Tracking the most popular programming languages, databases and software development tools in whoishiring.
The new year and a new way of working in the Covid era allows us to take a fresh look at hiring trends on Hacker News' whoishiring threads. This month, we are going beyond just technology. A few new terms have been added to the analysis, looking at software job specialization (frontend, backend, full-stack), and job experience/level (Principal, Staff, Senior, Junior).
I think it's safe to say that the World experienced unprecedented change this year with the Covid-19 Pandemic and the response to it. But, even with a shift to remote work, and a strong software job market, the tools and technologies that Software Developers used in 2020 remained very similar to the tools used in prior years. Looking at the job postings from Hacker News, this data reveals very little change from what was found in 2019.
2020 was a year unlike any other, but tech tools didn't change much >>
With the midway point of 2020 fast approaching, and the world in the midst of perhaps the largest shift in employment in my lifetime, it seems like an appropriate time time to take a peek at how software job trends are looking through the lens of Ask HN: Who is hiring?, a regular, monthly collection of software development job postings. The summary posts on hntrends.com usually focus on specific technologies that are gaining or losing adoption, but first let's look at how Covid-19 is affecting this specific job board.
Just as it did last year, React completed the full calendar 2019 as the top tech in Ask HN: Who is hiring? extending its win streak to 31 months. React has been trending down in recent months and December marks its lowest share of the year, at just over 25% of postings. But, the runner up, Python, still has a long way to go to catch up.
GraphQL continues a fast rise that mirrors what popular JavaScript frameworks have done. November marks GraphQL's first time in the top 20 of techologies mentioned on the Hacker News "Who is Hiring?" thread. GraphQL was first mentioned in September, 2015 and joins TypeScript as one of the newest entries in the Top 20 over the past year.
Fall hiring season was in full swing in October's "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread with the usual technologies in demand. React ran away with the top spot again, showing no sign of weakness as it beat Python by 8 percentage points and won for the 29th month in a row.
React continues on the path towards software ubiquity as it cracks the 30% barrier. That means 30% of the job postings on September's "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread mentioned React. Not since Septepmber, 2014 when JavaScript cracked 30% has there been a technology mentioned so frequently.
These charts show what's popular and trending in programming languages, frameworks and technologies used to develop modern software applications as indicated by Hacker News activity. Using the HN Search API and a dictionary of software terms, all of the the comments (job postings) in the "whoishiring" submissions from April 2011 to the latest month were processed to count the number of times each software term was mentioned.
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