Modern Perl

Announcing Catalyst Community Poll and Upcoming Town Hall

The Catalyst web framework has been around for a number of years, and it one of the founding members of what we broadly call the Modern Perl movement.  However as the framework grows in years we need to figure out what direction the community wants to take it, and better understand if there are things we could do to increase code contribution.

As a result the core development team is doing to things.  First, we have published an online poll in order to give all of you a chance to talk to us about your thoughts and needs regarding Catalyst.  Second, later this Northern Hemisphere summer, we are going to host an online town hall where all the major Catalyst players will get together to discuss the Catalyst platform and answer your questions.

If you want to ask a  question, you will need to do the poll!  Its short and should take you less than 10 minutes, so we don't feel this is an onerous requirement.  In addition, one randomly chosen person will set to set the overall theme for the town hall!  So, please head over and complete the poll, and also send it around, reblog it, etc.

I really think we are at a place in the Catalyst project were we need to set a strong vision for its future.  We need to define what Catalyst is, what it offers and iterate on making it even better at what it doe.  However a handful of dedicated contributors can't do it alone.  Without your support more and more of us are going to drift off and work on projects with stronger community interest.  So if you care about Catalyst, this is the time to show it!

 

Poll: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEU1X2JfcjJPZnh3Qjk0M19ySWlaMXc6MQ

 

Not About Perl! Puppies!

Hey readers,

I just wanted to let all of you know that its time for me to find good homes for my Akita's remaining pups of her first litter.  We've already placed some in good homes and I am looking for trust worthy people who want a special puppy in there lives.  Here's a group picture:

And more pictures and videos for you to see:

Youtube : http://bit.ly/ShY6pJ , Flickr : http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAAXrZU

The dad is a Bernese Mountain Dog (you can spot him playing with his pups in some of the above links, the Akita mom is all business :)).

Its poisonously painful to be finding new homes for these precious lives, but I know its the right thing to do since each pup will get more love and attention in an individual family then we can provide in group.  So if you are looking for a puppy, feel free to shout out, or share these links with everyone you care to!

The puppies are currently living on my wife's farm upstate NY, about an hour or so east of Albany.

Thanks!

Perl and Recruiters: Part Two

In my last post I talked about how I think it’s important for the Perl.org community to start to figure out ways to better communicate with recruiters.  In fact, I would go so far as to say we should start to think of them (as well as many others) as part of our extended community, and not limit our conception of self to just the core group of perl hackers and CPAN authors.

 First off, I was really happy to see several others jump into the conversation and start to offer some thoughts.  Sawyer spoke about some of the things we might want to do in order to make sure recruiters can find you better (http://blogs.perl.org/users/sawyer_x/2012/07/how-to-reach-recruiters.html).  Perhaps that could form the basis for a page on the Perl.org website (“So you want to get a job as a Perl programmer?”).  Additionally all the mentioned ideas have the nice side effect of being broadly good press for Perl in general, so that’s a double win.

Chromatic wrote a series of articles broadly under the concept of “Perl Shop Maturity.”  The idea here is to list all the types of questions a recruiter might ask in order to understand what kind of Perl shop is hiring.  This is to better match the need to the available programmer.  Again there is a nice side effect in that it starts to help recruiters understand that there are different types of Perl programmers, and different movements within the community.  I long for the day when recruiters are saying less of “Its hard to find Perl programmers” and more of “All the best Modern Perl programmers are not going to be excited about working on your mod_perl1 + Perl 5.8.6 based website.”  It might help companies with legacy systems start to think about moving along.  It will certainly raise awareness amongst recruiters that there is a strong modern movement.  Here’s some great links: (http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/07/perl-shop-maturity-checklist-technical-concerns.html), (http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/07/perl-shop-maturity-checklist-social-concerns.html), (http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/07/perl-shop-maturity-checklist-perl-specific-concerns.html).

