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Overview of the Software Engineer Job Market

Are coders worth it? That’s the title of a very well written article by James Somers that I recently came across. His lengthy essay on the current state of the software engineer/web developer job market explains some of the many reasons why I chose to up-root my life to move to San Francisco to attend Hack Reactor.

This article goes into detail explaining why software engineering skills are so in demand right now, and why the perks of having the right skills are so good. James explains it this way:

In this particular gold rush the shovel is me. We web developers are the limiting reagent of every start-up experiment, we’re the sine qua non, because we’re the only ones who know how to reify app ideas as actual working software. In fact, we are so much the essence of these small companies that, in Silicon Valley, a start-up with no revenue is said to be worth exactly the number of developers it has on staff. The rule of thumb is that each one counts for $1 million.

James Somers - Are Coders Worth It?

From everything I have seen in San Francisco, James is definitely accurate when talking about our current prospects as Hack Reactor students. Hiring day is coming up this Friday, and we currently have about 15 companies that will be attending, with more potential last-minute additions. This number is especially high, considering there are only 19 students in my class, and not all of us are looking for jobs in San Francisco.

One of our instructors recently mentioned that Hack Reactor graduates are securing higher salaries than recent Stanford graduates. Hard to believe? Maybe. However, over 100% of students from first two classes before me have found jobs or are working for their own startups (most all of the recent graduating class have found jobs in the past couple weeks as well).

At the end of his article, James mentions some of the drawbacks to the coding profession, along with trivializing some aspects of the coding process. These are also accurate, but he follows it all up by re-stating just how much money he is being paid to have these skills.

I am very optimistic about my future at this point, and I can’t to see what the next chapter of my life brings.

Full article: Are coders worth it?

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