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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#41

Post by btilly »

I've seen this story several times.

Once a language no longer has a developer pipeline, it becomes a language with no future. No matter how important and widely used. You wind up with jobs begging for qualified developers. Given how systems last, the language may survive indefinitely. As nobody dares migrate projects off of it. But employers will struggle more and more to find employees.

The first language that this happened to was COBOL. There are still a lot of COBOL systems out there. And a lot of COBOL jobs. But nobody wants to go into COBOL for fairly obvious reasons.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#42

Post by datalopers »

mkl95 wrote: post #25

Rust should make the pool of C++ developers decrease exponentially in the coming decades. There's little reason to code a greenfield project in C++ unless it involves leveraging some niche libraries, and those niche libraries will eventually have Rust equivalents.

C++ doesn’t require you attend an annual furry convention.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#44

Post by ch4s3 »

bluedino wrote: post #29
dsign wrote: post #15

The last time I searched for jobs, there were two competing automotive makers among the prospective employers. The one that offered the C++ position for programming Lidar systems offered a lower salary than the one that just wanted a generalist to wrangle scripts and systems. Beats me.

I found it equally hilarious that (at the last place I was) the Python devops jobs paid 50% more than the core developers of the company's core product.

I wonder if this partially explains some of the issues car manufacturers are having with LIDAR systems, other than the inherent difficulty of course.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#45

Post by synergy20 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23
deaddabe wrote: post #9

Because Python pays more. Or Javascript. Or Ruby. More demand, more salary. Apart from finance, pay is lower than web languages. And finance is small. Embedded systems programming, that also uses the language, pays 30% less than web jobs from my last job hunting period. Employees may be leaving the embedded space (and C++) for web tech because of this. This is the feeling I get from my local job market (western Europ…

Yes, the embedded space pays terrible, and the employers don't seem great on the whole. When I was at Google I got to work on embedded stuff and really liked it; but I was getting a Google salary. When I left Google I pursued IoT and embedded jobs a bit and while I was not expecting Google level compensation at all, I was astounded at what was going on there, pay wise. General software eng back end jobs pay better. T…

system programming is a tough and low reward path indeed, be it in c/c++ or whatever.

embedded/EE is worse.

unless you made into the big few(google,amazon,meta,apple,microsoft,...), salary will plummet by half in general, or even more.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#46

Post by deaddabe »

antegamisou wrote: post #26
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the embedded space pays terrible, and the employers don't seem great on the whole. When I was at Google I got to work on embedded stuff and really liked it; but I was getting a Google salary. When I left Google I pursued IoT and embedded jobs a bit and while I was not expecting Google level compensation at all, I was astounded at what was going on there, pay wise. General software eng back end jobs pay better. T…

You may also look into Kernel Programming for a lucrative systems programming career. It is more C and low-level oriented though.

> You may also look into Kernel Programming for a lucrative systems programming career.

This is the road I have taken since I started to work professionally, but I yet have to find a lucrative job. I know that I am paid more than microcontroller devs, but less than web devs. The market for kernel developers is not that big either.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#47

Post by mhfu »

deaddabe wrote: post #9

Because Python pays more. Or Javascript. Or Ruby. More demand, more salary. Apart from finance, pay is lower than web languages. And finance is small. Embedded systems programming, that also uses the language, pays 30% less than web jobs from my last job hunting period. Employees may be leaving the embedded space (and C++) for web tech because of this. This is the feeling I get from my local job market (western Europ…

Yep. I build glorified CRUD apps in NodeJS + React, my friend works on some embedded C++ stuff.

- My working hours are way more flexible. I pretty much only have to attend meetings which are rare, so I can basically work whenever I want during the day. That means that I can go to the dentist and stuff like that without taking the day off. She has pretty strict hours.

- I can work from anywhere, only requirement is decent internet connection. She has to go to the office because that's the only way she can actually test the code she writes for physical devices.

- My salary is basically double of what my friend makes.

She's currently learning JS so she can just move into web space. If someone can choose between easier job with much better salary, benefits and working conditions, they will do that without thinking, unless they reeeeeally like C++.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#48

Post by antegamisou »

anonymousDan wrote: post #32
antegamisou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may also look into Kernel Programming for a lucrative systems programming career. It is more C and low-level oriented though.

Interesting, what types of companies pay well for kernel programming?

I remember Apple having a lot of related listings so I'd assume companies that are somehow involved in OS development (Microsoft, Google, maybe RedHat/IBM and Intel).

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#49

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #30

There's lots of C++ programmers out there. But they're bottled up in FAANG, I think. So you have to be able to compete with that. Working at Google is on the whole a lot of C++. Major parts are moving to Go, certainly. But there's absolutely giant code-bases of pretty cleanly written C++ services, and most Googlers are quite proficient in it and there's whole teams at Google that work on improving C++ standards and t…

From what I understand, Google is really about a crippled subset of C++, that people jokingly call "C+-".

I ran a C++ shop for 25 years. I used to program in it, but stopped, many moons ago. The new C++ is a huge change from what I knew.

I am expecting to see a lot of hate for the language, in this thread.

Regardless, it is a very powerful language, and it is not for the faint of heart.

I attended a Swift conference, many moons ago, and one of the speakers was this wonderful woman that had recently moved to Adobe (a C++ shop).

She was supposed to speak about Swift, but ended up speaking about C++, and the wonderful, supportive community of older, experienced developers she found, around the language.

I loved it, but I'll bet a lot of the folks around me, were squirming.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#50

Post by mschuster91 »

deaddabe wrote: post #9

Because Python pays more. Or Javascript. Or Ruby. More demand, more salary. Apart from finance, pay is lower than web languages. And finance is small. Embedded systems programming, that also uses the language, pays 30% less than web jobs from my last job hunting period. Employees may be leaving the embedded space (and C++) for web tech because of this. This is the feeling I get from my local job market (western Europ…

> Apart from finance, pay is lower than web languages. And finance is small.

And it's blasted to hell with bureaucracy, red tape, toxic work environments and a reputation for having to deal with infrastructure best described as "fossilized". Banks have no one to blame but themselves (and maaaaybe a bit the sometimes insane requirements of financial regulation agencies) for being unable to attract programmers.

At least in Germany, the fintechs have never had much trouble attracting developers... so it's not the finance industry itself, here in Germany it is definitely a culture problem in the established banks that historically have treated IT purely as a cost center instead of the integral part of business they are.

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