So David I posted a link for a Delphi job listing site, and Joe pulled a chicken little jumping to the conclusion that there are only 4 Delphi jobs in existence. Unfortunately there is not one single source that lists all jobs for any skill or category. You need to do a little hunting.
It used to be that DelphiJobs.com aggregated job listings from a number of job sites, and then allowed you to view them all from their site. It was as close as you could get to a definitive listing of Delphi jobs. Since they no longer do that, here is a snap shot of the Delphi job numbers as of right now:
- Dice 192 jobs [feed]
- America’s JobBank 404 jobs
- Yahoo! HotJobs 83 jobs
- ComputerWork.com 8 jobs [feed]
- ComputerJobs.com 18 jobs
- DataFrenzy 10 jobs
- Net-Temps.com 23 jobs [feed]
- Moster.com 284 jobs
(Click on the [feed] link to add a feed to your news reader. Maybe Delphi Feeds can include these in a special section!)
Grand total of 1022 jobs! And that doesn’t include all the job openings that are not listed on these centralized search listings, or the ones that are filled through networking (the #1 way jobs are filled). Sure, there may be some duplicates between the sites, and some of the jobs postings that are returned in these searches may be mistakes, but it certainly proves that Delphi job market is NOT dead.
It is true that there may not be as many Delphi jobs as other languages, but that is an indicator of two things:
- It takes less Delphi developers to complete a project then with many other languages. It is a more productive environment and community.
- Delphi developers have greater job satisfaction and switch jobs less often, thus less vacancies.
So it is a good thing!
Add one more to the list, as I am leaving my delphi job.
I don’t think that Joe was panicking, He was surprised when David I recommend a site which listed 4 Delphi jobs.
I have been a Delphi Developer for 10 years and I believe it is one of the most productive and versatile tools available today.
But companies are moving to Visual Studio C# .NET. There are many companies looking for contractors to migrate their products from Delphi to C# .NET.
I’m not saying the sky is falling, I am saying that companies have lost fate in Borland/CodeGear and Microsoft is the safe bet, who can truly blame them ?
For comparison purposes I searched DICE for for C# jobs – 7497 .
I’ve met Joe, and he is a good guy. You are probably right. I was a bit surprised that David I. recommended that site too.
I know a lot of Delphi developers who became C# developers because they thought that is where the jobs were, and I know a lot of companies moved to C# because they thought that was where the developers were. It is a circular argument. Not sure which side bought into the marketing first, but once one side did, it just spiraled from there. Migrating from Delphi to C# serves no practical purpose, it is just a waist of money, time and resources.
Do any of the job sites listed above include posting in Canada? Does anyone know of a good source for posting (specifically Delphi) in Canada?
Delphi rocks… and I expect to spend many more years programming at efficiency level that other deveolpers (not using Delphi) can only dream of. That said, it would much easier with unicode support
Dice supports Canada. I found one in Montreal, QC after a really quick search. If you visit http://monster.ca/ then you can get Canada jobs from Monster. Do you have a Canadian Job Service or department of labor?
I believe the root of the objection was using a site that lists only 4 delphi jobs nation wide as your basis for claiming delphi jobs is sloppy.
Back that with the fact that most Delphi programmers have to forge their own niche out of the market with dynamite against C and Java prejudices and you have a bad example mixed with a sore spot.
It was dang sloppy for David I to not list more sources himself in the article to support his point. Someone was bound to call him on it. After all, if his job is to be a Delphi evangelist, should he really be shooting himself in the foot with mixed messages?
Job hunters might look further, but those who are reading him to get a general idea of what is going on aren’t, and indeed shouldn’t have to. This message was more self-sabotaging than saying nothing at all, and it is a shame because, as you yourself point out, anyone who IS in the know and even slightly motivated can find better examples.
Honestly, if I was trying to pick which languages to follow now like I did when I was young, I wouldn’t even bother looking at Delphi with the current state of the market, and flawed messages like David I’s, I would have all the justification I would need to feel right about it.
He screwed up, he was called on it. SHooting the messenger isn’t gonna change the fact that David I could and, based on his job, SHOULD have done better.
Now, let’s leave it at that, cause I figure next time David I is saying a huge “whoops” this time and will likely be more on the ball next time.
Uhh… Am I the only one to actually *look* at those jobs? The problem with keyword searching jobs is that those numbers are WAY wrong! You get everything that mentions Delphi, even a “Catering Assistant” (America’s Jobbank) or an “Apartment Manager – Part Time” (Monster) among others!!
So, in order to “fix” an, obviously too short list from DavidI, you post an, obviously, too long list?
Not the mention the sheer number of those that are somehow Delphi related that are for things such as “Retooling rich client functionality from Delphi and VB 6 to a .NET (C#) rich client”…
Not that it matters to me as I’m not in the US, but from a short glimpse on those sites and discounting duplicates between them, I’d say that *real* Delphi jobs in the US are at most in a couple hundreds, not in the one thousand!
RGuy, e-mail me at ryan at run-time-systems dot com and I can provide you with a Canadian company (PEI) that does a lot of Delphi.
Fernando, I did look at the job listing very quickly, and the ones I saw were relevant, but past experience has proven your point to me. I have seen some search results that show everything in PhilaDELPHIa. That Job Service search engine may have done that to get such a high number.
So I think we can safely assume that the number of current open Delphi positions, that are publicly posted is somewhere between 4 and 1000. This will no doubt illustrate the uncertainty principle in action. The more we enumerate Delphi job openings, we will have a direct result on the number of Delphi job openings, both by helping developers to find and apply for positions as well as create more awareness that there are Delphi developers looking for work.