Looking at C++ skills from candidates by regions
published at 26.04.2023 17:41 by Jens Weller
Save to Instapaper Pocket
For over 2 years Meeting C++ organizes an online C++ job fair, featuring a form to share your CV/resume with the sponsoring employers. This post is about looking at the aggregate from this form filtered through the regions, which is continents in this case.
With the blog post looking at the 2022 data and hosting the first job fair in 2023 it occured to me, that with 2022 + 2023 there should be enough data to look at the C++ skills in each of the regions. Well, almost it turned out. The event has lots of candidates from Asia and Europe, plus North America being also relevant in numbers. For these 3 regions the data is statisticly significant enough to look at the graph.
For Africa and South America with only 20 and 18 submissions, its not enough to have a graph that is not really heavily influenced by a few submissions. But the top 5 C++ skills for these regions are interesting none the less:
Africa: Linux(16) , CMake(15), C++11(14), C++17(14), C++14/Modern C++/OOP (each 13)
South America: Linux(15), C++11(14), CMake(14), C++17(12), Modern C++/OOP(each 11)
For South America C++14 is missing in the Top 5, but actually its just at 6th place with 10 of 18 submissions.
Oceania even only has 3 candidates submitting. The reason for this distribution is a bit of the chicken and egg problem with having companies or candidates from one region, and also my own reach is strongest in Europe and Asia. The timing of the job fair event it self is also not so ideal for Oceania.
And with all these numbers, there is a big important point I have to ask you to keep in mind: these are numbers only from folks looking for jobs. Which is interesting, but this does not allow to extrapolite these numbers on the overall C++ community. But if you're hiring, its nice to know how relevant a certain skill set is with in this part of our community.
C++ Skills by region
The Top 5 skills for Asia are C++11(144), C++14(121), Linux(117), OOP(111) and C++17(104).
Compared to the other regions C++11 has a large lead here. Also older Technologies are still more relevant it seems, MFC is over 20%, while for Europe and North America over 10%. Another outlier here is Windows, 57% of candidates chose Windows in Asia, compared to 53% in Europe and 43% in North America.
With 170 submissions Asia has the most candidates, which is caused by India always being in 1st place of candidates for countries. Though other countries have catched up here.
Top 5 skills for Europe are C++11(133), Linux(126), C++14(123), CMake(112), C++17/Modern C++(109).
Historically C++11 has been the top Skill within the candidate population, and its still that. But only in Asia it is still having a large lead, in the other regions one can see other skills closing the gap. CMake is one of them, becoming more and more important as a build technology. Looking at the more rare skills, its interesting to see that DLib is more known in Europe, while POCO is in % more present in North America and otherwise equal to Asia.
Unlike Asia, Europe has not one country with most submissions, but a wide distribution for candidates. Place one is Germany, as Meeting C++ has lots of reach here too. But over the last years almost all European countries have seen some submission.
Top 5 for North America: C++11(34), Linux(33), C++14(30), Modern C++(28), C++17(27)
With less submissions then Europe and Asia, the numbers are a bit closer, and comparing to the other two regions should be taken with a grain of salt. One of the differences to the other regions is that Qt is not as popular as boost. But even boost is not as relevant: 27% in North America vs. 41% Europe and 36% in Asia. But with only 44 candidates from this region, the data isn't as good as for Asia and Europe.
And again with all these numbers, there is a big important point I have to ask you to keep in mind: these are numbers only from folks looking for jobs. Which is interesting, but this does not allow to extrapolite these numbers on the overall C++ community. Also there is a difference in candidates choosing skills. Some choose only what they know best, while others seem to choose what they've worked with.
Join the Meeting C++ patreon community!
This and other posts on Meeting C++ are enabled by my supporters on patreon!