Dice Postings Show MS Developer Certs Demand Rising

BI headline for recent MS Developer Cert value story

Thanks to Ken Rosen of Microsoft Learning whose recent Born to Learn blog posting (10/13/2011) clued me into an interesting article at Business Insider entitled “Job Listings Prove That Microsoft Still Matters.” Written by BI staffer Matt Rosoff, this story points to the following numbers on Dice.com as evidence that MS certs still have some clout in the workplace:

• more than 10,000 listings for developers with .NET skills (up 29% from 2010)
• more than 8,000 listings for those with C# skills (26% higher than 2010)
• over 6,000 listings for ASP.NET skills (up 24% from 2010, with anecdotal evidence that demand for .NET-savvy developers is booming, to head off a shortage of people with such skills)
• 4,000-plus listings for SharePoint (46% higher than 2010, which makes it a booming specialty

Outside the MS umbrella, BI also reports that J2EE/Java listings lead the developer pack with over 18K jobs listed (and “only” 19% growth over 2010, but that still sounds pretty impressive to me, given otherwise lackluster demand for and growth in IT sector jobs). Ruby on Rails OTOH (a popular Web development language) is up 67% over 2010, but that’s in part because current levels are around 1,800 listings (it’s easier to jump violently when you’re small than when you’re big). JavaScript demand is also high, though, with over 10K listings, but also with 53% growth over last year.

Very interesting! Developers: start your engines!