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Newy Dev Update: August 2021

7 Sept, 2021 | 05 mins 01 secs

Our Dev Update for August 2021 is here – learn more information about our recent 2021-2022 Salary Guide and what skills and frameworks you should watch out for in the dev space.

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Transcription

Liam Potter:

Pay’s always a big issue in Newy’s dev community. And we’ve just released Newcastle’s first tech salary guide. So let’s take a bit of a deep dive into the dev section. This is the Newy Dev Update. First things first, if you’ve not already downloaded our salary guide, get amongst it, do it. Go to newytechpeople.com.au/recruitment/guide. Pop in your info and it’ll download straight away. We won’t spam you. So don’t stress too much about that. Feel free to pause the video, get that up in another window, ’cause it’s probably worth having it, being able to reference it for the rest of this video.

A few trends. So, one that I think stands out immediately is the upper level for .NET and JS seniors. 140 plus super is a pretty, comfortable upper range at this point. We’ve seen 150, we’ve seen 160, so we’re setting it at 140 just to kind of knock out a few of the outliers. Market average for .NET and JS is about 125 to 130, nowadays. And considering the upper limit, even two years ago was 120 and it was a pretty hard cap at 120. It’s cool to see the growth that we’ve had so far. Going to get a bit wild with it. Gonna throw in a bit of a bold prediction. I expect the upper rate for a senior JS developer and a senior .NET developer to be 160K plus super in 2023. We’re not gonna see an inflow of talent into the market until Australia’s borders are a hundred percent open. Newcastle is still at a disadvantage when it comes to the capital cities. So they’re going to get the first pick for quite a while.

The salaries that we’re seeing locally, they’re gonna need to climb and to continue to climb, to be able to maintain a level of competitiveness on the national stage. So I’m pretty confident in saying we’ll hit 160 by 2023. Let’s look at the other side of the hiring spectrum, now. The graduate market. The new floor price for graduate hiring in Newcastle is 60K plus super. We’ve put 55 down for PHP. That’s reflective of reduced demand in that market. There’s not really anyone hiring for grad PHP locally. The mainstream stuff, your .NET, your JS, Java to an extent, 60 is the absolute minimum. You shouldn’t be going any lower than 60. 70 I’d say is market average. I’d say a good grad with maybe a high credit or a low distinction average, they’re getting 70. Outstanding marks, consistent HDs, faculty medals, really good portfolio, ticking all the boxes, they’re going to get 80 out the gate. If you’re a grad or if you’re a junior getting anything below 70, realistically, you’re probably being underpaid. It’s time to have a chat with your manager. If that doesn’t work out, honestly, it’s time to have a chat with us. You’ll notice as well, that there are a couple of languages that are getting a bit more love, a bit more money, namely, Golang, as well as, the mobile dev space. So, specifically Swift and Kotlin, the cross-platform framework stuff. Yeah, not as hot, not as much money in it. Demand in these spaces has been surprisingly high for Newcastle, recently.

A couple of companies popping up and looking for Go devs. You’ve got BodyMindLife, who’s blasted out the gate. BetMakers, as well, has been hiring for Go for quite a while. And we’ve got a lot of agency, as well as, enterprise stuff in mobile. So your Mudbaths, your in nibs, those sorts of things. Newer languages, bit of a double-edged sword. Good money, role availability just isn’t there in Newcastle. I can count on one hand the amount of people that would hire a Golang dev in Newcastle. Probably two hands for mobile in Newcastle. So, whilst the money is absolutely there, if you do your dash at a company, if it goes a bit south in a particular company, the unfortunate reality is that you might’ve run out of options. And you might have to go to Sydney. You might have to get to Melbourne. And look, you might be able to work remote, but you might not. So, see how you go there. Lastly, I’ll quickly point out.

The hardware adjacent market is seeing a bit of an increase in salaries too. So, mechatronics engineers, embedded devs, they’re making good money outside the mines, nowadays. Companies like 3ME, Cordell, SwitchDin. They’re doing good things. They’re doing it with good people. And they’re attracting people out of industries that historically have had that, I guess, that ethical, sort of quandary around them. This will hopefully continue as we start to see a bit more of a boom in the renewables focused economy in the Hunter Region. So I’m going to be keeping an eye on this market and you probably should, too. Of course, if you’d like to know a bit more about what’s happening in the market locally, if you’ve had a look at the salary guide and you’ve quickly realised that you’re being a bit underpaid, if you’re trying to figure out how much to pay your staff, if you need a bit of ammo for salary review, please reach out to anyone at NewyTechPeople.

Please strike up the conversation. We’re always keen to share the knowledge that we do have about the market. We’re all in it for the same reason. We’re trying to grow Newcastle’s tech ecosystem. So have a chat to any of us, more than happy to help in any way we can, even if it doesn’t mean that we make a placement out of you, if you can get better money at a better company, we’re happy to do that because it means that everyone’s moving in the right direction.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Normal programming will resume next month, or as normal as it can be considering the lockdown. Until then, thanks heaps for watching. Bye for now.

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