stick in memory -- horrible languages that you should just not even poke with a stick. It's not that things can't change, and probably/apparently have. But I guess I'm just not getting past the first impression and I think that will stand until the end of times. I wonder if that is why it's so hard to find people that write c, asm and cobol anymore ... It would drive the younger people mad with it's super arcane syntax and calls.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday August 03 2022, @07:11PM
There is no shortage of confident egos demanding large salaries eager to fill these positions. Good luck.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 04 2022, @06:35AM (1 child)
A reputable source then.
They can't even spell FFS.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday August 04 2022, @09:05AM
Yes they can, it's just that they're recruiting fish.
Their space bar could do with some servicing, though.