In an increasingly technical world that depends on well written programs to run multi-million dollar infrastructures and global financial concerns, it is no surprise that programmers are in high demand. Like any other industry, supply and demand plays a part in the price paid for good programmers. Would it surprise you to discover there are programmers making high six figure incomes programming with C++?

Moving on up

According to the latest trends, programming salaries are on the rise and finding good programmers is becoming more difficult for companies seeking programming help. There are a lot of factors involved in determining what an appropriate salary is, including; location, niche market, job title, area of programming responsibility, programming language, experience, and a host of other determining aspects. The good news for programmers is they are entering a prolonged period when industries will be intensifying their search for programmers and they will be forced to 'up the ante' as far as what they have to offer in order to attract qualified candidates for those positions.

What this means to a programmer looking for a position or someone who is now in college and will soon be in search of that perfect programming position is that you can be somewhat fastidious about the position you accept. Experienced programmers will have more of an edge on the competition because businesses are looking for that individual who has already followed the rabbit down the hole and can build quality code with expert troubleshooting skills.

In Demand

The industry areas with the most demand will be in the financial, mobile, gaming, medical, and engineering fields. The programming languages with the most demand will be C variants (including .Net, C#, C++), Java, Python, VB, JavaScript, and most of your web based languages and database programming. There are niche markets that require a particular language expertise like Ruby or Python.

Show Me The Money

Salaries for programmers have risen over the last few years and the rise is expected to get even steeper over the foreseeable future. The reason for this is the well of programmers is becoming shallow when compared to the predicted demand. “In the United States, there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer science over the next 10 years but only 400,000 will qualify for it.”  The mean average salary for a computer programmer was $78,260 in 2012. For the Memphis, Tennessee area it is $75,090. 2014 will see an increase across programming channels of between 7%-10%.  There are some programming niches, like SAS and SAP, that are in more demand but the entire spectrum of computer programming is in a higher demand cycle.

Computer Programmer is one of U.S. News and World Report "100 Best Jobs of 2013." There is no doubt that computer programming offers a viable career path and a certainty that jobs will be available for an experienced programmer. The salary that you should expect depends on the area or niche that you program in but with escalating demand you can expect escalating salaries.

And the programming position that pays a high six figure income? HFT programming. 

by Jim Atkins 'thedosmann'

Memphis Web Programming