Discussion:
Alternative sources of Perl programmers
Duncan Garland
2013-05-13 21:22:05 UTC
Permalink
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
Mark Fowler
2013-05-13 21:48:39 UTC
Permalink
On Monday, May 13, 2013, Duncan Garland wrote:

We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"

Mark
Job van Achterberg
2013-05-13 22:13:18 UTC
Permalink
I second this. Every YAPC::EU I chat with the sponsors there but none of
them are particularly welcome to telecommuters.

Is there a pattern in responses to that question, Mark? I find that it's
mostly wanting to have an in-office representation, especially when it
comes to meetings.

Job
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Kieren Diment
2013-05-13 22:27:26 UTC
Permalink
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Post by Job van Achterberg
I second this. Every YAPC::EU I chat with the sponsors there but none of
them are particularly welcome to telecommuters.
Is there a pattern in responses to that question, Mark? I find that it's
mostly wanting to have an in-office representation, especially when it
comes to meetings.
Job
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Schmoo
2013-05-13 22:37:51 UTC
Permalink
Telepresence robots are all the rage these days...
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Post by Job van Achterberg
I second this. Every YAPC::EU I chat with the sponsors there but none of
them are particularly welcome to telecommuters.
Is there a pattern in responses to that question, Mark? I find that it's
mostly wanting to have an in-office representation, especially when it
comes to meetings.
Job
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Paul Makepeace
2013-05-13 22:59:02 UTC
Permalink
Yeah, having the robots write code for me has been a real boon!

Written on my phone
Post by Schmoo
Telepresence robots are all the rage these days...
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those
for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot.
Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed
on-site/offsite staff?
Post by Kieren Diment
Post by Job van Achterberg
I second this. Every YAPC::EU I chat with the sponsors there but none of
them are particularly welcome to telecommuters.
Is there a pattern in responses to that question, Mark? I find that it's
mostly wanting to have an in-office representation, especially when it
comes to meetings.
Job
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position
is
Post by Kieren Diment
Post by Job van Achterberg
Post by Duncan Garland
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Dave Hodgkinson
2013-05-13 23:18:44 UTC
Permalink
Talk to Barbie :)

Sent from my iPhone
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Post by Job van Achterberg
I second this. Every YAPC::EU I chat with the sponsors there but none of
them are particularly welcome to telecommuters.
Is there a pattern in responses to that question, Mark? I find that it's
mostly wanting to have an in-office representation, especially when it
comes to meetings.
Job
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Sam Kington
2013-05-14 02:40:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work.

In a nutshell: as soon as even one member of the dev team is, or could be, out of the office, you need to do everything important off-line. Otherwise you'll end up discriminating against the off-site people, wittingly or unwittingly.

At UK2 we've historically had a mixture of off- and on-site developers - me in Glasgow, and some guys on-site in London. I come down to London once a month for three days to get face time with the other devs, but otherwise things get done over IRC, email or GitHub pull requests depending on what's most appropriate. We've had the occasional tele-conference via Google Hangouts to discuss upcoming projects and releases, but I'm not sure whether they were that useful. (That might be more useful for one-to-few discussions, rather than manglement + entire dev team.)

We started ramping up hiring a couple of years ago, and while we found a few people in the Greater London area, after a while we hit a brick wall. Because we already had some people working from home, and the group as a whole had developers in Ukraine already, it wasn't a massive cultural shift to hire people from Foreignstan - currently we have a handful of people in Ukraine, a guy who's effectively a Senior Developer in Russia, some people in India or somewhere (I'm not entirely sure where they are - I only know them from their online handles, and I've never met them), and another developer in Australia.

One interesting thing about this whole process is that a number of the guys in the London area started working from home as well. After all, if the important stuff is done via IRC and email, and we don't expect people to work 9-5 because they live in different time zones, then why should you struggle through rush-hour commuter traffic to go to an office with electricity, wifi, a desk and a chair if you have perfectly good electricity, wifi, a desk and a chair at home? (I think we might actually not have enough desks in the office any more, because we don't expect the entire team to be in on any given day.) As a general rule, most of the London developers only come into the office once a week. On weeks when I'm down, we try to schedule everyone on the same day so we can go to the pub; some of our best ideas have come from there.

Obviously, there are caveats and exceptions. Some people prefer to work in an office, probably so there's a clear demarcation between work and not-work (living close to the office is a contributing factor for this). Others may think they can work from home, but end up procrastinating instead, so while you'll have a much larger pool to hire from, be aware that some of them might not work out.

Employment contracts may need a bit of sprucing up - one of mine told me the company provided me a place to work, but reserved the right to search my desk and personal possessions, which I thought remarkably keen. A decent union will tell you that if you work from home, your employer should make sure your equipment is ergonomic and up to standard; if you live alone or your spouse works, you're entitled to claim a fraction of your utility bills, on the basis that your home wouldn't be heated otherwise. And so on - I suspect most telecommuters don't press such matters because, after all, they're no longer paying for their weekly season ticket, but it's something to bear in mind.

The people in HR might be concerned about how easy it would be to enforce penalty clauses against employees in distant lands also. We have a guy in Russia who is socially a Senior Developer, but legally is a contractor, presumably because we can't legally employ non-resident non-EU citizens.

Finally, if you want regular face-to-face meetings (which are absolutely useful), you need to budget for the expense of moving remote employees around.

Having said all of this, one of the reasons I've stuck with UK2 during bad times and good is that, if you can cope with working from home, it's bloody marvellous. Working from home effectively means flexitime, which is a big plus for me (look at the timestamp on this email ;-) ); it lets people say "I need to take the dog to the vet" or "knocking off early, I have a bunch of Russian people around and I need to barbecue things and drink vodka with them". or "brb, kid's vomiting". And it means that you don't have to worry about an employee saying things like "hey, I have a house in France now, I'm going to spend a couple of months there every summer" or "I'm thinking about moving to Mexico, is that OK?" - as long as they have an Internet connection, what do you care about where they are?

Sam
--
Website: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/
Kieren Diment
2013-05-14 03:03:36 UTC
Permalink
Very similar to my experience except I work as a contractor with a bunch of other contractors across three or more continents to develop and support a reasonably high profile high value product in it's domain. I meet a subset of the people I work with face to face once every couple of years (but was doing that before this work started anyway), and I've never met the principal in person. We talk on the phone up to 4 times a year, but generally it all happens through IRC, bug tracker, wiki and git repo.

For big companies where slacking or low value staff are a problem I don't think telecommuting is a great option (hence Marissa Miller's recent proclamations), but could be solved with an organisational culture turnaround. The very nice thing about perl from my experience is it seems to attract people from a greater diversity of social and educational backgrounds than other programming communities (in my experience), but you've got to make the working conditions good to take full advantage of that.
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work. [snip]
Richard Proctor
2013-05-14 13:19:16 UTC
Permalink
I can report on both sides of this:

I have run a largish project from home with developers working beside me
(my son), 5 miles away (in two offices) and 200 miles away (from his
home). In general it worked fine, I enforced strongly defined
interfaces between the different people, working in different languages
on different parts of the project and then left them to get on with it
in their own style. I developed much of the Perl (overall control),
several others worked in C (the bits that had to be fast), one worked in
PHP and Javascript (a modification to an existing product written in
PHP). We had weekly audio hangouts, frequent phone calls and met up
rarely. The project was 98% working when cancelled (due to two
important people falling out).

I have been looking for a new role for some time now, I run into either:

1) You are over qualified for this role

or

2) My very wide experience of 35 years working in many environments,
happens to not include knowledge of some esoteric new fangled term/type
of programming

Who would like a Senior ( Perl | Real time) programmer/ System architect
/ Problem solver ?

