17 Nov, 2008

Talent Availability Part 2 – San Francisco, New York, Seattle and other US cities

Posted by Bhavin Turakhia | (4) Comments

I have been spending a ton of my time in researching talent acquisition for Directi. As a follow-up to my previous post on a comparison of Availability of Developers in various cities in India (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi etc) – I have spent the last several weeks in performing comparative analysis of various tech hubs in the United States with respect to available talent. I have conducted empirical study on various jobsites, read several reports, and spoken to many individuals who kindly volunteered their time to answer my tirade of questions :)

Miscellaneous conclusions from my conversations

  • Based on conversations with various individuals that I connected with, I can conclude that there is no better place than the Valley for recruiting tech talent
  • New York’s tech talent largely comprises of developers in the financial sector. Most of the Web 2.0 development is taking place in the Bay Area
  • This is a really good time to be thinking of starting up in the US, given the economic crisis talent availability is at an all time high
  • Cost-wise the Bay Area and NYC are similar in terms of salaries. Housing costs in the Bay Area have reduced more than that in NYC in the current environment, which may further drive down compensation costs in the Bay Area
  • New York compensation models are at times different from those in the Bay Area, since the financial sector compensation packages typically comprise of hefty bonuses, while the tech sector doles out equity.
  • Seattle is 20-30% cheaper than the Bay Area in terms of salaries. Seattle is a good bet for recruiting for Microsoft technologies, given their dominant presence there.
  • Median salary figures for developers range between 75-85 for freshers, 90-120 for experienced developers and 120-160 for leads. This is trending downwards to a certain extent in the current environment
  • Chief sources of recruiting talent are Craig’s List, LinkedIn, other job boards, recruiters and networking / referrals
  • Bay Area Tech community is significantly more vibrant in terms of events, activities etc in comparison to any other destination in the US
  • Obviously it goes without saying that the competition for talent in the Bay Area is significantly higher than other cities
  • Other tier-2 cities that happen to be tech hubs are Dallas, Austin, Chicago
  • .. and yea … more people seem to think that New York is more fun than the Bay Area :)

Empirical Data from Jobsites

City (10 mile radius from zip) Java (3m) C# (3m) C++ (3m)
San Francisco (94110) 223 72 176
SFO Bay Area (94041) 795 181 678
Dallas (75205) 240 83 191
Chicago (60612) 368 121 331
Los Angeles (90210) 274 93 209
Austin (78701) 137 42 119
Boston (02114) 353 103 286
New York (10028) (5 miles) 448 154 346
New York (10028) 1000 521 1000

The above data was gathered from US websites using the methodology described in my previous post on a comparison of Availability of Developers in various cities in India. The above data shows the following -

  • SFO Bay Area has 3x the talent availability pool of San Francisco proper
  • In New York I had to modify the search parameters to a 5 mile radius as opposed to a 10 mile radius due to the concentration of businesses in Manhattan
  • By sheer numbers the New York area (using a 10 mile radius from Central Manhattan) has more software developers looking out for a job, than San Francisco
  • The Bay Area has almost twice the talent pool in terms of availability as compared to other cities

Notes:

  • The above data was gathered by searching job boards for number of candidates who were out there looking for a job in the last 3 months
  • This methodology can provide a fair indication of general talent availability, but is not conclusive. For instance, it is possible that job-seekers are simply more active in the Bay Area than in other cities resulting in a larger number despite similar talent availability. While these type of error conditions may average out – the above data should be used in an indicative manner only.

Other Resources

  • AeA publishes very detailed reports on distribution of tech talent in the United States, by state and cities. You can obtain them at the below links. They cost $250 each, and provide some interesting perspectives -
    AeA CyberStates Report 2008
    AeA Cybercities Report 2008
  • For instance an interesting factoid I figured from the above reports was that 1 out of every 4 persons employed in the Bay Area is employed in the tech industry
  • Another helpful website is http://topuniversities.com – which provides a rating and ranking of universities worldwide. As expected United States features on the top of the list. I will be providing a separate analysis on my findings with respect to a comparison of universities worldwide.
Category : 0-cosmos | TechTalk

11 Sep, 2008

Availability of Developers by City (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi etc) and Technology (Java, C++, C#, AIR, WPF etc)

Posted by Bhavin Turakhia | (16) Comments

An alltime favorite question amongst journalists who interview me as a “young entrepreneur” has been – “Tell us about some of the challenges you faced while growing Directi?” and my patent answer has always been that the only challenge we have faced and continue to face is finding good talent. In our bid for finding talent we are now expanding into other cities over the next few months.

In order to determine tech labor availability across the common metro cities in India I compiled a statistical comparison of the count of resumes available on common jobsites for common software development skillsets in the various cities in India, and the findings are very interesting. This blog post compiles these findings. If you are a tech company in India – these findings can help you make technology decisions concerning city selection and platform selection.

The findings

Below are findings from the comparison of the count of resumes of software developers with 0-4 yrs of experience from various cities in India as compiled from a jobsite -

1. Findings by City

  • Bangalore has 2.5 times the number of Java resumes of Mumbai
  • In terms of total resumes from each city the ranking is in the following order – Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Chennai, Delhi, Pune, and lastly Mumbai
  • As an example, here is the citywise count of Resumes that contained the keyword Java
    • Bangalore – 123,205
    • Hyderabad- 114,561
    • NCR – 85,347
    • Chennai – 82459
    • Pune – 54,086
    • Delhi – 53,256
    • Mumbai – 43,672
  • Every city in India has more available developers than Mumbai with the South taking the lead
  • NCR has almost twice the number of developers as Delhi

2. Findings by Technology

  • The total count of Resumes of developers with 0-4 yrs experience that contain the below keywords across all 7 cities was -
    • C++ – 635,575
    • Java – 556,586
    • C# – 190,872
    • Javascript – 162,343
    • Ajax – 41,219
    • Flex – 8,668
    • Python – 3,429
    • Ruby – 2,099
    • WPF – 779
    • Silverlight – 255
  • As you can see Java and C++ are the predominant keywords in Software Developer Resumes
  • Flex beats Python and Ruby :)
  • Ajax and Javascript beat Flex/WPF/Silverlight by several magnitudes as keywords appearing in resumes

The results above remain similar in terms of ratio, for Resumes with 4+ yrs of experience.

Click here to download the raw excel sheets for all cities and technologies >>

The methodology

I had my team conduct independent searches for each permutation and combination of the following -

  • Keywords – Java, C#, C++, Javascript, Flex, Silverlight, WPF, Ajax, Actionscript, Ruby, Python
  • Cities – Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, NCR (Noida/Gurgaon), Chennai, Hyderabad
  • Experience – 0 to 4 yrs , 4+ yrs
  • Function – Software Development (or equivalent)
  • Jobsites – Naukri, Timejobs, Monster
  • Date – 3rd June 2008

The above totals upto a whopping 462 searches :) . I then tabulated the count of Resumes for each search and put it in multiple excel spreadsheets. You can download the spreadsheets to crunch the numbers yourself.

Based on the above data, Directi and .pw clearly need a presence in the south. The data also demonstrates the lack of penetration of RIA, especially Flex/Silverlight/AIR/WPF, amongst Indian developers.

Hopefully this data can help others make similar decisions. Meanwhile lookout Bangalore/NCR – we are in the process of making an appearance shortly :)

PS: Interested in joining Directi? – check our openings at http://careers.directi.com

Category : 0-cosmos | Random Musings