Alternative sources of Perl programmers

[Mark Stringer]

We sent out an Intern Wanted posting to heads of careers departments at 
various colleges and Unis. This was filtered through to the students and 
we had a number of promising looking applicants contact us. We're a 
startup, no track record, tiny budget, no benefits and all we had to our 
credit was wfh and flexitime. We had an intern signed in 4 days, and our 
pick from a number of decent looking ones.

Sure, we're having to train him up a bit, but overall he's proving 
beneficial.

With a decent sized budget for a full time employee, I'd have thought 
it'd be easy to get a high standard of applicant. They may not be 
experienced in Perl, but some experienced developers are willing to 
cross-train IME.

Also worth pointing out that now is about the best time to be finding 
Uni/College leavers... they're all wondering what they're going to be 
doing come June/July.

As for wfh, I've done it for about 10 years now. One previous employer 
operated solely on this basis. Staff turnover was minimal. It 
occasionally didn't work out due to distractions/it not being a suitable 
environment for some, but by and large, it seems to work IME.

Cheers

Mark

On 05/13/2013 10:22 PM, Duncan Garland wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   
>
> We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
> struggling. It's a shame because we've got quite a lot of development work
> in the offing, mostly using Catalyst, DBIx::Class, Moose and the like.
>
>   
>
> I spoke to the agent today and asked why so few people are coming forward.
> His view was that there aren't many Perl vacancies about at the moment, and
> even fewer people are interested in them.
>
>   
>
> What are other companies doing about this?
>
>   
>
> We've got several PHP projects on the go as well. It's easier to get local
> PHP programmers and when we can't, there seems to be a constant supply of
> good Eastern European programmers. Why isn't there the same stream of
> Eastern European Perl programmers?
>
>   
>
> A second possibility is to cross-train experienced programmers from other
> languages into Perl. However, Perl has got itself such a reputation for
> being difficult to learn that the CTO winces whenever I suggest the idea.
> How have other companies got on when they've said that they will take
> experience in Python/Django or Ruby/Rails or whatever in lieu of experience
> in Perl/Catalyst? Was anybody interested and did they succeed?
>
>   
>
> The third possibility is just to move some of the projects ear-marked for
> Perl into the PHP camp. I don't really believe that they can't be done in
> PHP, but it's a pity because they sit nicely with similar successful
> projects we've done in Perl. (A Catalyst-based system of ours won an
> industry-wide prize for "Best Digital Initiative" a couple of months ago.)
>
>   
>
> All the best.
>
>   
>
> Duncan
>
>   
>
>   
>