Mark Geller

Last night, I went to the Jobnob Docstoc Happy Hour at Air Conditioned in Venice. The event was co-hosted by Julie Greenberg and Jason Nazar of Jobnob and Docstoc respectively. The idea behind the meetup is to connect technology startups with prospective hires who may be interested to work for “alternative compensation”–e.g., reduced salary, partial equity, good experience, etc. Jobnob has held 8 events in the Bay Area, where they are based, with huge turnout, not super surprising in a down economy. The turnout last night was excellent, maybe 200 people total, including 30-40 companies and job seekers of all types. The Jobnob folks said they easily could have filled a room twice the size.

At the start of the event, 20 companies each gave a one-minute pitch describing themselves and who they were looking for, then everyone was free to mingle.

The most striking aspect of the night was this: every company there was looking to hire talented developers, based in Los Angeles, and there were not nearly enough developers to go around. Yes, a few companies were also looking for business development or marketing help, however everyone needed engineers. The most common skills being sought were web developers, front-end and back-end, especially in PHP, Python, and ASP.net (Docstoc).

The few developers there–maybe 5 or 6 actual developers out of 200 folks–were the rock stars. CEOs, founders, and VPs were literally following them around the room asking for introductions.

For anyone who believes all the coding jobs are being off-shored to India or Russia or other parts non-U.S., it was clear, there is a lot of demand for developers right here in L.A. If you have solid web skills and a few years experience, either with a commercial company or running your own legit projects, there are dozens of companies in L.A. who would love to talk with you. Based on last night, that does not appear to be changing any time in the near future.

If I were a parent with a college-aged child who wanted to know what they could do to get a solid, good-paying job–or for any friends who have recently been laid off and want to improve their chances of getting hired–my advice would be to log onto a coding tutorial site (personally I recommend Python), pick an idea for a simple site, and get coding. Your job is waiting for you.