I remember someone asked me about Flex jobs in Europe when I showed this graph at the Flex pre-release tour last February. This graphs shows the increase in demand for Flex coders but is based on data from the US. I remember responding to the question saying that everywhere I go, people ask if I don’t know anyone that knows Flex or ActionScript. So I did a quick check with a few companies in Belgium and the demand is definitely there.
Boulevart is currently looking for Flash developers and Flex/AIR developers. LBi is looking for Flash/AS3 developers. iDa/MediaFoundry is looking for RIA developers. These Days is looking for Flashers/Flexers.
And I’m pretty sure there are more jobs out there if you look for them. And that seems to be the big problem right now. You’ll have to do a little bit of extra effort to actually find these jobs. You usually won’t find them in the newspapers…
Peter Elst is trying to make that a lot easier. He just launched RIAjobs.org, a job board targeted at Rich Internet Application developers from various backgrounds be it Flash, Flex, AJAX or Silverlight. As it only launched a few days ago, there aren’t that many jobs yet but I’m sure that will change soon. Usergroup meetings and conferences are also a great way of meeting companies who are hiring and obviously keeping an eye on your favorite company’s website is also a good way of finding out about job opportunities.
What do you mean by “people ask if I don?t know anyone that knows Flex or ActionScript”?
Is the demand greater in the US than abroad?
How is the percentage of growth calculated and by whom?
You can also check out http://www.flexjobs.in which is a site focused on just the Flex, Flash and AIR jobs.
Jeff: When I meet with agencies, I get that question a lot. I don’t know if the demand is greater in the US. It certainly seems more organized. The chart is from Indeed.com ( http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22adobe+flex%22&l=&relative=1 ). Indeed.com searches millions of jobs from thousands of job sites. This job trends graph shows relative growth for jobs we find matching your search terms
Serge,
About the question you’re asked… I was trying to determine by the phrasing, in particular the use of “don’t”, if the question is tongue-in-cheek. It looks like everyone you know has a Flex/AS background and you don’t know anyone that does not have a Flex/AS background.
It’s a great crowd to hang out with!