Richard
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work. [snip]
Richard Foley
2013-05-14 19:08:34 UTC
Permalink
I've found that on the whole, the specs. that the agent is giving out are badly
understood by them. You have to remember that *most* agents are placing a whole
lot of different people (developers) into a whole lot of different boxes
(clients). Very often they have no idea of what they're doing besides matching
up keyword searches. My point being that you sometimes need to get to the
client at the other end, somehow, before you can actually find out what the
requirements really are. Not what they say they want (rocket-scientist working
in-office for peanuts), but what do they need (someone who can get the job
done for a reasonable fee at whatever location is most sensible).
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Richard Proctor
I have run a largish project from home with developers working
beside me (my son), 5 miles away (in two offices) and 200 miles away
(from his home). In general it worked fine, I enforced strongly
defined interfaces between the different people, working in
different languages on different parts of the project and then left
them to get on with it in their own style. I developed much of the
Perl (overall control), several others worked in C (the bits that
had to be fast), one worked in PHP and Javascript (a modification to
an existing product written in PHP). We had weekly audio hangouts,
frequent phone calls and met up rarely. The project was 98%
working when cancelled (due to two important people falling out).
1) You are over qualified for this role
or
2) My very wide experience of 35 years working in many
environments, happens to not include knowledge of some esoteric new
fangled term/type of programming
Who would like a Senior ( Perl | Real time) programmer/ System
architect / Problem solver ?
Richard
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work. [snip]
James Laver
2013-05-14 06:48:43 UTC
Permalink
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
I managed such a team once. The hard part is time zones, but luckily they all agreed to keep UK time (they were pretty nocturnal anyway).

Pick a lightweight ticketing system (I'm currently a huge trello fan) so everything is visible to everyone. Assign tickets yourself and don't standup, actually have a chat for a few minutes on IM with each team member individually and see if they need some help with things. And make yourself available in case it happens during the day.

Then the usual thing with in office staff goes - different people respond well to different management styles. One worked great if you outlined things and left them to it. Another worked brilliant if you broke things down massively and kept checking up.

Honestly, it's no harder to manage than in-office staff. And I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

James
Richard Foley
2013-05-14 04:00:58 UTC
Permalink
Indeed.
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
Gareth Kirwan
2013-05-14 07:08:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Fowler
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
We've had a mix of teleworkers and onsite staff, going back over the
past decade.
Last year I started to consider the issues of hiring good programmers
locally, and concluded that there isn't really a choice.
So we embraced teleworking completely when hiring new programmers recently.

It's made a world of difference.
The CVs from agents trickled in. I would have thought that meant that
the perl programmers weren't out there.
But the response to our jobs.perl.org advert was enormous, and very good
quality indeed.
I'm still open to anything through agents, because if I find "the right
candidate" then I wouldn't care where they came from.

I'd suggest opening yourself up to telecommuting.
Make sure you actually hire for it as a skill, though. Assuming "You're
a good dev, you can work from home, surely?" can be disastrous.
Watch for signs of demotivation, and ensure that there's some
"telecommuting best practices" available.
Richard Foley
2013-05-14 07:34:13 UTC
Permalink
One thing to bear in mind is that remote-working does NOT suit everybody.

It's not about lounging around watching TV or mowing the lawn. It is about
being able to organize your day so ALL your jobs get done, without having the
hassle of the commute. On the negative side, some people find having their work
at home means they are unable to separate their work/private time, others miss
the colleague contact. It's not all roses.

On the plus side, being able to mow the lawn in the time you used to commute is
a bonus. Working in a (presumably) comfortable environment is nice. Having more
time to be around your kids, if you have a young family, is a plus too. Having
a dedicated work room/office space where you can shut the door, if only
metaphorically, is almost essential for separating work and play though.

And of course, as Dilbert found out after 4 days of remote-working, if you go
to work naked nobody cares ;)
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Gareth Kirwan
Post by Mark Fowler
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
We've had a mix of teleworkers and onsite staff, going back over the
past decade.
Last year I started to consider the issues of hiring good
programmers locally, and concluded that there isn't really a choice.
So we embraced teleworking completely when hiring new programmers recently.
It's made a world of difference.
The CVs from agents trickled in. I would have thought that meant
that the perl programmers weren't out there.
But the response to our jobs.perl.org advert was enormous, and very
good quality indeed.
I'm still open to anything through agents, because if I find "the
right candidate" then I wouldn't care where they came from.
I'd suggest opening yourself up to telecommuting.
Make sure you actually hire for it as a skill, though. Assuming
"You're a good dev, you can work from home, surely?" can be
disastrous.
Watch for signs of demotivation, and ensure that there's some
"telecommuting best practices" available.
Lyle
2013-05-13 22:18:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Have you considered training graduates? I hear there are a lot of them
out of work. I see a lot of Perl jobs wanting and expecting nothing less
than very experienced Perl programmers. If there aren't enough companies
willing to give fresh programmers the experience, how are they supposed
to get there?

If you cut the roots off an apple tree, don't expect to harvest many apples.


Lyle
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-14 13:05:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rick Deller
Have you considered training graduates? I hear there are a lot of them out
of work. I see a lot of Perl jobs wanting and expecting nothing less than
very experienced Perl programmers. If there aren't enough companies willing
to give fresh programmers the experience, how are they supposed to get
there?
If you cut the roots off an apple tree, don't expect to harvest many apples.
+1

There are lots of companies complaining of a skills gap (not just
within perl, look at newspaper or magazine article about it and you'll
hear the same old lines trotted out), they all seem to expect somebody
else to foot the bill for training and developing staff so they can
reap the benefits.

It's as if they expect a magic skills fairy to somehow sprinkle
developers with 5 years of perl experience, on the ground before them,
obviously that doesn't happen any industry or with any language, but
there is a lot of training available out there if you actually want to
grow a team and train or cross-train them, rather than just poach them
from somebody else.

You don't even need to train them youselves to start with - there are
plenty of training courses available to get them started, or you could
get a trainer onsite.

A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Dave Cross
2013-05-14 13:10:07 UTC
Permalink
or you could get a trainer onsite.
That sounds like a *fabulous* idea :-)
Schmoo
2013-05-14 13:30:04 UTC
Permalink
+1 (partly because this is the first thing I would have responded with)
Post by Dave Cross
or you could get a trainer onsite.
That sounds like a *fabulous* idea :-)
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-14 13:34:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Cross
or you could get a trainer onsite.
That sounds like a *fabulous* idea :-)
<bbc>Other perl trainers are available</bbc> ;)

A
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Dave Cross
2013-05-14 13:37:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dave Cross
or you could get a trainer onsite.
That sounds like a *fabulous* idea :-)
<bbc>Other perl trainers are available</bbc> ;)
Yebbut "Who ya gonna call?"
Dominic Thoreau
2013-05-14 13:56:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Cross
Post by Aaron Trevena
<bbc>Other perl trainers are available</bbc> ;)
Yebbut "Who ya gonna call?"
The Ghostbusters are doing perl training now?
--
Unde venistis vos manebit, donec completa est.
-- Tenax D.
Greg McCarroll
2013-05-14 13:46:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dave Cross
or you could get a trainer onsite.
That sounds like a *fabulous* idea :-)
<bbc>Other perl trainers are available</bbc> ;)
I don't think training is the answer always here, i think what you
need is decent mentoring. And the funny thing is i think that could
almost come better from outside the company.

I sort of suspect it might even be better served from outside the
company so people get a different perspective than 'the one true way'.

