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The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

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11–20 of 99 posts

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#11

In the meantime in France, we can't get past that PHP/Enterprise Java illness that's been afflicting the dynamism of our net ecomomy for a decade now. Sad.

Not my experience: I'm in France doing Ruby/Rails since 2004/2005, and I'm most likely booked until end of 2014... So it's more a matter of niches and networks I believe.

Are you in Paris?

Maybe the market is getting bigger for Rails devs there? I left France 5 years ago and the picture was grim then, Java/PHP had a literal death grip on the market. Well, since I'm coming back I guess that's good news :)

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#12

And here I am, a rails developer trying to move to SF, and I only get maybe a few nibbles a week. I must not be on the right job boards. Or something. Is the meetup.com ruby list the place to go? Someone also suggested changing my location on LinkedIn to SF - however, I am hoping to relocate, but haven't done so yet, so that seems dishonest.

For what it's worth, I found a job in SF as a rails developer while living in a small town in Georgia via the site mentioned in the article, Developer Auction, and it was a great experience.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#13
post #10

And here I am, a rails developer trying to move to SF, and I only get maybe a few nibbles a week. I must not be on the right job boards. Or something. Is the meetup.com ruby list the place to go? Someone also suggested changing my location on LinkedIn to SF - however, I am hoping to relocate, but haven't done so yet, so that seems dishonest.

If you're serious about moving it's not dishonest - people looking for candidates for a S.F. role want you to appear in their search results! Maybe mention your plans to move, and your willingness/ability to interview onsite or remotely via Skype, in your profile summary.

Well, is LinkedIn even the best way?

I get a fair amount of (local, I live near DC) recruiter spam through it, but it's often nothing to do with rails, and it is mostly third party recruiters.

I'm looking for a startup or small-company environment that actually uses rails. Big ERP jobs are easy to find, but the startup jobs are, despite the supposed feeding frenzy, a little bit more scarce on the ground. (Or else I'm not looking in the right place!)

This article mentions at least a few engineers passing on leads to companies that I might actually want to work for; that's what I'm trying to find.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#14
Hire telecommuters outside of SF.

For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be competitive financially since practically everywhere has lower cost of living than SF, I believe. (How much would a home for a full family within cycling distance of the office cost?)

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#16
We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else.

Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares.

This is good though, because it makes people who know those things that much more valuable as well they should be.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#17
It's clear that popping on everyone's radar gets you a lot of attention, but really, how many would follow through all the way?

The article mentions that none asked for any sort of online presence (Linkedin, Github, etc). Perhaps it's because they weren't serious to begin with.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#18

Hire telecommuters outside of SF. For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be…

I agree! Geography is very valuable to some individuals; Especially with the tools available at this point, it seems strange to value being physically co-located for work.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#19

Hire telecommuters outside of SF. For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be…

Well yes, but for startups that doesn't work. Every day you need to look at the results of your product, talk with your team and adjust course. Having remote workers really kills your ability to do that.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#20

Hire telecommuters outside of SF. For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be…

Some/most companies have a real problem with the concept of telecommuting/remote working. It's really quite astounding to me: the internet is in more places than ever before, video conferencing, text conferencing, etc, are at all-time highs, yet for some reason companies simply think remote work is unacceptable.

Blows me away.

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