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Our Dev Update for June 2021 is here – learn about what’s hot in the market as well as what skills and frameworks you should watch out for in the dev space.

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Transcription

Liam Potter:

New financial year and everyone’s back inside, so it’s probably a pretty good time to reflect. Welcome to this episode of The Newy Dev Update.

Okay, quickly, we’ll look at the last calendar month of the Newcastle software development market. We had 40 jobs posted in June. Exactly the same as May, so can’t glean too much insight from that, aside from the fact that the market is continually strong.

We’ve got a lot of companies hiring at the moment, anecdotally, just on our books internally, a lot of new clients that we haven’t really seen hire locally before. So the market is definitely strong. I think that number, or sort of the stability of that number, is maybe a bit more reflective of the fact that the outcomes that you get from posting an advertisement aren’t really as strong as they used to be.

As I’ve said, as James just said, honestly, as everyone within NewyTechPeople has said in the last 6-12 months, the market is as hot as ever at the moment. Software development as a market in Newcastle, this is far and away as hot as it’s ever been. We’ve seen salaries jump by 30% in some cases, So if you think you’re being underpaid, if you think you’re being underutilised. If it’s just, you know, if it’s just time to make the step to a new company, pick up a new challenge, now is a 100% the time to do it, because there are companies of every shape and size screaming out for talent.

One thing I wanted to touch on quickly, Alex Mendez from the University of Newcastle recently put out a call for projects for the Work Integrated Learning Program that the university does every semester for Bachelor of IT, Bachelor of Computer Science students as well. We’ve been the beneficiary of that program directly, through picking out Cordelia, who does some of our marketing/editing stuff. And indirectly, just by virtue of the software development market in Newcastle, essentially having a richer talent pool, having people that do have commercial work experience rather than, you know, graduating uni and basically just having the piece of paper. So if you are a hiring manager who could potentially put a project together for Work Integrated Learning, if you’re a student who’s maybe at the midway point of your degree, maybe starting to get to the point where you’re looking at Work Integrated Learning projects, reach out to us. We’re happy to make an introduction to Alex. If you’ve got a pretty interesting project that you can get a grab onto. If you’re a student, happy to take a look at the list of projects that exist at the moment, happy to give you our recommendations, just reach out. One particular point I’ll try and cover.

If you are a current student, who’s about to go into Work Integrated Learning, one thing I would really recommend you to do, try and get onto the projects that are external to the university. University, obviously a great environment, and the projects that you do within the university are also great. But the university bubble is a real thing. It’s a real phenomenon, and you will benefit immeasurably from working in an environment external to the university. I’ve seen the list for this semester, there are some awesome companies on there, and I would really recommend that you get involved in those, if you can, just because you’ll pick up some skills and you’ll pick up some industry connections that you otherwise wouldn’t if you stay within the university for your project. Speaking of grads, we’ve got some pretty fun grad roles on at the moment. Software engineering, as per usual, we’ve got some Grad QA, we’ve got some Grad Scrum Master, Grad UX, Grad Design, really pretty much anything for someone who’s fresh out of uni or maybe has, you know, 6-12 months commercial experience.

If you’re at that level, if you’ve just finished uni or if you’re just about to finish uni, and you’re kind of looking to figure out what the next step is going to be, reach out to me, give me a ring, shoot me an email, shoot me a message on LinkedIn, whatever you want to do, let’s talk about it. There’s heaps out there with pretty exciting companies. So it’s a really good way to kickstart your career. If you’re a student who’s maybe a second year student, or just generally speaking, you don’t think you’re ready to take a commercial role yet, let’s have a chat anyway. Let’s put together a bit of a plan, try and understand what you think your shortfalls are, what those shortfalls might actually be. And let’s try and figure out what we need to do to get you to the point where you’re a commercially viable prospect for a company. What you learn within the university is great, but what you learn within university and what is commercially viable and commercially desirable, usually are two pretty different things. So, let’s have that conversation, let’s figure out where the gaps are, and let’s make it work. More generally, I just want to call out some interesting roles that we’ve got across our desk at the moment. I’ve got Senior Go at 190K, plus super, plus bonuses, which is wild. We’ve got some mid-senior mobile stuff. We’ve got some, just sort of mid-senior Go. I’ve got a bunch of interesting UX roles, got a bit of security, got a bit of data stuff happening. Like I said, the market is super hot at the moment, and as a result, companies are starting to pay more. They’re starting to throw some more benefits into their, sort of REM packages. They’re starting to be more flexible, and they’re making more interesting roles to try and lock the best people down, so it’s the best time to move.

Honestly, I would recommend doing so if you, at all, have the itch to leave your current organisation, feel free to reach out, happy to tell you anything and everything about those roles, happy to tell you about the companies, happy to tell you about what we think you’ll get paid, happy to tell you about what the progression potential is. Look, there’s plenty out there, we’re happy to help out. Please reach out.

Aside from that, let’s keep it short for this one. Stay safe, stay warm, keep watching the videos, keep looking at our socials, keep engaged, reach out to us if you’ve got any questions and until next time, have a good one.

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