How is the .Net Job Market now?

[Grigori]

How is the .Net market now? I have read from recruiters that it's heating up, but it's difficult to trust those guys.

Are you finding it easier to get work?
Have you been head hunted?
Is your firm struggling to get qualified .net devs?
Has your pay increased in the last 1-2 years?

If you could state where you are and how much experience you have, that would help also.

Thanks

[mendhak]

Yes, Yes, No, Yes.

London, 3 years.

You're welcome.

[Merrion]

Yes, No, No, Yes

Dublin, lots

[nemaroller]

Oh Yes, Yes, Yes, OH Yes.

Twin cities Minnesota - 6 yrs.

[Xcoder]

Yes, Yes, Yes....OHHHHHH Xcoder!

[sevenhalo]

Yes, yes, no, yes.

Nebraska, 3 years.

[bgmacaw]

No, No, Yes, No

Atlanta, GA USA, 3 years with .NET, 20+ years programming

My age probably has a lot to do with my 3 'No' answers. If I was 24, I'd probably answer 'Yes' to them all.

[homer13j]

Yes, Yes, No, Yes, but not enough.

Cleveland, Ohio, 5 years .NET, 15 years as a pro (mostly C and VB), 25 years programming altogether.

I have also heard from recruiters that the job market is heating up - around here it's mostly Java and C# programmers in demand.

[wossname]

Yes, yes, no, yes.

Actually, we're finding it harder to find good C programmers these days, applicants are usually C++/.net (95% of which are VB.net people), VB6 people. We have to turn away 70% of our applicants after the first interview because they don't measure up (or are psychopaths, I'm not sure how I got through to be honest ).

There are any number of almost-competent coders out there especially in .net but we do perform extremely difficult interviews (minimum of 2 per selected candidate) and make them do a spoken presentation and a timed written test (we don't tell them about the written test before hand ).

But at our place (an R&D department) we tend to share the skills around. Chances are sooner or later everyone will be asked to use other languages or technology. Amusingly enough I was headhunted as a VB.net programmer when the recruitment guy saw ".net" on my CV on Monster.com. Since I was hired as a C# coder I've written about 8 lines of VB.net Which is the way I like it.

Now I spend most of my time writing C code for a huge linux server application, C# for one of its several client apps and the odd bit of legacy VB6 (soon to be updated to C# next year. Other stuff like php, various web technology and MySQL play a big part too.

So I recommend you get yourself into R&D as soon as you can in your career, its the best job ever. I'm a lucky guy.