I am considering learning more about programming as I will eventuallly not be playing poker for a living. How would you guys rate the outlook and opportunities for junior programmers/software developers? In Canada?

I appreciate that long-term predictions aren't going to be that useful, but a general idea about opportunties is important before I even consider enrolling in a CS program down the line. I would greatly appreciate the first-hand knowledge of the industry from the posters here.

I have recently moved to canada from the UK and am working as a developer. From what I have seen so far, opportunities are good, but its really hard to be specific.

What it is really going to be determined by is...

Where in Canada... and

What/How much experience do you have

I have been in the industry as a programmer for 10 years.
I can't speak to canada, but I live and work in the Philadelphia area. There are a decent amount of jobs out there. From what I have noticed lately it seems that salaries/raises are slightly lower then a few years ago and significantly lower than 12 years ago or so.

Salaries were quite inflated during the late 90's and what i noticed at my company is that we have a fair number of people hanging around from that era who are quite overpaid and i imagine there are a few people all over who are in that situation. As those people retire/quit/get fired and the economy gets better I think there will be a slight bump.

Here is what gets you jobs in the computer industry. This is all from my experience in the industry over the last 10 years and my recent observations from interviewing people for 2 jobs over the last 3 months.

Programming skills - obviously you need to have a good technical background and skills and prove it in the interview.

Communication skills - (Racist/Ethnic Ban coming i'm sure) But if i can't understand what you are saying, the emails you write and you can't correctly gather requirements from business users/customers and understand them i can't hire you. FWIW, my department is like a mini UN, but we all communicate very well, and I have passed on hiring Americans because they couldn't effectively communicate during an interview, so this is not a race/ethnicity driven comment.

Personality - I need someone who is friendly, outgoing and gets along with people. If you are unwilling to compromise, see others opinion, work as part of the team, and at least pretend you like all of us I won't hire you.

Honesty - Don't lie. If it is on your resume and I ask you about it, don't Bull**** me. It is better to say, "I'm not sure" or "I only worked with that a little" then to make up an answer. I have heard some quite funny made up answers to technical questions.

Example: I have Java on my resume but haven't used it in about 7 years, if someone asked me about Java i would simply say, I used it a while back and could do minor maintenance, anything more and i would have to do some research.

Another thing in the honesty department. There are quite a few people i work with when asked, "why is this broken" or "why aren't you done coding X" they always have an excuse, "It's not my fault, Person Y didn't do their part yet" or "It was person A not me". And even a few where I ask, "hey anyone know what is wrong with server x" and they immediately respond with "I didn't break anything", "Calm down i didn't say you did". I have more respect for someone who admits when wrong and can say, "My bad i F****** up, but here is what I am doing to fix the problem/finish up coding etc...."

Sorry for the long post, just trying to help. Let me know if you have any other questions.

I'm in Toronto, and the job market here is great. When I was looking for a new job in May, I had two offers within a week of being laid off. I could probably walk out of my current job and in to a new one before the end of the month.

Things are a bit tougher for juniors/new grads, always, but if you come out of school with a portfolio of stuff you've done outside of school, then you shouldn't have any trouble finding a decent job.

Software development is one of the few industries that is growing at a massive clip worldwide. In fact it is probably the biggest reason that so many other industries are shrinking. More new billion dollar businesses are in software than in any other business type (I don't have any facts to back that up but it has to be true.)

So in my opinion it is the safest bet with the highest upside you can make in your career.

I am in general very skeptical of people who want to become programmers solely because they figure it offers them good job opportunities. I have yet to meet a truly good programmer with that mindset. Programming is not for everyone, and I am not just talking about intelligence / analytical skills etc.

I very much agree with this. To be a good programmer, you need to be very passionate about it.... not just see it as a job.

True, but being a good/great programmer is not a prerequisite for being employed as one.

I've always found that to be an exaggeration.

I don't consider myself passionate about programming but I still consider myself good. I enjoy programming but if I were to win 100 million dollars tomorrow I imagine the amount of time I'd spend programming to be pretty minor.

I think that people that are very passionate about programming are a huge asset and have an edge over non-passionate people but it's not the be-all-and-end-all. If you're someone that just generally cares about doing good work you can become a good programmer.

