Coding jobs are in high demand and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that computer and information technology employment will grow 13% by 2030. Alongside the increasing demand, coding has emerged as a highly flexible career option with room for growth.
If you’re looking to build a lucrative career in coding, researchers at Scrapfly.com pulled together a list of the top 10 states for coders and what the average salary is in those states.
Scrapfly.com, a web scraping API, calculated each state’s job openings per 100,000 people, as well as the median annual wage. Delaware came out on top with 759 coding jobs per 100,000 people, with a median wage of $108,440. Behind it is Vermont with 519 jobs per 100,000 people and a median wage of $99,210.
Surprisingly, the least populous state in the U.S., Wyoming, rounded out the top three with 488 jobs per 100,000 people.
“As you can see by the data, it’s a common misconception that you have to get a job in one of the more populous states in order to get the dream job as a software developer. Wyoming is a great example of a state that is small in population but is really pushing the boundaries in terms of creating jobs within the tech industry,” Scrapfly.com researchers said.
Despite having the fourth-highest annual salary, Alaska placed seventh on the list with 443 jobs per 100,000 people. Behind it, Massachusetts had the highest median wage at $128,160 per year.
Numbers seven through 10 on the list all bring in at least $100,000 per year, on average, with New Hampshire and Rhode Island providing 411 and 395 jobs per 100,000 people.
Furthermore, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota come in at numbers four, five and six with their median wages varying between $80,000 and $78,000. In those states, between 458 and 475 jobs per 100,000 people were recorded.
“Whether you’re already established in the coding world or looking to kickstart your career journey, there are plenty of states that provide ample opportunity to flourish,” said Sparkfly.com’s research team.
Although many people don’t have a coding background, it is easier than ever to learn the skills necessary to get a job in coding. Indeed.com advised learning a programming language like JavaScript, Python or Swift and taking a coding class. It also touched on the importance of contributing to open source, building projects and expanding your portfolio.
“This research demonstrates that a career in tech and coding is more accessible than many believe. We can see this not only by the sheer number of job openings across the states but by the attractive average salaries too,” the researchers said.
devopsy.kinsta.cloud is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted as part of an effort to better serve our audience.
Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers. Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.
The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.
We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:
devopsy.kinsta.cloud is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted as part of an effort to better serve our audience.
Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers.
Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.
The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.
We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:
devopsy.kinsta.cloud is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted as part of an effort to better serve our audience.
Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers.
Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.
The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.
We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:
In recent weeks, there have been a slew of organizations announcing that their work from home policies will be extended through the end of the year such as is the case with Google and Facebook, or perhaps indefinitely such as Twitter and Square.
It’s good news to many technology workers who, according to a recent CNBC|SurveyMonkey survey, prefer remote work (25%). Also, a recent survey, produced by Cybersecurity Insiders on behalf of Pulse Secure, found that 38% of U.S. companies experienced gains in productivity. In this survey, 84% of respondents believe they will institute broader and permanent work from home policies beyond the novel coronavirus crisis.
What does the work from home policies mean for organizations going forward? When it comes to security and compliance, it means quite a bit. According to the Cybersecurity Insiders survey, 69% of respondents are concerned about work from home (WFH) risks, especially due to low user awareness training, poorly secured home and public WiFi networks, use of personal devices and sensitive data leakage.
A full 78% of respondents expressed their desire to enforce the same level of security controls for remote users as they do for on-premises users. While 65% allow access from personal, unmanaged devices, two-thirds of security professionals anticipate malware, phishing, unauthorized user and device access, and unpatched/at-risk systems to be the most exploitable WFH attack vectors.
“Sixty-three percent expressed that remote work could impact compliance mandates that apply to their organization; especially GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA and those with data breach notification,” the report found.
Interestingly, about three-fourths of those organizations surveyed said they have more than 76% of their employees working from up — that’s up from 25% in 2019. Still, a third of those surveyed said their organization is ill-prepared or not prepared to support remote working. Yet, 75% of businesses transitioned to remote working within 15 days.