G.
Uri Guttman
2013-05-14 14:10:12 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
You don't even need to train them youselves to start with - there are
plenty of training courses available to get them started, or you could
get a trainer onsite.
i tried something like that a few years ago with damian conway. it was
an offer to employers to fund a group training and then they could hire
from the students. the problem is no one shop needs to train and hire 10
people at one time. and few (really none) of the potential clients went
for such a farsighted concept. also even a week of training by damian
(or dave cross) won't give actual experience. the trainees might do
better but still have a steep learning curve in the real world. it is
more like they need a year of apprenticeship to get the experience they
need. and no one is going to do that these days.

uri
AJ Dhaliwal
2013-05-15 16:06:33 UTC
Permalink
Damian (and Dave cross) disagree with you on that one. A week with them
is worth more than a year's actual experience.
also even a week of training by damian (or dave cross) won't give
actual experience. the trainees might do better but still have a steep
learning curve in the real world.
Uri Guttman
2013-05-15 17:28:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by AJ Dhaliwal
Damian (and Dave cross) disagree with you on that one. A week with them
is worth more than a year's actual experience.
also even a week of training by damian (or dave cross) won't give
actual experience. the trainees might do better but still have a steep
learning curve in the real world.
real world experience can't be taught in a classroom. i know damian's
courses well as i produced a bunch of them in boston. you can only use
some of the things you learn in a given shop. house rules, idiot
cow-orkers, bad code base and such all conspire to slow down the
application of what you learn in classes. in classes you don't work with
real code much, you don't have to work around existing code, etc. that
is what real world teaches you.

as for training these days, o'reilly school of tech has a good set of
online perl classes (written by peter scott). you have to code up
problems in their sandbox to pass each test/level. they have online
people to review and help you out. not saying this is better than a well
taught class but it is another way to do it and they do it well. also
being online, remote and self paced it has some advantages over a classroom.

the real problem is getting shops to PAY for any sort of training. i was
producing damian classes successfully for 3 or so years. then the
economy bottomed out (this was before the great recession) and training
budgets dried up. they still haven't come back yet from what i have
seen. i would love to pull together damian training and client
sponsorship but that didn't work when i tried it.

uri
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-15 18:32:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by Uri Guttman
the real problem is getting shops to PAY for any sort of training. i was
producing damian classes successfully for 3 or so years. then the economy
bottomed out (this was before the great recession) and training budgets
dried up. they still haven't come back yet from what i have seen. i would
love to pull together damian training and client sponsorship but that didn't
work when i tried it.
You mean people are complaining about how hard it is to hire just the
right people but nobody ponies up the cash to train anybody? Surely
you jest sir!

;)

A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Abigail
2013-05-15 18:42:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by AJ Dhaliwal
Damian (and Dave cross) disagree with you on that one. A week with them
is worth more than a year's actual experience.
Doubtful.

There's a lot more to making a good programmer than knowing the language,
just like being a spelling bee doesn't make you a good novelist.

When I'm looking for a good Perl programmer, whether the candidate knows
Perl or not doesn't matter much (of course, if the candidate claims to
know Perl, (s)he better shows (s)he knows the language); for a good
programmer, learning a new language should not be a problem.



Abigail
David Cantrell
2013-05-15 20:03:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Abigail
Post by AJ Dhaliwal
Damian (and Dave cross) disagree with you on that one. A week with them
is worth more than a year's actual experience.
Doubtful.
There's a lot more to making a good programmer than knowing the language,
just like being a spelling bee doesn't make you a good novelist.
When I'm looking for a good Perl programmer, whether the candidate knows
Perl or not doesn't matter much (of course, if the candidate claims to
know Perl, (s)he better shows (s)he knows the language); for a good
programmer, learning a new language should not be a problem.
Learning a new language shouldn't be, but becoming productive in it is.
Being productive isn't much about the language. It's the quirks of the
toolchain, learning where to get third party libraries, what The One
True Solution is to common problems and how to be productive with those
One True libraries, knowing where to ask for help and who to trust
(don't ask london.pm, for they will answer "yes", "no", and "buffy"),
and so on.

I'm sure I could pick up python or ruby or javascript or whatever is
fashionable in a week, but becoming *productive* in them would take
months of constant use, and probably years of constant use to become as
productive in them as I am in perl.

Which is why I have put little effort into learning them. It's so
offputting to have a simple problem, which I know I could solve with
twenty or thirty lines of perl in five minutes, and find that because I
don't know the tools I get frustrated and give up after half an hour in
python.
--
David Cantrell | Minister for Arbitrary Justice

More people are driven insane through religious hysteria than
by drinking alcohol. -- W C Fields
Jason Clifford
2013-05-13 22:54:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Are you certain that the agency or agencies you are using are actually
talking to perl developers and others who could be perl developers?

Has the job been posted to places like jobs.perl.org?

Jason Clifford
Dave Hodgkinson
2013-05-13 23:23:18 UTC
Permalink
1. Who are "you"?
2. Agents. There's your first problem.
3. Are you doing anything interesting?
4. Your CTO


Perl is only a programming language. There's ruby, python and *spit* PHP. People learn them too. One of the companies around here doing very cool things hire programmers and then pervert them with Perl.

Sent from my iPhone
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Avleen Vig
2013-05-14 01:49:13 UTC
Permalink
You're not alone in facing this, and as a rule it isn't a
perl-specific issue. Perl's just at the leading edge of this.

1. There are fewer perl programmers than PHP programmers. There are
many reasons for this, they really don't matter that much. In the end,
perl doesn't get as much exposure and it becomes a vicious circle
where fewer and fewer people learn perl.

2. There are fewer programmers than there is demand. This is only
going to get worse. If you think it's bad now, wait 5 years.

3. The telecommute issue, which has already been brought up. The
biggest blockers to this are general fear of the unknown, and a poor
understanding of how to manage remote employees. It's really very
different to managing local ones.

Have you considered hiring existing programmers and teaching them, or
giving them time to learn perl? You should.
Or you'll have to massively up the price you're willing to pay for
someone (either an existing perl dev, or someone who will be able to
learn enough perl quickly and well). Simple supply and demand. Again,
it'll only get worse.

I'd encourage every company to hire more junior people and give them a
lot of training.
Go ask your HR / recruiting departments how much it costs to hire
someone. Don't be shocked when they come back and tell you the number
is over ?20,000 *just to find someone*.
Spend that time and money on training instead - you'll help yourself
and everyone around you.


On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Duncan Garland
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Kieren Diment
2013-05-14 02:12:55 UTC
Permalink
When you're employing a builder, if the house is steel framed, you might want to employ someone with experience with the framing system.

If you're building a steel framed housing estate, you will need to familiarise your crews with the technology, but that's a small amount of overhead compared to the effort of delivering the project.
Post by Avleen Vig
You're not alone in facing this, and as a rule it isn't a
perl-specific issue. Perl's just at the leading edge of this.
1. There are fewer perl programmers than PHP programmers. There are
many reasons for this, they really don't matter that much. In the end,
perl doesn't get as much exposure and it becomes a vicious circle
where fewer and fewer people learn perl.
2. There are fewer programmers than there is demand. This is only
going to get worse. If you think it's bad now, wait 5 years.
3. The telecommute issue, which has already been brought up. The
biggest blockers to this are general fear of the unknown, and a poor
understanding of how to manage remote employees. It's really very
different to managing local ones.
Have you considered hiring existing programmers and teaching them, or
giving them time to learn perl? You should.
Or you'll have to massively up the price you're willing to pay for
someone (either an existing perl dev, or someone who will be able to
learn enough perl quickly and well). Simple supply and demand. Again,
it'll only get worse.
I'd encourage every company to hire more junior people and give them a
lot of training.
Go ask your HR / recruiting departments how much it costs to hire
someone. Don't be shocked when they come back and tell you the number
is over ?20,000 *just to find someone*.
Spend that time and money on training instead - you'll help yourself
and everyone around you.
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Duncan Garland
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Richard Foley
2013-05-14 04:09:40 UTC
Permalink
I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
majority of the work. This suited both parties.

The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.

Solution-1: ditch the agent, work directly with the client/contractor, save
everyone some grief, and some money at the same time.

