A Decline in Ruby Opportunities? 📉
I love Ruby but would I recommend learning it today? No.
Ruby was my first programming language and I love it even today.
Ruby was designed to make programming fun. It is succinct and reads like English. To use alongside Ruby on Rails can make for a satisfying coding experience. The community is very welcoming and the vast number of open-source libraries (known as Gems) have made developing with Ruby enjoyable.
But despite this, there seems to be a decline in job opportunities in London.
According to this blog post published in 28th March 2013. It states:
Indeed.co.uk lists 1,136 Ruby jobs in London
The search query for job title Ruby Developer in London.
So 1,136 Ruby Jobs In London in March 2013. If you were to click that same link today (3rd June 2020). There are now only 266 jobs which is a 76.58% decline in 7 years which is huge!
This was always a concern of mine, I remember speaking to a colleague back in 2014. Our tech stack was Ruby on Rails, I asked him whether he thinks Ruby and Ruby on Rails is losing its popularity. He said:
even if that happens, there will be a lot of projects to maintain and so the job opportunities will still be there.
I’m a little less confident about that statement today. Perhaps that was already happening when I asked him. While there are still a few opportunities (in London), its not looking healthy when compared to other programming languages.
Is there a reason to learn Ruby today? 🤔
From a career standpoint, in my opinion, no. I think that if you haven’t already had experience with Ruby, you should avoid it, especially if you’re a beginner. There are other languages that may be more worth investing your time into, particularly due to the job opportunities.
As of 3rd of June 2020, when searching for job opportunities from Indeed, I’ve filtered on job title: <programming language> Developer from London (which is the same filter as the blog post above) for some modern programming languages. Here are the results:
| Language | Number Of Jobs |
|---|---|
| C# | 865 |
| C++ | 297 |
| Go | 568 |
| Java | 1727 |
| JavaScript | 1589 |
| PHP | 356 |
| Python | 1076 |
| Ruby | 266 |
Based on these numbers alone, as a beginner, you’re better off choosing between JavaScript, Python, C# or Java. In fact, all of those Ruby Job Opportunities seem to start at £45,000 anyway meaning that they’re not roles aimed towards juniors.
Job opportunities on Indeed.co.uk as of June 2020
Already An Experienced Developer? 🤓
What if you’re an experienced developer. Is there value in learning Ruby? Maybe.
According to the very recent 2020 Stack Overflow Survey. Despite Ruby’s decline, it is in the most top paying technologies ranking at 5th place globally.
Top Paying Technologies - Stack Overflow Survey 2020
While it’s true that there are fewer Ruby job opportunities, the salaries for those jobs start at £45,000 and can be as high as £100k full-time. There seems to be a high number of contract work as well, starting at £450 per day and as high as £650 per day.
Ruby Developer Salary Estimates on Indeed.co.uk as of June 2020
If you already experienced with Ruby then there is value continue using it as the salaries are very generous, the disadvantages are that there are fewer opportunities meaning its harder to get a (Ruby Developer) role if that’s all you can do.
Its like my old colleague said:
…there will be a lot of projects to maintain and so the job opportunities will still be there.
It would seem there are some opportunities but very few when compared to similar programming languages like Python and JavaScript.
There are other considerations such as, will there be innovation? New interesting greenfield projects you’ll be working on? Or will it be legacy projects and maintenance?
Will you even enjoy Ruby? While I personally love Ruby, according to the 2020 Stack Overflow Survey, Ruby is 7th most dreaded Programming language, one below PHP who is 6th place.
Most Dreaded - Stack Overflow Survey 2020
An experienced developer wouldn’t struggle too much to learn Ruby quickly but there are again other programming languages which pay just as well and at the same time seem to be evolving whereas Ruby is a little slow (no pun intended) to innovate, improve or grow. Even PHP is getting better with each version.
Summary 📝
It’s a shame, I really liked Ruby. I actually initially moved on from Ruby because I had moved out of London to an area where there was only one Ruby position where I had interviewed and didn’t get the role, I wrote about my move from Ruby to PHP here.
In January 2019, a recruiter approached me with a remote Ruby opportunity. I had said to him that I would normally not proceed with that role because Ruby seemed to be losing its popularity and he didn’t believe me, he recruits for Ruby roles on a daily basis and was convinced I was wrong. He probably had a few opportunities on his desk but perhaps not looking at the bigger picture.
That said, I did actually complete a tech test for them and wrote a blog post about it. Really enjoyed completing that one as well although I didn’t receive a response from the company after submitting it.
Given the decline in job opportunities for Ruby, I personally would consider specializing in other programming languages. As mentioned above, particularly if you live in London, specializing in JavaScript, Java, Python or C# would be my top picks.