« YAPC:NA Videos Posted! | Main | Perl and Recruiters: Part Two »

07/06/2012

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Andy Lester

Right now, what I hear a lot is that recruiters tend to say things like "Its very hard to find qualified Perl programmers", or "I'm not seeing a lot of young people interested in Perl".

The problem there, I think, is not that recruiters say those things, but that those things are true, at least for that recruiter's experience. It's good to help recruiters learn, but we have to address those underlying problems as well.

john

Andy,

There's little doubt it is harder to find qualified Perl programmers than we'd like. I really don't like to say that Perl is harder than say PHP or Javascript, because I don't think its a complete apple to apple's comparison, although it is often cast that way.

I do think we need to be honest, and say that yes it is not as easy as it could be to find good Perl programmers, both because the total number isn't as high as we'd like and also the community doesn't shout as loudly as we might. That would be fair to say. What I think is not accurate is the often times conclusion that a company that is using Perl should stop using Perl for that reason. We can I think do some things right away to help recruiters do a better job of locating and understanding good Perl programmers now, while over time our advocacy attracts new programmers and grows the base, which is the true long term solution.

Lurk Quietly

The Perl "community" is a small pool.

There are a lot of highly qualified Perl programmers out there that can claim nearly two decades of experience with the language, have written tens of thousands of lines of production code, have stayed up-to-date on new developments with perl, have acted as advocates for the language through training others and using it appropriately in their workplaces, and who have nothing or next to nothing on CPAN, don't hang out on PerlMonks or IRC, and have never attended a Perl Mongers meeting, much less a YAPC.

Barefootcoder

You know, you're absolutely right about adding things like CPAN modules and Perl Mongers attendance to our resumes. I'm going to go do that right away. (Well, figuratively speaking, of course. ;-> )

Emily

As a recruiter, currently searching for a Perl developer, having an FAQ to go to would be very helpful! Often the hiring manager isn't a Perl person themselves and really lack the understanding of what they need. Coupled with the time it takes to find Perl developers with specific backgrounds, we run out of resources. Right now I don't feel as though I could log into IRC to find the people I need and I can't always wait weeks or months to go to a meetup or gathering to possibly find someone. I don't want to come off as sneaky when what I want to do is find people jobs.

Along with FAQs for recruiters, a list of resources on where to find interested parties would be immensely helpful as well.

The comments to this entry are closed.