Solution-2: look at how some groups of people are trying to raise the current
and future profile of the Perl programming language instead of resting on dusty
laurels. Yes we you can learn another language, but would you really want to ?)

Solution-3: do both solution-1 and solution-2.
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Uri Guttman
2013-05-14 04:45:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Richard Foley
I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
majority of the work. This suited both parties.
The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.
how did the agent scotch it? what motivation did they have (other than
no ethics and lots of stupidity)?

it may sound sappy but i am very happy when i place a perl hacker and
all three parties (candidate, client and me) win. it does happen quite a
bit IMO. my first placement was a grad student in germany and he moved
to nyc for this job and he still has it 8 years later. that makes me
happy. :)

and i can't scotch things as i like c_ognac better!

uri

_
Richard Foley
2013-05-14 06:06:40 UTC
Permalink
Hi Uri,

Yeah, I guess my brush was a bit broad there, I herewith send out my apologies
to all the good agents, and the bad ones can suck :)

So, what happened was that the agency contacted me and said they had this
on-site role in CH, and I said I'd be able to work 50/50 on/off-site, and they
said that I should talk to the client about that. The client and I had a
telephone interview where they were happy for me to start on-site and gradually
move off-site. Then the agent called me and said "that's not going to happen".

And I never heard from them again... The agents motivation, I imagine, was to
keep people under their umbrella of control as far as possible.

In general terms I'm happy to work though an agent so long as my cut is
reasonable as I don't want the hassle of dealing chasing up new roles.
Sometimes dealing directly works very well indeed, and sometimes working
through an agent works very well indeed, too. I have good and bad stories for
both scenarios. What we all want, (whoever is involved), is to be content with
the arrangement.
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Uri Guttman
Post by Richard Foley
I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
majority of the work. This suited both parties.
The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.
how did the agent scotch it? what motivation did they have (other
than no ethics and lots of stupidity)?
it may sound sappy but i am very happy when i place a perl hacker
and all three parties (candidate, client and me) win. it does happen
quite a bit IMO. my first placement was a grad student in germany
and he moved to nyc for this job and he still has it 8 years later.
that makes me happy. :)
and i can't scotch things as i like c_ognac better!
uri
_
Rick Deller
2013-05-14 06:32:36 UTC
Permalink
The issue is that there is a number of Perl Developer roles out there at the moment , I'm working on a number at present but competition is very high.

I say to all my clients if you see a candidate you like , you must interview quickly and then if you like them offer as often someone will have a couple of offers on the table.

There is a limited number of junior developers out there going into Perl we have launched the Perl Academy to counter act this and hopefully this will help.

But I agree companies allowing telecommute will be a massive benefit to sourcing developers.

Kindest regards

Rick Deller
Perl Specialist Recruitment Consultant



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-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org [mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of london.pm-request at london.pm.org
Sent: 14 May 2013 05:48
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Subject: london.pm Digest, Vol 91, Issue 11

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Avleen Vig)
2. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Kieren Diment)
3. Working from home (was: Re: Alternative sources of Perl
programmers) (Sam Kington)
4. Re: Working from home (was: Re: Alternative sources of Perl
programmers) (Kieren Diment)
5. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Richard Foley)
6. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Richard Foley)
7. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Uri Guttman)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 20:49:13 -0500
From: Avleen Vig <avleen at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID:
<CAMjP1KmLkEL6hu9kscUWyNUPbJeWpBUANxM=5yg3L95_ZZHu8A at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

You're not alone in facing this, and as a rule it isn't a perl-specific issue. Perl's just at the leading edge of this.

1. There are fewer perl programmers than PHP programmers. There are many reasons for this, they really don't matter that much. In the end, perl doesn't get as much exposure and it becomes a vicious circle where fewer and fewer people learn perl.

2. There are fewer programmers than there is demand. This is only going to get worse. If you think it's bad now, wait 5 years.

3. The telecommute issue, which has already been brought up. The biggest blockers to this are general fear of the unknown, and a poor understanding of how to manage remote employees. It's really very different to managing local ones.

Have you considered hiring existing programmers and teaching them, or giving them time to learn perl? You should.
Or you'll have to massively up the price you're willing to pay for someone (either an existing perl dev, or someone who will be able to learn enough perl quickly and well). Simple supply and demand. Again, it'll only get worse.

I'd encourage every company to hire more junior people and give them a lot of training.
Go ask your HR / recruiting departments how much it costs to hire someone. Don't be shocked when they come back and tell you the number is over ?20,000 *just to find someone*.
Spend that time and money on training instead - you'll help yourself and everyone around you.
Post by Duncan Garland
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
------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 12:12:55 +1000
From: Kieren Diment <diment at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <8995C2E8-E1DF-4853-9740-E2B5792E2C2E at diment.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

When you're employing a builder, if the house is steel framed, you might want to employ someone with experience with the framing system.

If you're building a steel framed housing estate, you will need to familiarise your crews with the technology, but that's a small amount of overhead compared to the effort of delivering the project.
Post by Duncan Garland
You're not alone in facing this, and as a rule it isn't a
perl-specific issue. Perl's just at the leading edge of this.
1. There are fewer perl programmers than PHP programmers. There are
many reasons for this, they really don't matter that much. In the end,
perl doesn't get as much exposure and it becomes a vicious circle
where fewer and fewer people learn perl.
2. There are fewer programmers than there is demand. This is only
going to get worse. If you think it's bad now, wait 5 years.
3. The telecommute issue, which has already been brought up. The
biggest blockers to this are general fear of the unknown, and a poor
understanding of how to manage remote employees. It's really very
different to managing local ones.
Have you considered hiring existing programmers and teaching them, or
giving them time to learn perl? You should.
Or you'll have to massively up the price you're willing to pay for
someone (either an existing perl dev, or someone who will be able to
learn enough perl quickly and well). Simple supply and demand. Again,
it'll only get worse.
I'd encourage every company to hire more junior people and give them a
lot of training.
Go ask your HR / recruiting departments how much it costs to hire
someone. Don't be shocked when they come back and tell you the number
is over ?20,000 *just to find someone*.
Spend that time and money on training instead - you'll help yourself
and everyone around you.
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Duncan Garland
Post by Duncan Garland
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
------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 03:40:35 +0100
From: Sam Kington <sam at illuminated.co.uk>
Subject: Working from home (was: Re: Alternative sources of Perl
programmers)
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <5D5EFCDF-ED61-40D9-BB3F-AA4504FEF54B at illuminated.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Post by Duncan Garland
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work.

In a nutshell: as soon as even one member of the dev team is, or could be, out of the office, you need to do everything important off-line. Otherwise you'll end up discriminating against the off-site people, wittingly or unwittingly.

At UK2 we've historically had a mixture of off- and on-site developers - me in Glasgow, and some guys on-site in London. I come down to London once a month for three days to get face time with the other devs, but otherwise things get done over IRC, email or GitHub pull requests depending on what's most appropriate. We've had the occasional tele-conference via Google Hangouts to discuss upcoming projects and releases, but I'm not sure whether they were that useful. (That might be more useful for one-to-few discussions, rather than manglement + entire dev team.)

We started ramping up hiring a couple of years ago, and while we found a few people in the Greater London area, after a while we hit a brick wall. Because we already had some people working from home, and the group as a whole had developers in Ukraine already, it wasn't a massive cultural shift to hire people from Foreignstan - currently we have a handful of people in Ukraine, a guy who's effectively a Senior Developer in Russia, some people in India or somewhere (I'm not entirely sure where they are - I only know them from their online handles, and I've never met them), and another developer in Australia.

