I forget what search I was doing, but I came across the "Joel on Software" guys post about the
An Amazing change in the job market. He mentions as he scans through jobs he sees the database jobs he saw decades ago plus he sees a lot more
SharePoint and .NET which he categorizes as becoming like SQL
as lifeblood or
backbone skills.
I thought it was a clever observation. The point he makes further down about developers becoming more of a commodity and it being harder to get an entry level job is a harsh reality and I'm hearing more about. SharePoint hasn't yet become commodity, but the requests for SharePoint work seems to be becoming. I don't see beginner SharePoint work, if you do you should ping Paul Graham (an entry level guy who's simply looking for a SharePoint tier 1 support or intern level job.)
A quick default search on Dice (with similar results on Monster) for SharePoint resulted in 2388 jobs. (You can now create your own RSS feed from your search, and category based RSS on Monster.) Narrowing it just to title narrows it to 646. A search for job titles with 'Exchange' is 208. Whoa! I do see many SharePoint Developer/Architect requests. Very common to see the two in one title. That's a tough request. More with less is the mantra. I do see Exchange and System Admin commonly used in the same title... can you say commodity for a system admin? The Exchange team has done such a good job making it easy... Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to comoditize and make our jobs so EASY.
Now doing a search for SQL and looking in the title you see all sorts of crazy things. C#, Unix, Oracle, Programmer... The expectations are high that it's not just a simple DBA job. There were 2000 plus jobs for SQL in the line.
Ironically when you combine SharePoint and SQL you get 3 job postings when restricted to title alone. Wild. Of course SQL is likely in most of the admin descriptions...
I was excited to see new titles like SharePoint Designer and SharePoint Project Manager and SharePoint Business Analyst... very cool to see these titles pop. They really are different roles that are becoming quite specialized. I do see how SharePoint is creating jobs.