A Voice from the Eastern Door

Top IT Skills wanted in 2012

Yearly surveys are conducted from companies like Forester Research, Zend, and other technology companies and they are typically published in January. I answer many surveys because it allows me to receive the survey results every January and helps me to check that my chosen career path is going to work well for my own goals. It’s important that developers, programmers, and designers check their plan often and schedule time to learn the latest trends while keeping their old skills honed and competitive.

Mobile Development is Number One for 2012

It’s no surprise that mobile development is the number one career opportunity for 2012. I was one of the 3,335 developers that answered industry surveys last year for Zend Technologies because I develop PHP web applications.

Mobile Development

If you are interested in becoming a mobile developer in 2012, you are fortunate to have many resources available to help you with your goals. Android.com provides free software development kits, documentation, and forums to help a new developer learn how to develop mobile applications. Create.msdn.com offers quick start guides and Developer.apple.com provides commercial iOS software development kits for the iPhone. If you are serious about becoming a mobile developer you must start by reading and understanding the documentation.

My personal favorite place to learn how to be a mobile developer is Full Sail Online University. The instructors provide a lot of one on one training, weekly web conferences, video tutorials, and your completed course assignments are so awesome they can be used in your professional portfolio.

HTML5, JavaScript, and Table-less CSS are all good to know. As a mobile developer it can help you to have real world examples of all of them on your online portfolio. Websites like Behance, Tumblr, and WordPress can provide you with a free content management system to show off your best work.

Salaries, Contracts, and Benefits for Mobile Developers

You can conduct a search on monster.com, dice.com, and google to learn what the current trends are for compensating mobile developers. Contractors with an awesome portfolio earn $150 / hour plus travel expenses, equipment, and other perks. Employees with a mobile development degree and awesome portfolio are earning an average of $90k yearly. If you have zero experience, you need to work on creating an awesome portfolio full of real world mobile apps, with matching written case studies and testimonials from everyone that worked with you on the projects in your portfolio.

Do you have any Questions?

Don’t forget to use Google.com or any popular search engine to learn more about “Top 10 IT Skills in 2012”. Send your computer and Internet questions to me at [email protected] and I’ll do my best to answer you in future stories.

Resources:

Full Sail Online. Retrieved January 12th 2012 from http://www.FullSail.edu

What developers will be doing in 2012. http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/11/what-developers-will-be-doing-learning-listening-to-in-2012-survey-results/

Zend Developer Pulse. http://www.zend.com/topics/zend-developer-pulse-survey-report-0112-EN.pdf

Top 10 IT Skills for 2012. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/top-it-skills-wanted-for-2012/3503

 

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