Tales from a Trading Desk

I would agree that good .net developers are a rare of a kind. You would find a lot of them claiming they are but actually they are not a real one.

About pair programming, a lot of people counter-claim that it's kinda non-productive especially when you pair up programmers with different levels in skill. What do you think?

I haven't come across any issues with different levels paired programming. I suspect the usual issue is that the senior pair person believes he knows best, but at the end of the day, from a knowledge transfer, training, code style, design etc, pairing work well. Is productively really effected? I suspect if u measured the number of bugs, time etc, pairing verses non-pairing works out about the same - believe there is a lot of PP research on the web, just google :)

Given the nubmer of averts out offering £25,000 for a .NET prgrammer with a few years experance, I do not think there is a sortage of .NET programmer. Just a shorage of CHEEP .NET programmers.

In Cambridge(UK) it is very hard to get over £35000 as a C# programmer however good your are, to get more you have to go into managament.

I am not even seeing a big demand for contractors, I would beleave there was a real skill shortage when a lot of the adverts said that the client was willing to wait for a month, e.g. take on a contractor that is leaving parament job.

There seens to be a lot of employers out there only willing to pay ‘VB rates’ but wanting “jave level” design skills, e.g. OO develoment.

Ian Ringrose
www.ringrose.name <-email address on website.