Perl outreach

[Aaron Trevena]

On 27 November 2012 07:00, Abigail <abigail at abigail.be> wrote:
>> Or to put it yet another way:  cross learning a different language in the same class as perl (wide field) is clearly trivial for a competent perl programmer (for some value of trivial that implies an initial discount on productivity or billable hours).
>
> s/perl programmer/programmer/
>
> At Booking.com, we've stop focussing on finding new Perl programmers a long
> time ago. We're looking for good *programmers* who are willing to learn Perl.
> Of course, knowing Perl is an advantage, but we've found that for a good
> and willing programmer, learning a new language isn't the biggest hurdle.
> A language, after all, is just syntax. And most of the coding work means
> building upon something existing, making it easier to pick up a language
> than if you have to start from scratch.
>
>> So maybe what we should be promoting is that good perl people are valuable in any dynamic language situation where doing things the cheapest possible way isn't the primary goal. (not that perl's expensive - just a focus on cheap at all costs tends to be a sign of very bad management or a toxic industry segment).
>>
>
> I would even be more generic. We've succesfully turned C programmers to
> the dark side, and C isn't a dynamic language.

+1

We've had a lot of success at headforwards recruiting people from
non-Perl roles or even without any perl but with C and C++ backgrounds
and found them very productive very quickly, give a good programmer
with a familiarity with C/C++ family syntax perl and they'll give good
results in a couple of weeks.

I think we're probably between 60/40 and 70/30 ratio of perl to
non-perl backgrounds in our dev headcount, we've also managed to
recruit about 20 developers (as well as additional QA, Tech writers
and Project managers) to a non-London location at less than London
salaries (but competitive nationally, and even with some London roles
I've seen advertised), that's without doing any VISA sponsership,
graduate milk-rounds or any other extra efforts, so it's not that hard
to recruit for perl development (heck we've even been able to be picky
enough to be able to choose from local developers with perl skills,
even this far out in Cornwall)

I should also mention that like others here, we're working on some
fairly interesting stuff (along with some old legacy code) that
includes cloud services, web services, ajax, and pretty much every
buzzword or hyped tech aside from android at the moment.

Oh.. and we're still recruiting : http://www.headforwards.com/careers/
- you might have seen a few of our people at LPW :)

Cheers,

A

-- 
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting