Less than half (44%) of IT professionals believe it is essential to know more than one programming language to boost employment prospects in the current market, research by IT recruiter Greythorn has found.
However, the pay premium attached to those with multiple programming language capabilities is estimated to be up to £10,000 – suggesting many IT professionals significantly underestimate the value of skill breadth, for their employment prospects. Indeed the proportion of IT professionals rating multiple programming languages as vital has fallen by 22% in the past year.
The Greythorn research follows an announcement by the BBC for a nationwide initiative, to help address the UK IT skills gap, by inspiring more children to develop an interest in computer coding. Additionally, from September 2014, the introduction of a new computer science curriculum will see children learn computer coding from the age of five.
Mark Baxter, director at Greythorn, said: "Now more than ever IT professionals should see the value of being fluent in more than one programming language. Not only can this key skill boost candidate’s overall employability and proficiency, but it can also mean significant monetary gains – adding up to £10,000 to salaries.
"An increasing number of companies, especially those in London, are looking for flexible employees who have the capacity to work in a number of functions for cost reduction purposes, which can sometimes necessitate knowledge of up to three or even four languages. IT professionals must therefore continue to develop, renew and refresh their skillsets in order to maintain their competitiveness."
The most popular programming languages in October 2013 – in terms of the number of lines of code written using them – were C, Java and Objective-C respectively, according to the TIOBE index. However, the fastest growing programming language according to the TIOBE software index is ‘Groovy’, which has seen rapid expansion over the past twelve months in moving up 35 places in the rankings and breaking into the top twenty for the first time – up to 18th from 53rd.
