As a part of our effort to understand the LA tech scene (the mobile scene, to be precise), we ran some numbers from LinkedIn, PayScale and our own research.
We also approached a few prominent mobile dev shops in the region to get their perspectives on salaries, price for custom dev work. The numbers are in line with what we guessed.
Here's a snapshot:
We took this from LinkedIn. People have all kinds of obtuse reasons to link a keyword to their profile. So the numbers are not relevant as absolutes. But when you aggregate and normalize as percentages, you get a directional idea of how the market is.
The starkest contrast is in terms of the split between design and engineering. I assumed LA to have a dominant design talent within mobile but it seems to follow the national pattern (more on the national pattern in another blog post).
[ibimage==37862==Original==https://contractiq.com/mobile-app-developers-los-angeles==self==null]A myth that I see getting busted is that the mobile workforce is young, dominated by 20s. If you noticed the graph, almost over 50% have over 10 years experience (meaning they are at least in their early 30's).
On to salaries..
[ibimage==37863==Original==https://contractiq.com/mobile-app-developers-los-angeles==self==ibimage_align-center]We pulled this information from PayScale. You'd need to keep in mind that PayScale's data is as good as what's being contributed to them. I would not take it as a representative sample. IMO the median seems to be lower that I'd have anticipated.
Finally about, app development rates..
This is data from our own research (after talking to 100s of dev shops across the country). The numbers are based on national averages. LA is not too deviant from these numbers.
[ibimage==37864==Original==https://contractiq.com/mobile-app-developers-los-angeles==self==ibimage_align-center]If you are interested in further details about app development trends, we made a whole report for it. You can access it here - Mobile App Development Report 2015.
Finally, we've a curated list of app developer interviews and listings on the LA page within ContractIQ and we're a bunch of helpful folks that can get on a call to help you pick dev shops, in case you're in the market for it.