“Surprisingly, less than a third expressed cost or budget problems, demonstrating the urgency to support their business. Additionally, more than half (54%) expressed that COVID-19 has accelerated migration of users’ workflows and applications to the cloud,” stated the report.
How are survey respondents securing their staff who work from home? The survey found the most common to be endpoint security, firewalls, virtual private networks and multi-factor authentication.
The 2020 Remote Work-From-Home Cybersecurity Report is based on a survey of 413 security decision makers, conducted in May of this year, within multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, high-tech, government and education.
Interestingly, the work from home movement may also give a boost to the gig economy, as gig economy work moves from lower-paying taskwork to professional gig work. A recent report, How the Gig Economy is Reshaping Tech Careers and IT Itself, highlighted data that shows 72% of all gig projects were in large enterprise and professional services firms throughout 2018 and 2019, compared with 52% two years prior.
“This rapid growth is spurred by workers’ interest in flexible careers as well as businesses’ interest in convenience and efficiency. There are signs that the gig economy is finding many adherents overseas as well,” stated the report.
Whether or not the work from home movement is real or long-term is no longer the question, it’s for how long and how far the trend goes. Enterprise technology leaders had soon prepare for a much more remote and loosely connected workforce.
Current events have revealed that there are two worlds in the employment landscape. One is digital, the other analog. For the most part, those in IT—the digital workers—have been unaffected by the spike in unemployment due to the economic side-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, it doesn’t mean they’ll be untouched in the long-term. As current events demonstrate, when it comes to the essentials in life, we’re all connected. Yet, the divide will continue to separate us to the detriment of all unless we do something about it.
When observing current events, I can’t help but think about Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent movie, Metropolis. It’s a science fiction film that depicts a world in which a small number of people live a privileged life in skyscrapers that tower high above the city. The rest of the population toils away below ground, doing the mundane work required to keep the city running. It’s a stunning piece of cinematography. The sets and special effects are breathtaking. What’s also impressive is that, for better or worse, so much of what Lang presented nearly 100 years ago has come to be.
You can view the full-length version of Metropolis here.
Figure 1: Scenes from the 1927 silent movie, Metropolis by Fritz Lang.
Lang’s vision of the future has a strange, almost eerie prescience for me, particularly as someone who has spent most of his adult life working in IT. It’s one that’s entirely possible, yet one I hope we avoid.
Allow me to elaborate.
Life Is A-OK in the Cloud
There’s a good argument to be made that today we live in Lang’s Metropolis, a world in which those who are doing really well live in the light of society while those who are just getting by live below ground in darkness.
The widening gap between prosperity and economic hardship is a trend that’s been unfolding over the last 30 years. We’ve become accustomed to it. Sadly, it’s no longer newsworthy.
What is newsworthy is the dramatic spike in unemployment due to the business shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The uptick in unemployment reveals a troubling set of circumstances: If you’re a digital worker chances are you’re still working. If you work in the analog world, that place where factories, restaurants, airlines, movie theaters, hotels, cruise ships and warehouses exist, there’s a good chance you or someone you know is out of a job, for now anyway.
Take a look at the graph from the US Private Sector Job Quality Index, a project from Cornell University Law School and others, by way of vox.com. It lists the jobs that are most vulnerable to layoffs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. IT workers don’t even make the list. It’s as if we live in another world.
Figure 2: Information workers are absent from the list of jobs at risk due to COVID-19.
The long and the short of it is that for developers, sysadmins, SREs and all the other people working in information technology, the recent economic downturn is but a blip in the daily news feed. For those manning a cash register, taking a ticket at the local cineplex, cutting hair or driving for a rideshare service, it’s a life-altering event. Or, to put it terms of Lang’s film, those of us who live in the clouds are doing well, and for those on the ground, it’s a different story.
