Alternative sources of Perl programmers

[Ben Vinnerd]

As others have said, re: WFH.

I'm a Perl contractor (about to finish a contract in a few weeks time), and
it amazes me of the number of clients who do not like WFH. I have to travel
50 miles per day to get to my clients office (and back) - the overwhelming
majority of the time I can do exactly the same work at home compared to
on-site.

I live in the North West and recently I saw a contract at Jobsite in
Hampshire (i.e. a long way away). I spoke to the agent and they don't allow
WFH (is this the agent not allowing me? Or Jobsite?). It would be nice if I
could speak to Jobsite directly and offer a lower rate for WFH, but the
agent is only interested in maximising his/her commision, so wants to
charge the maximum rate, so client must think, "we're paying a bigger
amount, we demand on-site work". Just my thoughts there.

It's disappointing when I look at the job/contract websites and I see very
little at present in the way of Perl development contracts. I have a plan B
that I need to start work on, of course it will be written in Perl :)  If
plan B works out then i'll be able to WFH all the time.

If I need employees/contractors in the future, you bet your life WFH will
be mandatory! :)

Ben


On 13 May 2013 22:22, Duncan Garland <duncan.garland at ntlworld.com> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>