One interesting thing about this whole process is that a number of the guys in the London area started working from home as well. After all, if the important stuff is done via IRC and email, and we don't expect people to work 9-5 because they live in different time zones, then why should you struggle through rush-hour commuter traffic to go to an office with electricity, wifi, a desk and a chair if you have perfectly good electricity, wifi, a desk and a chair at home? (I think we might actually not have enough desks in the office any more, because we don't expect the entire team to be in on any given day.) As a general rule, most of the London developers only come into the office once a week. On weeks when I'm down, we try to schedule everyone on the same day so we can go to the pub; some of our best ideas have come from there.

Obviously, there are caveats and exceptions. Some people prefer to work in an office, probably so there's a clear demarcation between work and not-work (living close to the office is a contributing factor for this). Others may think they can work from home, but end up procrastinating instead, so while you'll have a much larger pool to hire from, be aware that some of them might not work out.

Employment contracts may need a bit of sprucing up - one of mine told me the company provided me a place to work, but reserved the right to search my desk and personal possessions, which I thought remarkably keen. A decent union will tell you that if you work from home, your employer should make sure your equipment is ergonomic and up to standard; if you live alone or your spouse works, you're entitled to claim a fraction of your utility bills, on the basis that your home wouldn't be heated otherwise. And so on - I suspect most telecommuters don't press such matters because, after all, they're no longer paying for their weekly season ticket, but it's something to bear in mind.

The people in HR might be concerned about how easy it would be to enforce penalty clauses against employees in distant lands also. We have a guy in Russia who is socially a Senior Developer, but legally is a contractor, presumably because we can't legally employ non-resident non-EU citizens.

Finally, if you want regular face-to-face meetings (which are absolutely useful), you need to budget for the expense of moving remote employees around.

Having said all of this, one of the reasons I've stuck with UK2 during bad times and good is that, if you can cope with working from home, it's bloody marvellous. Working from home effectively means flexitime, which is a big plus for me (look at the timestamp on this email ;-) ); it lets people say "I need to take the dog to the vet" or "knocking off early, I have a bunch of Russian people around and I need to barbecue things and drink vodka with them". or "brb, kid's vomiting". And it means that you don't have to worry about an employee saying things like "hey, I have a house in France now, I'm going to spend a couple of months there every summer" or "I'm thinking about moving to Mexico, is that OK?" - as long as they have an Internet connection, what do you care about where they are?

Sam
--
Website: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/




------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 13:03:36 +1000
From: Kieren Diment <diment at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Working from home (was: Re: Alternative sources of Perl
programmers)
To: "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <BC3D14D0-F9C7-4FE5-B0E2-D9589F87092B at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Very similar to my experience except I work as a contractor with a bunch of other contractors across three or more continents to develop and support a reasonably high profile high value product in it's domain. I meet a subset of the people I work with face to face once every couple of years (but was doing that before this work started anyway), and I've never met the principal in person. We talk on the phone up to 4 times a year, but generally it all happens through IRC, bug tracker, wiki and git repo.

For big companies where slacking or low value staff are a problem I don't think telecommuting is a great option (hence Marissa Miller's recent proclamations), but could be solved with an organisational culture turnaround. The very nice thing about perl from my experience is it seems to attract people from a greater diversity of social and educational backgrounds than other programming communities (in my experience), but you've got to make the working conditions good to take full advantage of that.
Post by Duncan Garland
Post by Duncan Garland
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
Can't speak about management per se, but I can talk about how a team with off-site developers can work. [snip]
------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 06:00:58 +0200
From: Richard Foley <richard.foley at rfi.net>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <20130514040058.GA8227 at thpad>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Indeed.
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
"have you considered telecommute?"
Mark
------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 06:09:40 +0200
From: Richard Foley <richard.foley at rfi.net>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <20130514040940.GB8227 at thpad>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
majority of the work. This suited both parties.

The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.

Solution-1: ditch the agent, work directly with the client/contractor, save
everyone some grief, and some money at the same time.

Solution-2: look at how some groups of people are trying to raise the current
and future profile of the Perl programming language instead of resting on dusty
laurels. Yes we you can learn another language, but would you really want to ?)

Solution-3: do both solution-1 and solution-2.
--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 00:45:09 -0400
From: Uri Guttman <uri at stemsystems.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <5191C155.2070708 at stemsystems.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Post by Duncan Garland
I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
majority of the work. This suited both parties.
The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.
how did the agent scotch it? what motivation did they have (other than
no ethics and lots of stupidity)?

it may sound sappy but i am very happy when i place a perl hacker and
all three parties (candidate, client and me) win. it does happen quite a
bit IMO. my first placement was a grad student in germany and he moved
to nyc for this job and he still has it 8 years later. that makes me
happy. :)

and i can't scotch things as i like c_ognac better!

uri

_


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
london.pm mailing list
london.pm at london.pm.org
http://london.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/london.pm


End of london.pm Digest, Vol 91, Issue 11
*****************************************
Mark Stringer
2013-05-14 09:18:15 UTC
Permalink
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
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Duncan Garland
2013-05-15 21:37:08 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting thoughts on telecommuters. Also
interesting that nobody sees too much of a problem cross-training into Perl.

I didn't mention the company because I was (and still am) using my personal
email and it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, the company is Motortrak
(www.motortrak.com).

We're located in Thames Ditton and we do websites and backend systems for
chains of motor dealers. We've doubled in size to about 70 in the last three
years. In the last six months we've opened an office on the west coast of
the USA to partner the existing one on the east coast. Earlier this week we
bumped up our nominal presence in Australia to a proper office of half a
dozen people. We can reasonably claim to be doing quite well.

Thames Ditton is a bit difficult to reach from certain directions because of
the way the Thames loops. However, the upside of that is that it doesn't
feel like the big city. Plenty of greenery, nice riverside pubs etc.
Generally a good working environment.

The CMS and the inventory management system (IMS) are written in PHP and
doing very well. The CMS serves thousands of dealers and we have contracts
in place which guarantee that the IMS will do at least a thousand. There are
other PHP projects in the offing. Any idea that PHP is a toy or that Perl
programmers are automatically worth more than the better PHP programmers has
to be justified.

The feeds are all written in Perl, as are several other systems. The
service-booking system won the Automarket award for "Best Digital
Initiative" earlier this year. It's a Perl system and is the first one on
which we've used modern Perl modules such as Catalyst, DBIx::Class,
Template::Toolkit and the like. We developed it over three years so there's
at least 5 man-years of effort in there. Based on the success of the
service-booking system and the general momentum of the company we are almost
certain to be doing three or four more similar projects this year. Each will
be big enough to keep the interest of an experienced programmer or provide a
real challenge to a less experienced one. Hence we need more people (just
one ticket signed at the moment). They don't have to be done in Perl, and
they won't be done in Perl at any cost, but they sit logically in the Perl
camp. As Lead Perl Programmer, I've got to make the case.

We haven't been passive in our search. We saw it coming. Perl programmers
have been rare for a while. It took some time to find our last Perl
programmer whom we picked up from the BBC. We try to be visible in the Perl
community.

We sponsored the last London PM and I ran a beginner's workshop on TT. I
attended most of the London PM tech meetings until they stopped. I
contributed to the Catalyst Advent Calendar this year.

I offered to mentor one of the students from Rick Deller's Perl Academy.

I attend Southampton PM meetings. I contacted Portsmouth University and
there is a possibility that we may be going in for beer and sandwiches with
their computer club in the autumn. (It's only a possibility because I'm not
sure the other mongers are as keen to do it as I am.)

I've also tried to contact Kingston University. I didn't get a reply and I
confess that I haven't tried again yet.

In spite of all that, I've only had five CVs across my desk this time. None
were strong candidates. One we rejected outright. A second told me at the
end of his telephone interview that he had just started a contract. Numbers
three and four weren't present at the appointed times for their telephone
interviews and the agency couldn't trace them either. We skipped the
telephone interview for number five and rushed him in for a face-to-face
with a view to hiring him if he was half-decent. He wasn't. He just wasn't.

When we want a PHP programmer, we only have to whistle.

