According to a recent study published by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC), software companies contribute an estimated $12.2 billion annually to San Diego County’s economy.
The study says the impact of the software is extensive. “From Intuit to Illumina, software development permeates nearly every facet of San Diego’s economy,” says Kevin L. Faulconer, San Diego’s Mayor. “Software development is helping to increase our workforce talent pool, diversity of job opportunities and capital investment. I’m proud to support San Diego Regional EDC’s new study that highlights our competitive edge in our tech ecosystem that’s making us a global leader in innovation and technology.”
For anyone looking for a job in the tech industry, you may be in luck. Software services bring in 100,000 jobs — both directly and indirectly. For starters, the county is home to approximately 21,600 software developers who work in a variety of industries. On top of that number, an additional 19,600 are employed to directly support these developers — such as product managers, UI and UX designers, and DevOPs. The other 58,800 jobs are indirectly related to software services. Meaning, you don’t have to be an engineer to benefit from the positive impacts of the industry.
Another key highlight of the study is San Diego’s ranking with other metro areas within the United States. EDC concludes that San Diego tops out as the 7th best metro area for software development. Software developers also see a nice living wage, making around $97,000 on average per year.
With a high rate of attraction and retention of talent, San Diego has an above average concentration of developers — a number only 1/5 metropolitan areas can hit. This prevalence is due in part to the local universities. Jacobs School of Engineering, founded at UC San Diego, graduated the third most undergraduates with computer sciences degrees, with Arizona State and Georgia Tech taking first and second place.
“San Diego is a great place to build a company and recruiting talent has been relatively easy,” says Aaron Fulkerson, founder, and CEO of Mindtouch. “Our staff stays with us, on average, two to three times longer than industry averages found in Silicon Valley. We recruit from both the local talent and universities, as well as other tech hubs like Seattle, Boston, and the Bay Area.”
Among the economic impact and the talent found in San Diego, the study also looks at the type of languages and frameworks employers sought the most. The EDC found that structured query languages (SQL) ranked number one, with 50% of employers polled calling the “very important” and 27.7% calling them “somewhat important.” The second-ranked language is JavaScript, and the third top language went to the family of C- based languages, which include C, C++, and C#.
The least desirable language went to Ruby on Rails. Used primarily to build web platforms, the language has been around for several years, but has been plagued with security issues. While Node.js has replaced it, a lot of popular companies still use Ruby on Rails. Shopify, Hulu, and AirBnb are all built on the framework, but these companies are not located in San Diego. Despite its use on heavily used apps, 62.9% of employers said it was “not important at all.”
If you are interested in learning more about how software development impacts the San Diego region, check out EDC’s report.
