The market opportunity: 33 million PDAs
In 2000 alone, the number of PDAs (personal digital assistants) sold nearly doubled to 6.9 million units from about 3.6 million units in 1999, according to IDC. Sales are expected to reach a whopping 33.5 million by 2004.
With more devices on the market, demand for software to run on these devices has expanded too. But the number of programmers fluent in wireless handheld code writing has not grown proportionately.
"We hire so few people compared to the number of resumes that we get, it's a tremendous challenge," said Linus Upson, chief technical officer for AvantGo. "There aren't a lot of people out there who have experience programming handheld devices."
The situation is less dire than the general programmer shortage of the latter 1990s. Programmers are now available, but they lack the direct experience developing software for wireless and mobile devices. Thus, companies such as AvantGo are extending offers to bright programmers from other fields in hopes of schooling them in the emerging craft.
"People we end up recruiting often have experience writing big server code," Upson said. "Often the concerns about memory you worry about, such as scaling and maximum efficiency, are the same types of elements needed in programming for the handheld."
John Miano, chairman of the Programmer's Guild, said companies' willingness to take chances on untested programmers is logical: It's impossible to expect a ready-made applicant pool for a brand new technology. Companies should look for strong fundamental skills and understand that good coders will have a short learning curve, Miano said.
"If a company goes out and puts out an ad and says, 'We want someone with handheld wireless experience,' yeah, they're going to have a hard time finding someone," Miano said. "But if they say, 'We want someone willing to deal with limited memory,' they'll have more luck."
Handheld software developers want to see more programmers not just for themselves, but for their customers too. Many AvantGo corporate customers, for example, use in-house staff to maintain their AvantGo products. The lack of information technology workers experienced in small-format devices at some companies has resulted in AvantGo losing some sales, according to the company.
To work around this roadblock, AvantGo recently partnered with Brightpod, which sells and maintains AvantGo software for corporate clients.
