Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify

Our Dev Update for October 2020 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.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Watch the Episode

Transcription

Liam Potter:

– Starting to heat up in more ways than one in Newcastle at the moment one of those ways being the continued strength of the Dev market. This is the Newy Dev Update. Okay, so October is nearly done.

Let’s look at sort of the past 30 days of the Dev Market and really do a bit of a piece by piece examination. So right off the bat, 37 roles this month on an increase of seven month on month, which is really really awesome to see. We’ve hit the pre- Christmas rush a bit early and as a result the markets a bit stronger than expected. Normally we’d start to see this sort of increase closer to November rather than occurring sort of the September – October period that we’re talking about here. But look any sort of increase especially considering the Covid dip that we saw sort of March – April. Absolutely welcome to see.

Looking forward, expect to see a bit of an increase in November, maybe a bit of an increase to the start of December. But you know really after about, say sort of the 10th December pretty sharp decline, and realistically, we’re not expecting to see much of a recovery in the market up until almost February. As we talked about in the last episode that January – February hangover period almost really really impacts Newcastle’s software market. It means that there’s not that many roles being posted. The roles that are being posted generally speaking they aren’t really roles that will start until March or April. So as a result if you’re looking for a role to start realistically between now and March almost, now is the time to be looking because if you start looking around December realistically your options are going to be quite limited.

One thing I’ll reiterate Jobs posted on Seek, LinkedIn, Indeed, that sort of thing. They’re so far from the whole story of what’s happening in the market. Newcastle as a region in general really well known for being quite a sort of word of mouth area, and that definitely extends to the jobs market. It definitely extends to the software development jobs market One of the stats I’ll continually refer to is that only about a quarter of actual live roles get posted on any of these sorts of online job boards. So realistically, if your approach to your job search is just spam applying to roles as they come up on those boards, you’re doing yourself a pretty big disservice and you’re really limiting your potential.

What you need to be doing realistically reaching out to key figures in the development community and people part of the Newy Slack, people that host meet ups that sort of thing because they are gonna be people that can point you in the right direction, Reach out to your local recruiter. I know a few In fact My role, our role at its simplest level really is to match make candidates with opportunities. And if we don’t know who you are, we can’t do that. So I really really strongly recommend you to reach out to any of the NewyTechPeople recruitment team. Get your name out there. We absolutely have something for everyone at the moment, so it’s definitely worth your time.

Beyond that as well, we can help you identify skill gaps. We can help you identify maybe future areas of growth that you need to be looking at because maybe your current skill sets on a bit of a downward trend. We can help bench mark your remuneration package. We can do all those sorts of things very confidentially, very easily over a coffee. So it’s a pretty nice experience anyway. So if you’ve got any level of curiosity about what’s happening in the market, absolutely reach out to us. Now we’ve got a few call outs as per usual. Just based on what we’re seeing, come across our desk essentially.

Surprising no one and look, let’s get the easy one out of the way. Surprising no one the .net space in Newcastle that Microsoft Stack stuff, .net, C# that sort of thing. Usually paired with JavaScript as well as either Angular or React. It’s always been strong in Newcastle, as long as I’ve been around anyway and it’s gonna be strong for the for the foreseeable future.

We’re always looking for that sort of skill set that Microsoft Stack skill set but what we’re seeing increasingly is that Cloud exposure is becoming less of a nice to have and more of a requirement and that’s a very interesting change. So look we’re not expecting you to be the absolute world’s best when it comes to AWS.

We’re not expecting you to have done every cert under the sun but AWS exposure Assure exposure honestly, Google Cloud not really big in Newcastle, Oracle Cloud not really big anywhere. So focus on the main two and you should be OK. I guess the take away is if you’re someone who works in that Microsoft stack space and you may be having a bit of trouble trying to find your next role. You may be feeling like the market’s getting a bit saturated a bit too competitive. Really, what you need to be doing study up your cloud stuff, get a couple of certs under your belt, get a bit more comfortable with that space and lean on that knowledge because that’s a really big differentiator at the moment. Still strong as well in Newcastle is the Front-end development space.

So when I say that I’m talking about HTML, CSS, JavaScript or TypeScript I guess. Paired with a framework such as a React or an Angular. Vue in Newcastle really not that popular nowadays and look the JavaScript framework stuff, it’s largely transferrable with a bit of time and effort, but Vue is definitely becoming more and more niche so I think for people looking to maybe get a bit more into this space, I would spend your time studying React rather than Angular or Vue personally. What I will call out, a bit more of a requirement around some of the I guess, the softer design elements of that sort of role. So UX awareness and look there’s a few UX certs out there that you can do. I’m not saying you need to sink 12 months into a UX course, but having some sort of UX awareness that you can refer to is definitely helpful. Same boat web accessibility guidelines and principles definitely something very nice to have.

As well as responsive design principles. So if you’re someone who is really trying to differentiate themselves in that Front-end market those are your options and it’s definitely an easy way to make yourself stand out a bit more from the crowd. We’ve also got a bunch of remote roles on. So primarily in the Front-end and mobile space, but as well is that we’ve got a few sort of tech agnostic full stack roles where we’re looking more for a mindset and a strong history of working really in best practice development environments rather than looking for someone with a particular language on the tool belt.

If you are liking this whole remote thing and you’ve you’ve definitely had the opportunity to get some exposure to it in sort of the last eight months or so. If you are finding it a bit nicer than you expected and you’re wanting to potentially look at a remote role going forward, we definitely have stuff out there for you. Fully remote roles, not super common to be honest still, you would have expected them to come online a bit harder considering the circumstances that we’re operating within but fully remote roles still quite rare.

So if you are looking for them, it’s not too easy to find them but we have a few. In summary Newcastle’s development market very candidate short at the moment, and as a result the candidates hold a lot of the power in negotiations, which, when when we sort of get down to brass tacks what that means, improvements in salary improvements in bonuses, equity becoming something that gets offered a lot more often especially sort of that early stage startup space.

So if you’re in a role where maybe you don’t love your boss, you maybe don’t love the work that you’re doing, you feel like you’re getting underpaid. Look the world’s your oyster at the moment. There’s plenty out there, and there’s companies that are willing to pay for your skill set. So if you’re not loving what’s happening at the moment in your little world, get out there, have a look.

If you wanna come and have a chat, we work opposite The Edwards so it’s definitely a nice venue to have a discussion about that. Come grab a coffee, come grab a drink, let’s talk about it. Let’s do a bit of a pulse check on where you sit in this market and where potentially your your future lies. Thanks again for checking out the Newy Dev Update. We’ve been really really appreciative of the continued support that we have had for this series, you know, liking the videos, commenting on them, sharing them that sort of thing. But as well, we’ve got a bunch of messages from people saying that it’s helped them understand their value in the market and realistically that sort of information,

It’s not super easy to come by. So the fact that we’ve been able to help in that sense has been really awesome to see. If you have enjoyed this series by all means give it a like, give it a share, whatever you wanna do. And if you want to learn any more information, by all means, reach out to myself, reach out to James, reach out the Linda, we’re all happy to help.

Thanks again, See you soon.

Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify