NeXTSTEP programmers and consultants are commanding premium wages and positions as more companies test the waters and start up projects writing their own custom applications.
"I'm seeing a big demand for NeXT engineers who have two to three years' experience and either Oracle or Sybase experience," said Clint Tomlinson, manager of NeXT recruiting for Pencom Software in Texas. "DBKit background is definitely a plus."
"There is a shortage of qualified NeXT programmers," agreed John Keister, a recruiting specialist at HT Associates, an executive- search company in Illinois.
In general, NeXT programmers can expect to make between $40,000 and $70,000 per year in the Midwest or South, said Tomlinson, and between $60,000 and $80,000 in a major metropolitan center. Salaries can sometimes go much higher: Keister has three positions he is trying to fill for which his client is willing to go as high as $100,000 per year.
Those high salaries have created a boom for consulting companies such as Pencom and Virginia-based RDR. "Companies that try to do their own hiring . . . can't believe the pay scales, so they turn to the outside," said John Lucian, director of RDR's advanced technology group.
Indeed, said Keister, many companies are reluctant to make permanent hiring decisions right now "because they are not sure about the long-term viability of NeXT."
RDR's Lucian likened today's demand for NeXT programmers to the demand for Oracle-fluent programmers a few years ago. "When Oracle came out in the mid-1980s, it was the same scenario: The company struggled for a few years, then the product started selling like hotcakes."
During that time, companies had to "pay through the nose" to get people experienced with Oracle, Lucian said.
Tomlinson advised job-seekers to "get as much training as possible in DBKit and other database environments," since many customers are looking to use NeXT-STEP to build the client programs for client-server systems. And, he added, "Be patient. The environment is going to be chang- ing very rapidly. . . . When '486 hits the streets, it is going to open up a whole new avenue for NeXT engineers."