Now, consider this: What if all the people who are presently laid off from their jobs find out there are no jobs to go back to? What if the economic recovery is slower than anticipated or society gets so accustomed to doing without that consumption doesn’t resume? Is such a scenario possible? Yes. Is it probable? Dunno. Will those of us in IT who work remotely all over the planet, from the comfort of our wired office, suffer? I doubt it. But, as for the rest, what then?
Let’s go back to the movie.
A Workforce Divided
There’s a point in the film when the protagonist, Freder (the son of the industrialist who built Metropolis), goes to his father to inquire about a catastrophic underground explosion shown earlier in the film.
The son asked,“Your magnificent city, Father, and you, the brain of this city, and all of us in this city’s light … and where are the people, Father, whose hands built your city?”
The father responded, “Where they belong.”
The son asked, “Where they belong? In the depths?”
His father nodded his head yes. (See the scene here).
There you have it. With that one physical gesture, Lang foreshadows a future which might very well be at our doorstep. As I mentioned earlier, it’s eerie, it’s prescient and it looks as if it’s coming to be.
What Does This All Have to Do with DevOps?
Those of us in DevOps have made valuable contributions to the world. We’ve done dramatically more good than harm. We’ve also been well compensated. The average salary for a SRE in the USA is $131,340, with a low of $60K and a high of $192K. Yet, the top salary for grocery clerk at Ralph’s supermarket is $22 an hour, which comes out to $44K a year over a 50 week year.
Do SREs deserve such a high salary? Of course, they do. Does a grocery clerk deserve only $44K a year in comparison? At the end of 2019, it would have been easy to say, yes. It’s a low skill, low education job. But that was then, and this is now. As of this writing, toilet paper is a premium commodity and the shelves need to be stocked with it. I’ll wager that in some circles, paying someone $50 an hour to get the rolls on the shelf is reasonable compensation. It all depends on how much people want toilet paper.
Am I being a bit dramatic? A little, but still, it’s worth thinking about.
So, what’s the important take away? Let’s go back to Metropolis one last time.
At the beginning of the film, there’s a scene in which the protagonist, Freder, was frolicking about in a lush arboretum-like greenhouse atop a skyscraper. He was surrounded by pretty maidens dancing. An elevator door opened into the garden. Freder observed as a group of raggedy waifs from beneath the city exited out of the elevator. A woman leading the waifs was at the head of the group. The waifs looked around in amazement at such luxury. Then, Freder’s servants ushered the group back into the elevator to exit. Freder was obviously affected by the waifs. He went into the depths of the city to investigate.
Shortly thereafter, Freder went to see his father to inquire about the explosion I described earlier. His father asked, “What were you doing in the machine halls, Freder?”
The son responded, “I wanted to look into the faces of the people whose little children are my brother, my sisters…”
It’s a powerful scene. It makes me wonder how many of the faces I’ve seen of those who were working in February are now sitting home, unemployed and unable to pay the rent in April.
The takeaway is this: We’re all connected at a level much deeper than the trivial interactions of the given social network. Current events have demonstrated the fact in spades. COVID-19 was first reported in China around November 17, 2019. On April 4, 2020, less than six months later, there were 240 cases reported in the state of South Dakota in the United States. If that’s not connection, I don’t know what is.
Those of us who work in the cloud are doing quite well, despite the setbacks caused by the global pandemic. But, there’s a growing number of us who are not doing so well and won’t be for the foreseeable future. It’s easy when everything is peaches and cream to be unaware of a world in which six-figure salaries are not the norm. But, when things go south and there’s no toilet paper to be had, the realization that we’re all in this together smacks us square in the face, like it or not.
The question then becomes, given that we’re all connected, what type of world do we want to share, the one in Lang’s Metropolis or something better?
It’s something worth thinking about. The pandemic will pass, but the underlying disparities will remain unless we do something about them.