 Dave Rolsky jumped into the conversation and mentioned that one way a company can attract some of the better Perl talent is to be open to telecommuters.  He also offered some advice about how to make telecommuting more effective.  This is a good thing for recruiters to know, and to advise companies.  However as several commenters pointed out, there can be some limitations and special concerns regarding telecommuting, so this is not something you should view as a cure-all to your Perl programmer recruitment needs.  (http://blog.urth.org/2012/07/who-says-hiring-perl-devs-is-hard.html)

Based on all this feedback I think I can see the shape of a recruiter FAQ.  I am seeing three sections, the first one based on Chromatic’s thoughts on the types of questions a recruiter should ask the hiring manager, the second one some advice about where to look for Perl programmers and the last section which would some advice about remote workers and how to analyze a Perl resume to figure out how strong a candidate is.

 I’m going to share these thoughts with a few recruiters and welcome your feedback as well!

 

 

 

Helping Recruiters understand the Perl Community Better

Recently one of my coworkers here at Shutterstock wrote a blog post about her experience of YAPC:NA 2012 through the eyes of a recruiter.  I asked her to write this blog because I thought it would be a great way to kick off a discussion about how we as a community can do a better job comunicating to recruiters.  I think doing so would be the next logical step in improving our ability to represent Perl and everything that is great about it to the world at large.

Over the past few years we've done a lot to bust out of our bubble and start talking about all the great stuff we are doing with Perl.  We blog, we post our code on popular open source oriented repositories like Github, we loudly celebrate our public conferences (as we did with the recent YAPC:NA 2012 conference and the past YAPC:Asia conference in 2011).  All these things have a positive effect.  Yet for the most part they are activities aimed at other programmers (ourselves and people we'd like to entice to join our community).  This is not a bad thing, it is a great thing of course.  But there are more people in IT then just programmers.  There's product and project managers, C levels (like the CTO and CEO of a company) and of course recruiters.  We ignore reaching these groups at our peril!

Recruiters do more than introduce programmers to potential jobs.  They speak to hiring managers a lot about the types of technologies and potential recruits they have.  Which means recruiters are the next level out from programmers regarding how a hiring manager or a C level perceives Perl.  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".  Now, when a recruiter says stuff like that to the CTO or to the Director of Software for a company, that has a negative impact on the perception of Perl amongst a group of people that wield tremendous influence in a company's technology choices.

Additionally recruiters seem to have a hard time understanding what makes a good Perl programmer.  Since we haven't widely advertised outside our community until recently, most recruiters are not in touch with modern Perl practices.  They don't know about Plack, or Moose for example.  They might know about mod_perl, which is not really considered a best practice for web development anymore.  They in general have a hard time understanding a companies technology base and matching that up to a resume.  This is not a problem they have (for example) when placing Java candidates.  Typically a Java shop will have a pretty clear stack and can give the recruiter a list of technologies to help better match potential recruits.  It would be great if we had a recruiter oriented FAQ of the modern Perl stack, for example.  We could also help recruiters better understand CPAN and vet candidates that contribute to projects.  In general there are a lot of things we could do to help recruiters vet possible candidates.

Recruiters also need help understanding how a company is using Perl.  Not all Perl shops are modern, for example.  Are they using mod_perl and Apache?  Do they manage dependencies with a Makefile.PL and do they write there applications like CPAN module or have they grown their own project management system?  Does a company use CPAN modules much, or are they stuck on whatever came with the server they installed?  Are they using modern tools like local-lib or do they use the system Perl?  Understanding how a company uses Perl will help a recruiter better match a candidate and also better communicate to a candidate what the job is like.

Lastly, we need to learn how to better represent ourselves on our resume to recruiters.  We need to call out our technology experience, our CPAN authorship, our YAPC attendence and presentations for example.  This will both make recruiters understand who we are better and has the nice side effect of making recruiters start to understand that Perl is vibrant and growing.  If you are enthusiastic about Perl and communicate that on the resume, recruiters will see and feel that excitement as well.

My goal would be to see recruiters excited about Perl candidates and expressing that to hiring managers.  Additionally as more programmers become part of what we call "Modern Perl" and recruiters learn how to realize that when they see resumes perhaps it will help us in our quest to prod companies stuck on older technologies a bit. 

I'm thinking we should start with a simple Recruiters FAQ that could live on Perl.org website.  This would just be a FAQ aimed at helping recruiters understand Perl, and understand how to better find qualified Perl candidates.  It should also offer a bit of advice to Perl programmers about how to make sure a recruiter understands you, your needs and your resume.  So, what do you all think?  Suggestions!  Lets get it started!