Learning common programming languages may ensure you have lots of job offers, but won’t necessarily maximise your earning capacity. If you want to make a lot more money in IT, mastering languages and techniques used in big data is the way to go. Anyone for a little R and PMBok?
Chart picture from Shutterstock
A survey of US technology professionals by recruitment site Dice highlighted ten skill areas which consistently offered the highest pay. While the salary figures are specific to North America, the trend is evident worldwide; big data has been consistently cited as the main growth area at every tech event I’ve attended over the last year. This is the top 10 according to Dice:
- R
- NoSQL
- MapReduce
- PMBok
- Cassandra
- Omnigiraffe
- Pig
- Service-oriented architecture
- Hadoop
- MongoDB
Service-oriented architecture is the only one there that doesn’t broadly sit in the “big data” bucket. Something to consider the next time you’re thinking of learning a new skill.
Dice [via Business Insider]
Comments
6 responses to “Big Data Skills That Will Increase Your Salary”
No surprise that Project Management is high up the list. PMBok (project management body of knowledge) is not a technology, and not specific to technology either.
If i was interviewing someone and they said they were experts in NoSQL, I would kick their ass to the curb. It is equivalent of saying I am an expert in programming. without context (language, platform, etc.) it is ambiguous and means that you are just saying catchy words.
As this is Lifehacker Australia, you’ll have to kick their arse to the kerb.
ouch, that is embarrassing.
In terms of R been at the top of the list, this is an interesting article about R vs Python for data driven programming: http://readwrite.com/2013/11/25/python-displacing-r-as-the-programming-language-for-data-science .
Which is good to read as a pythonist myself, besides the only R programmers I know use it purely in a Tertiary environment.
The headline is misleading. The list contains a few keywords related to Big Data, but the original list and article were about general keywords that related to high salaries in technology.
1) As Smithy mentioned, PMBOK isn’t Big Data, or even technology specific. It’s a project management framework. Not sure why this is singled out. Prince2 etc are probably just as relevant. PM work generally commands a higher salary so this is unsurprising.
2) What the hell is Omnigiraffe? Some kind of giraffe deity? I’m assuming they mean Omnigraffle, which is a diagramming tool for OS X. Sure, it’s a nice, shiny tool, but how is it specifically related to Big Data? Surely Visio, or maybe a data modelling tool like Erwin would be just as relevant, if not more.
This article might be more useful if it linked to the actual PDF and not transcribed to the point of inserting African animal names. ( http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/Dice_TechSalarySurvey_2014.pdf)
R? As in the GNU implementation of S? The one I learnt at uni some 12 years ago?
Who would have thought? If only I had not dismissed it as a gimmick all those years ago 🙁