Anyway, that's the background. Thanks for all your replies. A fascinating
read.

Duncan

-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org
[mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Mark Stringer
Sent: 14 May 2013 10:18
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers

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
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Tom Hukins
2013-05-15 22:04:53 UTC
Permalink
I attended most of the London PM tech meetings until they stopped.
I'm pleased that you enjoy your involvement in our community, but
please don't spread the rumour that anything we used to do stopped
happening.

With a small group of volunteers and a large group of followers and
mailing list subscribers, reality sometimes disrupts our aspirations.

We get distracted and occasionally overwhelmed, but we don't stop.

Tom
James Laver
2013-05-15 22:20:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by Tom Hukins
I'm pleased that you enjoy your involvement in our community, but
please don't spread the rumour that anything we used to do stopped
happening.
With a small group of volunteers and a large group of followers and
mailing list subscribers, reality sometimes disrupts our aspirations.
Indeed, I've been volunteered to organise the next tech meet. Now if we could just find a venue?

James
Duncan Garland
2013-05-17 19:28:31 UTC
Permalink
Do you want to come out to Thames Ditton? It's a bit of a hike, but if
you're interested I'll see what I can do.

-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org
[mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of James Laver
Sent: 15 May 2013 23:20
To: London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
Post by Tom Hukins
I'm pleased that you enjoy your involvement in our community, but
please don't spread the rumour that anything we used to do stopped
happening.
With a small group of volunteers and a large group of followers and
mailing list subscribers, reality sometimes disrupts our aspirations.
Indeed, I've been volunteered to organise the next tech meet. Now if we
could just find a venue.

James
James Laver
2013-05-17 20:12:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
Do you want to come out to Thames Ditton? It's a bit of a hike, but if
you're interested I'll see what I can do.
Historically, London.pm events outside of vaguely central london tend to have poor attendance ('vaguely' here means the BBC and Net-A-Porter are both easy to get to despite being in zone 2). I think Thames Ditton might be stretching the definition of 'vaguely central london' a little too far, but thanks for the offer.

James

Dave Cross
2013-05-16 08:16:15 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
We sponsored the last London PM and I ran a beginner's workshop on TT.
Just to be clear here, I suspect you mean that you sponsored the last
London Perl Workshop.

As I understand it, the last London Perl Mongers meeting was sponsored
by a recruitment company.

Dave...
Peter Corlett
2013-05-16 09:17:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
We sponsored the last London PM and I ran a beginner's workshop on TT.
Just to be clear here, I suspect you mean that you sponsored the last London
Perl Workshop. As I understand it, the last London Perl Mongers meeting was
sponsored by a recruitment company.
May's social was indeed sponsored by the lovely Christine Wong from Square One
Resources.

June's social has yet to be sponsored, but there's still time, hint hint ;)
GARLAND DUNCAN
2013-05-16 10:00:07 UTC
Permalink
Yes, we were a co-sponsor of the 2012 London Perl Workshop. Sorry for the
typo.

As far as I know, the last London PM tech meeting was in October 2012. It's
great news if they are starting again.
Post by Duncan Garland
We sponsored the last London PM and I ran a beginner's workshop on TT.
Just to be clear here, I suspect you mean that you sponsored the last
London Perl Workshop.
As I understand it, the last London Perl Mongers meeting was sponsored by
a recruitment company.
Dave...
Peter Corlett
2013-05-16 10:20:04 UTC
Permalink
On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:37:08PM +0100, Duncan Garland wrote:
[...]
Post by Duncan Garland
I didn't mention the company because I was (and still am) using my personal
email and it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, the company is Motortrak
(www.motortrak.com).
Now I know which role you were referring to, I can follow-up on my previous
post where I wrote "I don't know if I've even seen your advert as you didn't
say who the company is. I've certainly not had my interest piqued by it if I
did."

I have now seen the job ad, because I've just searched for it. Opus Recruitment
Solutions sent it to me on April 30th. They sent it to an tagged email address
that I only ever used on CVs submitted to job boards until about 2009, and
which I now only glance at infrequently. So they're working from a very old
candidate database.

I did not have my interest piqued. Thames Ditton is a very inconvenient
location, and the salary does not compensate for the longer commute. The advert
lists PHP as "very desirable" which is a red flag. The agent added "OPUS WILL
PAY ?300 TO ANYONE WHO CAN RECCOMEND A SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE" in a double-size
font, which showed a certain amount of desperation to fill the role, another
red flag.

As it happens, Opus Recruitment Solutions send me quite a few job ads. Some of
the roles are even in London and correspond to the skills on my CV. But more
often they do not. Sometimes they send me the same irrelevant role multiple
times. And they all go to that retired address and into email purgatory. So
when I wrote "I'd consider firing that agent for a start", you might want to
take heed.

In sharp contrast, Christine Wong of Square One who sponsored our previous
social actually reads CVs and makes a proper effort to contact her shortlist of
relevant candidates instead of indiscriminately spamming addresses on their
database. So instead of dealing with amateurs, why not call in a professional?
Square One's number is 020 7208 2828.
Simon Cozens
2013-05-17 08:28:20 UTC
Permalink
Post by Peter Corlett
The agent added "OPUS WILL
PAY ?300 TO ANYONE WHO CAN RECCOMEND A SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE" in a double-size
font, which showed a certain amount of desperation to fill the role, another
red flag.
Also, it will not help to recruit Perl programmers who are generally spelling
pedants. :-)

To echo the clamour of the thread so far: If you want to attract Perl
programmers, try advertising your job somewhere that Perl programmers who are
looking for jobs will see it, rather than using an agent who doesn't seem to
know how to find Perl programmers either.
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-17 05:35:58 UTC
Permalink
Hi Duncan,
Post by Duncan Garland
I didn't mention the company because I was (and still am) using my personal
email and it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, the company is Motortrak
(www.motortrak.com).
I visited the site, the jobs page renders really badly in my old
brower so I can't read it (FF 3.6).

I searched for motortrak in jobs.perl.org - do you have open job
posting on there you can link to?
Post by Duncan Garland
Thames Ditton is a bit difficult to reach from certain directions because of
the way the Thames loops. However, the upside of that is that it doesn't
feel like the big city. Plenty of greenery, nice riverside pubs etc.
Generally a good working environment.
Not as difficult to reach as 280 miles west of zone 1 in Cornwall, we
still manage to recruit people tho ;)
Post by Duncan Garland
The CMS and the inventory management system (IMS) are written in PHP and
doing very well. The CMS serves thousands of dealers and we have contracts
in place which guarantee that the IMS will do at least a thousand. There are
other PHP projects in the offing. Any idea that PHP is a toy or that Perl
programmers are automatically worth more than the better PHP programmers has
to be justified.
Better programmers cost more, experienced people cost more. The
demographics of PHP programmers lean heavily towards novices, the perl
ones towards older experts, Java covers both but is still more
expensive than either (and according to another list I'm subscribed
to, also hard to find decent java developers.. so there you go)
Post by Duncan Garland
We haven't been passive in our search. We saw it coming. Perl programmers
have been rare for a while. It took some time to find our last Perl
programmer whom we picked up from the BBC. We try to be visible in the Perl
community.
No - perl programmers haven't been rare, they just haven't been
queueing up at your door : The economy has picked up, many employers
have got wiser about hiring and recruiting their staff which means if
you want to get the right people you have to up your game, the same
applies to ruby, python and even java - only PHP really has an
abundance of CVs (but probably no more developers that you want to
actually hire than any other language)
Post by Duncan Garland
[ .. long list of good community involvement .. ]
I attend Southampton PM meetings. I contacted Portsmouth University and
there is a possibility that we may be going in for beer and sandwiches with
their computer club in the autumn. (It's only a possibility because I'm not
sure the other mongers are as keen to do it as I am.)
Wow! That really is a lot of community involvement and you definately
deserve to have that pay off.
Post by Duncan Garland
I've also tried to contact Kingston University. I didn't get a reply and I
confess that I haven't tried again yet.
Yes, universities can be really pretty crap about actually talking to
industry despite all their hot air.
Post by Duncan Garland
In spite of all that, I've only had five CVs across my desk this time. None
were strong candidates. One we rejected outright. A second told me at the
end of his telephone interview that he had just started a contract. Numbers
three and four weren't present at the appointed times for their telephone
interviews and the agency couldn't trace them either. We skipped the
telephone interview for number five and rushed him in for a face-to-face
with a view to hiring him if he was half-decent. He wasn't. He just wasn't.
I think you might be getting the basics wrong, you're certainly doing
a lot that others aren't and that should help.

