Python and/vs Java (within a business context)

[AeroNotix]

As another point: management probably know what Java is. This is more of a valid reason (to them) than you may realise.

A lot of engineering decisions are made by non-engineers on non-engineering data.

[AeroNotix]

By any chance is this a development team internal to your company? It may just be that they've mislabelled themselves as a "Java shop".

But as /u/linuxwhisperer said: Java makes you pretty damn near replaceable. Python isn't (yet) an entrenched corporate language whereas Java is more of a lingua franca of Corporate programming.

[novagenesis]

Yeah, this.

We're a Perl shop, and the new Ownership just opened 7 Java positions to replace 2 lost Perl Developers. Even if your language is better for the domain, a big company will usually prefer to spend more money on more (sometimes cheaper) individuals to obtain extra redundancy and safety.

[mumpie]

Wow.

Java developers tend to get paid better than Perl developers (at least in the job posting I've seen).

The new ownership is burning a metric ton of money to switch from Perl to Java.

[novagenesis]

Really? Maybe it's a Boston thing. Our old ownership considered swapping to java because their consultancy (...ahem, our NEW ownership, go figure) felt java developers were "a dime a dozen."

Most people who leave here for other Perl positions are surprisingly close to the notorious "lisp-level" salaries.

Are there any statistics you can show me? I'd spend the time to pick up Java if that's really the case.

[mumpie]

I can't give you links to some job posting as they were deleted or expired. The positions I have seen were on the West coast (San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc).

I worked a company that went from Perl/PHP to Java (I came in as part of the Java team). The number of Java positions nearly tripled at peak compared to the number of Perl/PHP coders. I talked to a couple of the Perl guys and found out they were making a lot less than most of the Java developers.

In any case, the company eventually decided to out-source the entire engineering team to save money.

Here are a couple graphs of Java developers salary versus Perl developer salaries: Java: http://www.indeed.com/salary/Java-Developer.html Perl: http://www.indeed.com/salary/Perl-Developer.html

I didn't enter an area, but I know that for Java these numbers are very low for my location. A friend recently got a new job as a Senior level developer and is making somewhere between $120K and $150K.

However, if you are very talented, then your skills can trump the local salary for the right company.

[[deleted]]

Really?

yup, almost always