This is BS, imo. You can be a perfectly adequate programmer working 40 hours a week and never learning anything on your own time. You will end up a maintenance programmer in a massive corporation working on ancient technology, but you'll pay your mortgage every month - which is good enough for nearly everyone.

Not sure I agree with this. I really dont think your will find many full time programmers who dont enjoy it. Personally I have never met any.

I worked with at least a dozen at a previous job. Guys 40+, had been there for 15 years or more, and were happily settled in, happily making a career and not enjoying programming more than most people enjoy their dead end jobs at middle age.

Fair enough... I havent been in the industry very long so I guess I havent been exposed to those people... where I work everyone really likes programming... but there are probably only 1 or 2 programmers above 40....

Well the attrition rate in programming is very high. 2/3 of my comp sci class dropped out or switched majors. And I remember my professors telling us that the vast majority of comp sci graduates will not be developing 10 years after graduation.

Having said that, there's no reason that someone can't start investigating programming as a career path with security in mind, and then grow to love it and become great at it. We all have to start somewhere.

Jobs in Seattle are awesome for software dev. I went from junior dev to lead dev in 2.5 years. You need to be willing to move to different opportunities; most of the way up the ladder in the PacNW and in California involves lateral movement to smaller companies.

That said, I hate being a software developer. The startup I'm involved in now (with nextgenneo) means I get to hack together some code and work with nextgenneo and another partner, but they're far better developers than me and thus handle all of it.

If you want to get into this field purely for the opportunities, I highly doubt you'll last. This industry has a way of tearing people apart if they don't absolutely love it.

Hey OP here,

Thanks for everyone's responses. I'll add a bit more info about my situation. I really appreciate everyone's help.

I am a licensed lawyer who has been playing poker full-time for the past few years. Getting a second degree in CS would be a very big investment of time and money, so my thinking wasn't that I would want to get into it because it offers opportunities, but am already interested in it and would choose not to make a big investment if it offered very few opportunities.

So far all I have done is a few extremely basic autohotkey scripts to automate simple tasks at previous jobs and I'm about 10 hours into an intro to Python online course. I have enjoyed both, so far.

If you were in the position of someone who was considering a career switch to programming, what route would you take? Right now, I am considering the following: spend a significant amount of time working through online courses and tutorials and develop some very simple programs to see how I like it. If I decide that I want to pursue this seriously and as a long-term path then enroll in a computer science degree.

I already enjoy staring at a computer screen all day looking at numbers and going through HEM database stats (I know, probably not that relevant )

Any thoughts on this plan and the Ontario/Canadian job market would be appreciated. If you play NLHE cash games then I'd be happy to give you feedback on a couple hands if you PM me. For reference, I am a top MSNL player and have over 20 MSNL videos on Leggo.

Tim

Have you thought about the option of trying to get into a biz dev job at a tech company and then trying to learn more while there (and on your own) and/or potentially using their tuition reimbursement to pay for a part time CS degree?

I've recently gotten the coding bug a little (though I'm a big newb) and feel like the above option is good cause it doesn't reverse/reset your career, it eases you into the coding/tech world.

CS degree -> Patent Law?

The world does not need any more ****ing software patent lawyers.

Hey Tim,
I quit playing poker about a year and a half ago, and came to University of Waterloo to study CS as a second degree. I am not an expert in the job market by any means, but I do have some idea of it, from my friends in CO-OP, and I do have the experience of going back to school a bit later for cs. You could pm me if you have any questions, or if you were entertaining coming to waterloo.

At least, any more that believe software patents should exist.

No kidding. **** can't come to an end soon enough.

Absolutely not feasible. If you manage to get a PhD in CS and want to be on the periphery of law, just get people involved in software patent litigation to pay you to be an expert witness. Way easier bux than becoming an actual lawyer.

Do any of the prosecutors in software patent cases even have CS degrees? I would be shocked.

Tim, sounds like you're a smart guy, so I think its definitely do-able for you. There are many many out there who have the same plans/ideas, but who won't make the cut. I like your current plan - go through the tutorials. Work on a project that has a meaningful end result. Take a stab at some http://projecteuler.net/.

I can't speak for Canada, but the outlook is definitely good. There were multiple developer positions here in LA at my previous company that we couldn't fill for 6+ months (we had plenty of resumes and had several people come in for interviews). A good/smart developer is ALWAYS in demand.