There's nothing on jobs.perl.org about this role, nor blogs.perl.org
(or any blog picked up by the ironman aggregator), and I haven't seen
any mention of it on twitter under the #perl hashtag, and I can't read
the jobs page on the website in some browsers. Have you posted to the
london.pm jobs list?

Hopefully you can fix the basic stuff on advertising the jobs and then
your hard work on other stuff will pay off, failing that get one of
the "tame" recruiters london.pm seems to have recently befriended and
give them your company's impressive CV.

One small thing, I don't think I've yet seen any company that
complains about it being hard to recruit perl devs who aren't
struggling because they've messed something up, it's not very
endearing to any potential candidates, and even acts as a big red flag
discouraging them from talking to you.

A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Paul Mooney
2013-05-17 08:55:32 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
Hi Duncan,
Post by Duncan Garland
I didn't mention the company because I was (and still am) using my personal
email and it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, the company is
Motortrak
(www.motortrak.com).
I visited the site, the jobs page renders really badly in my old
brower so I can't read it (FF 3.6).
It renders in my browser (Firefox 20.0) but there is no perl job
listed, the only tech ones were for PHP and a LAMP DBA.

I think Aaron pretty much hit the nail on the head with the rest of his
comments.
Duncan Garland
2013-05-17 19:18:42 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting thoughts on telecommuters. Also
interesting that nobody sees too much of a problem cross-training into Perl.

I didn't mention the company because I was (and still am) using my personal
email and it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, the company is Motortrak
(www.motortrak.com).

We're located in Thames Ditton and we do websites and backend systems for
chains of motor dealers. We've doubled in size to about 70 in the last three
years. In the last six months we've opened an office on the west coast of
the USA to partner the existing one on the east coast. Earlier this week we
bumped up our nominal presence in Australia to a proper office of half a
dozen people. We can reasonably claim to be doing quite well.

Thames Ditton is a bit difficult to reach from certain directions because of
the way the Thames loops. However, the upside of that is that it doesn't
feel like the big city. Plenty of greenery, nice riverside pubs etc.
Generally a good working environment.

The CMS and the inventory management system (IMS) are written in PHP and
doing very well. The CMS serves thousands of dealers and we have contracts
in place which guarantee that the IMS will do at least a thousand. There are
other PHP projects in the offing. Any idea that PHP is a toy or that Perl
programmers are automatically worth more than the better PHP programmers has
to be justified.

The feeds are all written in Perl, as are several other systems. The
service-booking system won the Automarket award for "Best Digital
Initiative" earlier this year. It's a Perl system and is the first one on
which we've used modern Perl modules such as Catalyst, DBIx::Class,
Template::Toolkit and the like. We developed it over three years so there's
at least 5 man-years of effort in there. Based on the success of the
service-booking system and the general momentum of the company we are almost
certain to be doing three or four more similar projects this year. Each will
be big enough to keep the interest of an experienced programmer or provide a
real challenge to a less experienced one. Hence we need more people (just
one ticket signed at the moment). They don't have to be done in Perl, and
they won't be done in Perl at any cost, but they sit logically in the Perl
camp. As Lead Perl Programmer, I've got to make the case.

We haven't been passive in our search. We saw it coming. Perl programmers
have been rare for a while. It took some time to find our last Perl
programmer whom we picked up from the BBC. We try to be visible in the Perl
community.

We sponsored the last London PM and I ran a beginner's workshop on TT. I
attended most of the London PM tech meetings until they stopped. I
contributed to the Catalyst Advent Calendar this year.

I offered to mentor one of the students from Rick Deller's Perl Academy.

I attend Southampton PM meetings. I contacted Portsmouth University and
there is a possibility that we may be going in for beer and sandwiches with
their computer club in the autumn. (It's only a possibility because I'm not
sure the other mongers are as keen to do it as I am.)

I've also tried to contact Kingston University. I didn't get a reply and I
confess that I haven't tried again yet.

In spite of all that, I've only had five CVs across my desk this time. None
were strong candidates. One we rejected outright. A second told me at the
end of his telephone interview that he had just started a contract. Numbers
three and four weren't present at the appointed times for their telephone
interviews and the agency couldn't trace them either. We skipped the
telephone interview for number five and rushed him in for a face-to-face
with a view to hiring him if he was half-decent. He wasn't. He just wasn't.

When we want a PHP programmer, we only have to whistle.

Anyway, that's the background. Thanks for all your replies. A fascinating
read.

Duncan

-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org
[mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Mark Stringer
Sent: 14 May 2013 10:18
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers

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
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-14 10:29:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
That's a good start but not much to go on...

Where and how are you advertising?

What sort of role is it, and how does the salary (presumably you're
advertising a salary range) stack up against the market for your
industry/area?
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
The agent is talking bollocks, find another - some actually specialise
in Perl so they must be confident that there are both enough
candidates and vacancies to make a living from. The number of perl
vacancies and developers are both increasing based on all the data
available.
Post by Duncan Garland
What are other companies doing about this?
Lots of different things, telecommute, offering salaries that match or
beat what you'd get with the same experience with Java, offering
flexitime and other decent benefit packages that make it worth taking
the job and sticking with it.
Post by Duncan Garland
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?
I've never found that a problem myself - both my current and previous
employers have recruited developers from eastern europe, they're not
10 a penny, but good developers aren't 10 a penny for any tech in any
country.
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
At headforwards we've cross-trained maybe a quarter of the development
team from C++ and other tech, it was very successful, to the point
where some have been promoted into very senior roles within 2 years.

That was without formal perl training - of which there is plenty
available like Dave Cross' courses and perl academy.
Post by Duncan Garland
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?
That should work fine, the only problem I can forsee is the problem
widely seen with python developers with a big chip on their shoulders
about perl, they can and should be weeded out at interviews tho.

I don't believe you've linked to the ad yet, I'm guessing you've
already advertised on jobs.perl.org, and your local LUG.

Other places you can use social networking to advertise are twitter (I
got my current job via a twitter tip), coderwall (which is a really
nice way to showcase your company and team), by sending your team to
conferences and workshops to talk about your projects (a 5 second "oh,
and we're hiring" at the end is usually acceptable, at least from what
I've seen).

You can also look at your recruitment process and advertising copy
itself - does your ad stand out, does it meet the basic criteria of
what a developer needs or wants to know (pay, location, will this
company be in business in 18 months or fold, will I learn or work with
new things, is there a career path/training/etc, is there a package as
a whole including benefits, working hours, holiday, etc that will give
me a better quality of life, etc)

Hiring perl developers isn't *that* difficult, we've managed to
recruit a large number over the last 2 years - despite our office
location in Cornwall (which is also a selling point but to a much
smaller pool of people), and despite all roles being on-site.

