DEV Community

Discussion on: Should I become a developer?

Collapse
 
codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald • Edited

From the article...

In the USA alone, there is, at this moment, almost 500,000 software developer jobs on the market.

Be advised, this is an artificial shortage. The majority of job postings are for developers who simply do not exist: job descriptions that are impossible to fulfill, over-specific technical expectations ("must have at least 5 years experience with Mithril"), disqualification of good candidates on irrelevant, arbitrary, or biased criteria, and so on.

What we're short is not 500K developers. What we're short is about 500K HR managers and recruiters who know jack cheese about the software development and IT industries.

This is not to discourage you from pursuing programming. Just understand that the developer shortage is an illusion. There are a number of developers looking for work, who between them could fulfill a majority of those 500K open jobs, but they aren't going to be considered for that mid-level backend JS position because they aren't a 25-year-old neurotypical white cis male with 30 years experience, including 10 years in Kubernetes and a Masters in CS from MIT. (Honestly, I'm only exaggerating a tiny bit on that one.)

Collapse
 
jenicarvalho profile image
Jeniffer Carvalho

Hello Jason. You are right about that.
I also work as a tutor and I see amazing Junior developers suffering to enter the market. It's not easy at all to get the first job, and when you do you see a lot of new things to learn each day.