.Net Programmers Fall in CNN's Top 5 In-Demand

GT_Alias writes "CNN Money is reporting that .Net programmers are one of the top 5 most in-demand jobs. Of the positions where recent surveys have indicated a labor shortage, .Net developers and QA analysts are the two that fell under the 'technology' category. According to CNN Money, .Net developers can make between $75-85K starting out in major cities, with the potential to make 15% more if they have a particular proficiency. Additionally, QA workers can make $65-75K a year with the ability to negotiate a 10-15% pay jump if they switch jobs. How does this information compare with the Slashdot crowd's real-world experience?"

Comments

Kill me...kill me please.

[x4071k05]

Since when did programming languages (C#, VB .NET) that a blind monkey missing three fingers could learn to program in pay high salaries? Bah. Blame it on point haired bosses (think Dilbert) who just want to incorperate the newest technology without understanding the benefits.

Re:Kill me...kill me please.

[BitwizeGHC]

It's not that a blind monkey with 3 fingers can learn to program in it; such is true of Scheme and Smalltalk. It's that the best ur-hacker in the world isn't going to be terribly much more productive than the blind monkey in a language like C#. C#, VB, Java, etc. do not scale well with the intelligence of their programmers; Lisp, Scheme, Dylan, Python, and Smalltalk do.

There are a lot of jobs paying good money because companies are adopting or migrating to .NET for their enterprise applications, and C# is a very poor fit for complex code; you need chain-gangs of coders to churn out that code and high salaries are what get people in the door. Microsoft is trying to ameliorate the deficiencies of its standard platform and language set with something called LINQ; this is a rather paltry band-aid which compensates partially for the fact that C# is not Scheme.

Re:Kill me...kill me please.

[Prof.Phreak]

It's the dot-com again. Ten years ago, you could easily get a $50k/year job (a lot for the time) creating web pages (basic HTML, nothing fancy).

Now it seems you can get $80k/year doing brainless .NET gui/web development. So much for the times, eh?

On the other hand (not mentioned in article), Perl/C/UNIX combination seem to get twice that (ahh... supply/demand :-)

Re:I'm Job Searching

[someone1234]

What, M$ didn't bribe the education with free software where you live? I thought they did that in the first place.

.NET? Who cares?

[Max Threshold]

There is very little legacy .NET code out there, and if you're writing new code, why lock your client into a platform? My shop uses PHP or whatever other open technology fits the bill. Only one guy in the shop knows anything about .NET, and he's not a fan of it. I don't intend to waste my time learning it, because it's dead-end technology for a dying platform.

Looking for slaves to Microsoft

[Omnifarious]

I bet most of the .NET code and jobs out there are either from people who were playing around with the language for a bit and wrote some useful code that now needs maintenance, or is there because of some stupid mandate to use Microsoft technology.

.NET/C# is a language for programmers who are at least mediocre. Unlike VB, it's not a language for the masses of poor programmers who's real job is something else. So, why would any programmer who was any good bother to learn some language that's going to enslave them to one company's technology forever. It's senseless.

So, it makes perfect sense that it's hard to find .NET programmers out there.

And don't tell me about GNOME mono. That project will be killed in some way by Microsoft as soon as Microsoft thinks it's in their advantage to do so. It's just a much a dead-end as .NET.

.NO

[mclaincausey]

I'm willing to take a considerable slash in starting pay in order to say NO to proprietary technology. I know it's foolish, but that's just how I feel. I must resist the Borg.

Mod parent down

[mattgreen]

The thread is about the .NET programming market. Not why you think Java is better. But, hey, you're badmouthing the evil Microsoft so you're at +5.

Re:I'd say thats about right

[Ethan Allison]

85-100K (in Canada)

So that's about $156.32 in the U.S.? :P

Re:Qué?

[The Clockwork Troll]

Goes to show what you know.

"Donut fetcher" is a .NET design pattern - you can read about in my forthcoming book on the subject.

Re:It's getting hard to troll like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not exactly the best example, since MediaWiki switched to PHP because the Perl version was too dificult to extend and maintain, and don't get me started on Slashcode. To say that it is badly designed, brittle and sloppy would be an understatement. It sure characterizes your assertion that Perl is the "glue" of the internet (something I won't dispute) but that is due to the fact that there was nothing better at the time. When you have nothing but crap, crap is what you get. Perl was never designed to be a web development language, someone just had the brilliant idea of writing a CGI interface for it. We're still paying for that today.

Can you write good apps with Perl? Of course you can. That's not the point. The open source community has historically been far behind on enterprise-level frameworks, mostly because everyone was comfortable with the same crap. Things like RoR are changing that. But it would be disingenous at best to compare anything done in Perl or PHP with, say, a J2EE or .NET solution. Your assertions make it clear you know nothing about enterprise development. Of course, you can also write crap code with Java or C#.

But hey, you got your daily dose of gratuitous MS bashing in.