Finding Experienced Labview Programmers

[falkpl]

I have repeatedly run into the same problem with labview development, a lack of experienced programmers.  Over the last several years I have seen an unreal growth is the market for labview applications but it doesnt appear that the developer community is keeping up with this demand.  Where can I find Labview programmers to fill this demand.  The job postings outnumber the seekers and there are many great positions unfilled.  What a crazy thing.  I find labview programming is very fulfilling and a great career.  Are there any Experienced programmers looking for jobs or is this a lost cause?

[smercurio_fc]

Are you offering a job?

Based on what I've seen over the past 13 years, there seems to be a number of reasons for this:

1. Market share. Let's face it: LabVIEW isn't as widely used as other, more traditional languages. There was an article I had seen a while ago that compared the market share of LabVIEW vs other programming languages. Let's just say that LabVIEW aficionados needed to turn away.
   
2. Most placement firms simply don't know about the language, so they (a) don't know who's working with it, and (b) don't know about the job offerings, so they can't tie the possibilities to the ones looking for work. I can't tell you the number of times I've talked to recruiters who've called me and when I told them I used LabVIEW their response is "Lab-what?".
   
3. Another is simply that LabVIEW programming requires a different mindset, so it's not readily taught in schools. Not taught = no graduates who know the language = no potential workers. Why isn't it taught in schools? Well, that can start a whole debate, and I'm not going there.
   
4. Yet another reason, it seems to me, is that LabVIEW isn't as flexible in terms of the kinds of programs you can write. I say this not to disparage LabVIEW, or start a flame war, but simply as a realistic assessment based purely on my own experience. There's just some stuff that you cannot do in LabVIEW, but can easily do in C/VB/C#/Java/whatever. Heck, I recently coded up a large .NET app in C# that would have been impossible in LabVIEW.
5. Money. And by this I mean how much people are paid. LabVIEW jobs tend to start as test engineer jobs, which are nowhere near as highly paid as a C or C/database programmer. There are exceptions, obviously.
   

Corollary to (2) and (5): Sometimes LabVIEW jobs are found in test engineer positions on job boards, as opposed to "programming" jobs. This sometimes makes it difficult to find jobs.

Is it a lost cause? Hardly. Have you gotten no responses posting on the LabVIEW openings board here?

[falkpl]

#3 is a huge one.  I am self taught when it comes to Labview despite getting graduate degrees in computer science and other degrees in engineering.  I know its not a luost cause but it is frustrating that there is so much work and not enough talent to do it.  NI really needs to get into the education market more agressivly.  I do know the limitations of labview and have programmed in almost all major languages and each has its strengths and weakensses.  Labview it (in my opinion) the most fun.  Labview should get into the high school if they really want to capture the next generation of engineers and scientists.

Paul

[chilly_charly]

That's funny : I opened very recently a thread on a closely related subject. The penetration of LabVIEW in the education  market is slow due to the reluctance of most teachers !

I use to make a parallel with the graphic interface brought in by Apple with the MacIntosh 23 years ago. At that time, it was considered as a curiosity with no future. The mouse was just a toy for kids, even less usefull than a mere joystick.

I wonder why people still accept to develop graphic UI using text based tools. That's a non-sense ! It's time to finish the revolution and to turn to a coherent environment.

Unfortunately there seems to be strong oppositions to such a move 😉

[Dennis_Knutson]

NI is involved quite a bit in universities. The local one here has something called the Integrated Teaching Lab and there are NI DAQ boards and LabVIEW on the work stations. The last time I was there was to see a competition they have every spring. In their second semester, freshman are paired with older students to create a project. Most of the teams did not use any software but there were a few running LabVIEW. My daughter's boyfriend was on one of those teams. Not only did his team win, the LabVIEW programmer got some big help from someone on the forum in order to get his program working.

My son's high school has a pre-engineering program that is affiliated with the university but they don't (or didn't the last time I checked) do anything with programming/data acquisition/instrument control. I'm hoping that they can add some robotic stuff with the Lego Mindstorms but high schools usually have a big problem with budgets so it would take donations from a company like NI to get cool stuff like this to the kids.

[falkpl]

Yes The lego mindstorm is going to help since it will introduce kids (big and small) to graphical programming models, this will help since labview (at least for me with text based experience) required a degree of unlearning before I liked labview

[GuenterMueller]

A couple of words from my side to the "Education in LabVIEW".
Gemany's famous computer magazine c't had LabVIEW 6.1 on the DVD that came with the magazine in April (?) 2007. I don't know anyone who uses it.
As far as I know the schools in Germany continue ignoring LabVIEW as much as possible.
Some universities have a tight connection to NI, so their students have at least more than a basic LabVIEW knowledge when finishing their studies. Some of my colleagues come from these universities.

Conclusion: There is still a high demand in "LabVIEW days" until LabVIEW gets wide-spread.
According to that fact, skilled people are hard to find.

[Ali84]

LabView isn't that widely spread in European countries because the automation market is controlled by strong manufacturers such a Allen Bradley and FESTO, at least that's what I think. Also, plenty of the programmers  were taught to program in text based languages. Most are reluctant to change to graphical programming. I live in Mexico, and LabView is being taught in universities all across the country, but that may be due to the strong influence of the United States given that we are so geographically close, which supports my theory regarding european countries.

Message Edited by Ali84 on 10-26-2007 08:48 PM

[Gabi1]

interesting...you need a programmer in Europe?

i guess it is our job to make it widespread. i make it my moto to rewrite every code written in C or fortran that i encounter, into LV. my audience being mainly  graduate students, they are not too reluctant into learning how to use and change code. but from there to make of them "programmers" needs this extra bit of "love of LV".

Physisits have tendency to dislike LV, and give it a bad name, because "it is not difficult enough", or " one cannot control the inner workings of the program". both are wrong, and interpreted as such mainly because lack of knowledge.

all in all, it all comes down to this: teaching!

[unclebump]

I think it goes back to not seeing enough examples of industrial/manufacturing usage. I'm the only one in my company that uses Labview and the DSC module. Some of the other controls engineers have seen my applications, but none of them have asked about learning Labview. I don't think people realize that Labview is not 'just a data acquisition program'. An engineer has to a little bit curious to see what other kinds software exist to solve a problem.