Skills requirements in the five years ahead us – Part 1

The recession caused many developers to cut their losses and grab what they could in terms of jobs. This often led to many developers concentrating on short term goals. As economies start picking up worldwide, it is only natural that the job market will come back. But the difference is that this time the requirements will change. More often than not, as a developer you will be required to function as a Jack-of-all-trades or something to that effect. In this regard, there are several skills that might be worth looking into which could help your prospects.

1. Unless the apocalypse prophesied by the Mayans arrives in 2012, the big three – .NET, Java and PHP will still be the languages to know. If you can’t get to study all of them, try and learn at least one of them. Note that the keyword here is Master, meaning that you need to know everything about at least one of them.

2. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) will be big in the coming years. The emergence of Flash as a versatile content delivery mechanism has prompted Microsoft to release Silverlight and Sun to put out JavaFX. Adobe itself has released Air and Flex to complement and enhance Flash. The upcoming HTML 5 standard also has RIA capabilities built in, so this is one area that will definitely experience growth.

3. Web development is not going to disappear anytime soon; as more and more companies want developers who can “disappear under the hood” of the code. This means that the demand for developers who know JavaScript, CSS and HTML will continue to grow.

4. Web services will also be a key area that employers will look at. Experience in using or creating web services will be extremely useful for a developer.

5. Soft skills are more in demand than ever. No longer can developers be stuck using jargon or having someone translate requirements to them. Developers need to be able to converse with clients and understand their requirements. They also need to be able to let clients know in plain English, why their requirements are not practical so that a compromise can be worked out.

To be continued…

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