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90% Of Software Developers Work Outside Silicon Valley (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: So much code to write, so few developers. The chronic talent shortage afflicting Silicon Valley is now all over the US -- and the developers are too.
A study by the software trade group The App Association analyzed government and private sector data to map where software developers live, and it identified 223,054 open positions around the country. It found that most developers live far away from the technology epicenter of Silicon Valley, and job openings follow a similar pattern. The upshot: Silicon Valley-style talent wars are moving away from tech hubs to smaller metro and even rural areas. Everywhere from rural Vermont to the middle of Montana is in need of programmers. "You can find places where you didn't expect software developers to be, but they are part of the local economy," said association spokesman Jonathan Godfrey in an interview. "It's pretty much everywhere."
10-15 years ago i made a vigorous proposal to move all software developers into silicon valley for easier categorization. Cattle ranchers would be moved into cattle valley, and car repairmen would be moved into car valley (this makes indexing and normalization easier.) problems began to mount from the start. Some people complained they "didnt want to leave" their friends and family. others answered back with "sure ill move but i dont have a job" and "when will i see my wife again, you told me she was safe." Whiners.
Anyhow once id approacher 40% of developers I noticed they didnt stack well, and many of them complained of food shortages and transportation problems. Id instituted a "no family" policy to try and remedy this, and it worked for a while, until people told me that id have to find a way to get new software developers imported. Constructing a giant tube, i used it to hydraulically propel anyone from about age 17 on who tweeted even a cursory interest in software into my silicon valley. things were working well, so long as once weekly I greased all my programmers so they could move freely in the valley and made sure to flood their cubicles with nutrition slurry once or twice a day. Then the real issues started to mount. once id hit 80% of all developers, their combined mass and pressure was enough to begin to elicit a gravitational field. Project managers now had to come with an escape velocity equation in their salary, and pizzas from neighbouring cities were delivered from 3 miles outside the valley by letting go of the pie and hoping for the best. I unfortunately had to give up on my grand vision of a valley of programmers when a rogue sysadmin at a rest stop accidentally flew into the valley and impacted it with enough force to blanket the valley in a dark cloud of coffee beans and office chairs. its now a cold, barren wasteland inhabited by a race of creatures that subsist entirely on fried meat and energy drinks. they communicate in an arcane language of 3 letter abbreviations and social justice causes.
Good people go to bed earlier.
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