In this photo, @duncangoodall, @btnmike and @lethrir
It’s been a whole year since I went to my last Brighton Alt.net meetup, so it was nice to be back again and hope I can come again.
I have updated the Brighton alt wiki with the event summary, so check there for details.
As per tradition, at the end we were asked if anyone was either needing a job or needing to hire. As a result of this conversation, one final question came up:
“By the way, is anyone else finding it really hard to find good .NET developers? All of the developers I’ve seen were beyond terrible.”
There was a lot of agreement on this.
So this got me thinking how or why this could be, and a few theories emerged:
1. There are just as many good candidates – it’s just perception bias
Perhaps not all of the candidates are as bad as they appear. Developers who go to meetups and conferences are the most passionate ones, and maybe find flaws in other developers more easily than other developers. It’s certainly likely that the average candidate won’t know as much as a developer who is actively engaged with the local development community
2. There are just as many good candidates – it’s just harder to attract them
Maybe it’s the fault of the companies seeking to hire. Maybe they need to do more to sell their companies to potential candidates? Maybe they aren’t offering enough money or expressing why it is an interesting job to do? Maybe they have a lot of legacy technology?
3. There aren’t as many good candidates because developers are staying with their current employer longer
I have absolutely no evidence to support this, but it’s a possibility
4. Fewer good candidates are interested in .NET these days
For the reasons given in this composite code post
I’m interested to hear your opinions.
Further Reading
October Brighton Alt.NET
Nobody wants to be a .NET developer
Comments on reddit
Zombie Code Kill 
You missed me 🙂
Heyo, thanks for the link back!
Interesting to see what others are thinking on this matter. As someone who still writes .NET code on a semi-frequent basis but avoids the term “.NET Programmer” like the plague – I’m always curious.
I write C#/.NET code in my work. I love the language, framework and accessibility to 3rd party libraries through nuget. I write front-ends, back-ends, production systems, anything really. But from what I have seen “.NET Developer” usually automatically includes things like “sharepoint” and “biztalk”, which, like any of the heavy microsoft products, I will never touch. The horror stories are real. So most of the people who list a “.NET Developer” seem to actually want a “Microsoft Engineer”.
Yes I guess “good .NET developer” does more or less mean “good Microsoft engineer” although “good Microsoft engineer” does sound a lot better.
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