Craigslist Software Jobs: Canada vs. San Francisco

I recently checked out the Canadian Craigslist scene after reading some recent posts by Guy Kawasaki.  I’ve heard that Craigslist is big in the San Francisco Bay area, but how is it catching on in Canada’s largest cities?  I devised a small survey to compare the regions, and wow, what a difference.

I compared Canada’s largest city, Toronto, and the surrounding area (known as the GTA), to the San Francisco Bay area.  I also threw in Montreal, Vancouver, and their surrounding areas.  I looked at some of my software specialities, including the Python programming language and Linux, and at some general Web2.0 activity indicators.

As searched on Sept. 23rd, 2007:

	S.F. Bay	GTA	Vancouver	Montreal
Population (2006)	7 million	5.5 million	2.1 million	3.6 million
Python in Jobs	386	27	23	16
Linux in Jobs	1157	247	244	75
Ruby in Jobs	259	31	55	6
Python in Gigs	14	0	0	0
Ruby in Gigs	41	0	0	0
AJAX in Jobs	577	222	121	41
Developer in Jobs	1206	772	456	141
Software Engineer in Jobs	1458	98	99	26
Programmer in Jobs	269	234	169	80
Startup in Software Jobs	234	10	4	4
Startup in Internet Engineering Jobs	179	4	1	4

heri noted in the comments that the Montréal numbers are irrelevant, because most job postings will be in French.

Some interesting observations:

• Why does everyone in S.F. want a Software Engineer, but in Toronto they only want Developers?
• I have heard that the Linux scene in Toronto is pretty dead.  Answer: yep.
• I have heard that Vancouver is a bigger tech hub, per capita, than Toronto: perhaps, going by the Cutting Edge Indicators (Ruby, Open Source/Linux, startups, and overall Craigslist usage).

Do keep in mind that this is just a survey, and unscientific in every way.  But do feel free to have fun with the numbers, and draw your own conclusions.

Technorati Tags: python, ruby, linux, jobs, canada, craigslist

Advertisement

Facebook: the ultimate P2P darknet enabler?

Could Facebook be used as the catalyst for a new generation of Peer-to-Peer darknet applications?

Briefly, a darknet is a private virtual network where users only connect to people they trust.  This is very similar to the networks that Facebook builds. Trust is the key.  You connect to close friends and relatives, giving them access to personal content not privy to your larger network as a whole.

Facebook could become an enabler for these networks, in that it provides a common point in the network through which you may connect with those trusted people.  Not directly, but via Facebook’s new applications interface, or via exisiting network tools that Facebook supports directly, such as MSN, Gmail, etc.

One such darknet application may be Peer-to-Peer shared backups.  Imagine making an agreement with your relatives, that you would each devote 2GB of hard-drive space to keeping the family photo pool backed up.  Some clever Open Source software could keep the photo pool maintained, distributed among all of your computers.  The sharing tool could use a Facebook application for peer discovery.

You could even route new content over existing tools.  I wonder, if you could install the iLike application, could you use it to publish new content for your friends, and hook an Open Source content sharing tool into the iLike interface to handle the transfer?  iLike publishes what’s new, Facebook publishes your content share points, and the Open Source tool handles the data.

Using Facebook to publish content discovery and sharing points opens the door to federated services, allowing you to get your network out of the hands of commercial parties.  If I could publish the address of a personal server on Facebook (a server that I own, running my own services), then I could start building networks and sharing with others outside of Facebook.  And I would once again have control of my identity within those networks – I won’t have to rely on the Facebook privacy controls, or anything like that.

Just some ideas.