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The Most Valuable Tech Skills in 2017

Published

6 years ago

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The Most Valuable Tech Skills

The interactive graphic above comes to us from Dice Insights, and it helps to visualize the relationship between the supply and demand for over 1,400 technology skills.

Specifically, the supply shown on the graph is based on the amount of job seekers with those skills available, while demand is the portion of employment opportunities listed that require that skill. The “hotter” red a skill is, the greater the ratio of demand to supply.

Big Data Heats Up

With billions of new “things” connecting to the IoT and an explosion in the amount of information that must be processed and interpreted, it is no surprise that many of the most lucrative skills in tech today relate to making sense of large volumes of data.

Here are the ten highest paying skills in technology, according to Dice:

RankSkill2016 SalaryYr/Yr Change
#1HANA$128,958-3.30%
#2MapReduce$125,009-0.30%
#3Cloud Foundry$124,038n/a
#4Hbase$123,9345.70%
#5Omnigraffle$123,782-1.90%
#6Cassandra$123,4592.20%
#7Apache Kafka$122,728n/a
#8SOA$122,094-1.90%
#9Ansible$121,382n/a
#10Jetty$120,9781.30%

Leading the list is SAP’s HANA, or “High Performance Analytical Application”, which is part of a new wave of databases that can crunch large amounts of data nearly instantly. The average salaries of workers skilled in HANA currently hover around $129,000.

If we sort the members of the top ten most lucrative skills list by “heat” level (with several omissions according to availability in the “heat data” set) we can see that HANA is right in the middle of the plot, where supply is roughly equal to demand. This shows us that tech workers choosing to skill up in HANA are effectively getting paid what they are worth.

Top tech skills ranked by heat

Defining the Essentials

What else does “heat” ranking tell us about the market for tech skills that salary data alone does not?

First and foremost, it shows that skills like Java, SQL and HTML, all of which live in the top right-hand corner of the interactive graph where both demand and supply are very high, have become the “bread and butter” of the tech industry. The vast majority of people in the field have a need for these basic services, and as such, the majority of workers in tech have become conversant in them.

We can also see that specific fields, like database administration, web infrastructure management, automation, and big data science, are the areas that businesses need the most help in. The number of specialists skilled in these fields has not yet expanded to meet the significant demand for the associated skills. On the other hand, many marketing and web design skills have fallen toward the “cold” side of the spectrum as supply exceeds demand.

Competition and Timing

Employers may often look for very specific skill sets including one or more of the “hot” skills in the current marketplace. Combined with a hot technology sector, this demand pushes average salary ranges up and motivates tech workers to continually revise their competencies on a regular basis.

Year over year growth in tech salaries

With such a fluid marketplace for jobs in technology, unemployment is very low at around 2%. At the same time, over the past decade, the average tech salary has also increased by roughly $17,000.

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Technology

Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club

America’s biggest chipmaker Nvidia has joined the trillion dollar club as advancements in AI move at lightning speed.

Published

4 days ago

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May 30, 2023

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Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club

Chipmaker Nvidia is now worth nearly as much as Amazon.

America’s largest semiconductor company has vaulted past the $1 trillion market capitalization mark, a milestone reached by just a handful of companies including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. While many of these are household names, Nvidia has only recently gained widespread attention amid the AI boom.

The above graphic compares Nvidia to the seven companies that have reached the trillion dollar club.

Riding the AI Wave

Nvidia’s market cap has more than doubled in 2023 to over $1 trillion.

The company designs semiconductor chips that are made of silicon slices that contain specific patterns. Just like you flip an electrical switch by turning on a light at home, these chips have billions of switches that process complex information simultaneously.

Today, they are integral to many AI functions—from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to image generation. Here’s how Nvidia stands up against companies that have achieved the trillion dollar milestone:

Joined ClubMarket Cap
in trillions		Peak Market Cap
in trillions
AppleAug 2018$2.78$2.94
MicrosoftApr 2019$2.47$2.58
AramcoDec 2019$2.06$2.45
AlphabetJul 2020$1.58$1.98
AmazonApr 2020$1.25$1.88
MetaJun 2021$0.68$1.07
TeslaOct 2021$0.63$1.23
NvidiaMay 2023$1.02$1.02

Note: Market caps as of May 30th, 2023

After posting record sales, the company added $184 billion to its market value in one day. Only two other companies have exceeded this number: Amazon ($191 billion), and Apple ($191 billion).

As Nvidia’s market cap reaches new heights, many are wondering if its explosive growth will continue—or if the AI craze is merely temporary. There are cases to be made on both sides.

Bull Case Scenario

Big tech companies are racing to develop capabilities like OpenAI. These types of generative AI require vastly higher amounts of computing power, especially as they become more sophisticated.

Many tech giants, including Google and Microsoft use Nvidia chips to power their AI operations. Consider how Google plans to use generative AI in six products in the future. Each of these have over 2 billion users.

Nvidia has also launched new products days since its stratospheric rise, spanning from robotics to gaming. Leading the way is the A100, a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) well-suited for machine learning. Additionally, it announced a new supercomputer platform that Google, Microsoft, and Meta are first in line for. Overall, 65,000 companies globally use the company’s chips for a wide range of functions.

Bear Case Scenario

While extreme investor optimism has launched Nvidia to record highs, how do some of its fundamental valuations stack up to other giants?

As the table below shows, its price to earnings (P/E) ratio is second-only to Amazon, at 214.4. This shows how much a shareholder pays compared to the earnings of a company. Here, the company’s share price is over 200 times its earnings on a per share basis.

P/E RatioNet Profit Margin (Annual)
Apple30.225.3%
Microsoft36.136.7%
Aramco13.526.4%
Alphabet28.221.2%
Amazon294.2-0.5%
Meta33.919.9%
Tesla59.015.4%
Nvidia214.416.19%

Consider how this looks for revenue of Nvidia compared to other big tech names:

For some, Nvidia’s valuation seems unrealistic even in spite of the prospects of AI. While Nvidia has $11 billion in projected revenue for the next quarter, it would still mean significantly higher multiples than its big tech peers. This suggests the company is overvalued at current prices.

Nvidia’s Growth: Will it Last?

This is not the first time Nvidia’s market cap has rocketed up.

During the crypto rally of 2021, its share price skyrocketed over 100% as demand for its GPUs increased. These specialist chips help mine cryptocurrency, and a jump in demand led to a shortage of chips at the time.

As cryptocurrencies lost their lustre, Nvidia’s share price sank over 46% the following year.

By comparison, AI advancements could have more transformative power. Big tech is rushing to partner with Nvidia, potentially reshaping everything from search to advertising.

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