Cheers,

A
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Rick Deller
2013-05-14 11:04:50 UTC
Permalink
I'm actually giving a talk at the MK PM tech meet Up on Monday , so it interesting hearing people's thoughts

Kindest regards

Rick Deller
Perl Specialist Recruitment Consultant



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-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org [mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of london.pm-request at london.pm.org
Sent: 14 May 2013 12:00
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Subject: london.pm Digest, Vol 91, Issue 13

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (James Laver)
2. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Gareth Kirwan)
3. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Lyle)
4. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Richard Foley)
5. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Mark Stringer)
6. Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers (Aaron Trevena)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 07:48:43 +0100
From: James Laver <james.laver at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <C2889B02-6E90-4DDF-B1DB-3CBA04C27D95 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Post by Kieren Diment
The management challenges for telecommute jobs are different to those for on site. But it does increase the pool of potential candidates a lot. Does anyone have any useful experience about managing mixed on-site/offsite staff?
I managed such a team once. The hard part is time zones, but luckily they all agreed to keep UK time (they were pretty nocturnal anyway).

Pick a lightweight ticketing system (I'm currently a huge trello fan) so everything is visible to everyone. Assign tickets yourself and don't standup, actually have a chat for a few minutes on IM with each team member individually and see if they need some help with things. And make yourself available in case it happens during the day.

Then the usual thing with in office staff goes - different people respond well to different management styles. One worked great if you outlined things and left them to it. Another worked brilliant if you broke things down massively and kept checking up.

Honestly, it's no harder to manage than in-office staff. And I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

James


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 08:08:40 +0100
From: Gareth Kirwan <gbjk at thermeon.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <5191E2F8.4010602 at thermeon.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Post by Kieren Diment
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position
is "have you considered telecommute?"
We've had a mix of teleworkers and onsite staff, going back over the past decade.
Last year I started to consider the issues of hiring good programmers locally, and concluded that there isn't really a choice.
So we embraced teleworking completely when hiring new programmers recently.

It's made a world of difference.
The CVs from agents trickled in. I would have thought that meant that the perl programmers weren't out there.
But the response to our jobs.perl.org advert was enormous, and very good quality indeed.
I'm still open to anything through agents, because if I find "the right candidate" then I wouldn't care where they came from.

I'd suggest opening yourself up to telecommuting.
Make sure you actually hire for it as a skill, though. Assuming "You're a good dev, you can work from home, surely?" can be disastrous.
Watch for signs of demotivation, and ensure that there's some "telecommuting best practices" available.


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 23:18:45 +0100
From: Lyle <webmaster at cosmicperl.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <519166C5.9070502 at cosmicperl.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Post by Kieren Diment
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
Post by Duncan Garland
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position
is "have you considered telecommute?"
Have you considered training graduates? I hear there are a lot of them out of work. I see a lot of Perl jobs wanting and expecting nothing less than very experienced Perl programmers. If there aren't enough companies willing to give fresh programmers the experience, how are they supposed to get there?

If you cut the roots off an apple tree, don't expect to harvest many apples.


Lyle



------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 09:34:13 +0200
From: Richard Foley <richard.foley at rfi.net>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID: <20130514073413.GG8227 at thpad>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

One thing to bear in mind is that remote-working does NOT suit everybody.

It's not about lounging around watching TV or mowing the lawn. It is about being able to organize your day so ALL your jobs get done, without having the hassle of the commute. On the negative side, some people find having their work at home means they are unable to separate their work/private time, others miss the colleague contact. It's not all roses.

On the plus side, being able to mow the lawn in the time you used to commute is a bonus. Working in a (presumably) comfortable environment is nice. Having more time to be around your kids, if you have a young family, is a plus too. Having a dedicated work room/office space where you can shut the door, if only metaphorically, is almost essential for separating work and play though.

And of course, as Dilbert found out after 4 days of remote-working, if you go to work naked nobody cares ;)

--
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html
Post by Kieren Diment
Post by Duncan Garland
Post by Duncan Garland
We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
struggling.
The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position
is "have you considered telecommute?"
We've had a mix of teleworkers and onsite staff, going back over the
past decade.
Last year I started to consider the issues of hiring good programmers
locally, and concluded that there isn't really a choice.
So we embraced teleworking completely when hiring new programmers recently.
It's made a world of difference.
The CVs from agents trickled in. I would have thought that meant that
the perl programmers weren't out there.
But the response to our jobs.perl.org advert was enormous, and very
good quality indeed.
I'm still open to anything through agents, because if I find "the
right candidate" then I wouldn't care where they came from.
I'd suggest opening yourself up to telecommuting.
Make sure you actually hire for it as a skill, though. Assuming
"You're a good dev, you can work from home, surely?" can be
disastrous.
Watch for signs of demotivation, and ensure that there's some
"telecommuting best practices" available.
------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 10:18:15 +0100
From: Mark Stringer <mark at repixl.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: london.pm at london.pm.org
Message-ID: <51920157.4000003 at repixl.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

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
Post by Kieren Diment
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
------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 11:29:44 +0100
From: Aaron Trevena <aaron.trevena at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Alternative sources of Perl programmers
To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" <london.pm at london.pm.org>
Message-ID:
<CAJWQ4V3gziCgQq_4AQBtJ7-YD4ReWJr5s4MrJUtJSMMsxFRWQg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Post by Kieren Diment
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.
That's a good start but not much to go on...

Where and how are you advertising?

What sort of role is it, and how does the salary (presumably you're advertising a salary range) stack up against the market for your industry/area?
Post by Kieren Diment
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.
The agent is talking bollocks, find another - some actually specialise in Perl so they must be confident that there are both enough candidates and vacancies to make a living from. The number of perl vacancies and developers are both increasing based on all the data available.
Post by Kieren Diment
What are other companies doing about this?
Lots of different things, telecommute, offering salaries that match or beat what you'd get with the same experience with Java, offering flexitime and other decent benefit packages that make it worth taking the job and sticking with it.
Post by Kieren Diment
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?
I've never found that a problem myself - both my current and previous employers have recruited developers from eastern europe, they're not
10 a penny, but good developers aren't 10 a penny for any tech in any country.
Post by Kieren Diment
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.
At headforwards we've cross-trained maybe a quarter of the development team from C++ and other tech, it was very successful, to the point where some have been promoted into very senior roles within 2 years.

That was without formal perl training - of which there is plenty available like Dave Cross' courses and perl academy.
Post by Kieren Diment
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?
That should work fine, the only problem I can forsee is the problem widely seen with python developers with a big chip on their shoulders about perl, they can and should be weeded out at interviews tho.

I don't believe you've linked to the ad yet, I'm guessing you've already advertised on jobs.perl.org, and your local LUG.

Other places you can use social networking to advertise are twitter (I got my current job via a twitter tip), coderwall (which is a really nice way to showcase your company and team), by sending your team to conferences and workshops to talk about your projects (a 5 second "oh, and we're hiring" at the end is usually acceptable, at least from what I've seen).

You can also look at your recruitment process and advertising copy itself - does your ad stand out, does it meet the basic criteria of what a developer needs or wants to know (pay, location, will this company be in business in 18 months or fold, will I learn or work with new things, is there a career path/training/etc, is there a package as a whole including benefits, working hours, holiday, etc that will give me a better quality of life, etc)

Hiring perl developers isn't *that* difficult, we've managed to recruit a large number over the last 2 years - despite our office location in Cornwall (which is also a selling point but to a much smaller pool of people), and despite all roles being on-site.

Cheers,

A

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


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
london.pm mailing list
london.pm at london.pm.org
http://london.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/london.pm


End of london.pm Digest, Vol 91, Issue 13
*****************************************
Zbigniew Łukasiak
2013-05-14 11:44:27 UTC
Permalink
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Duncan Garland
<duncan.garland at ntlworld.com> wrote:
...
Post by Duncan Garland
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?
There is a Polish Perl Workshop next week :)
I am sure the organizers would not mind if you sponsored a beer round
to advertise your vacancies.

Cheers,
Z.
Ben Vinnerd
2013-05-14 13:43:51 UTC
Permalink
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
Post by Duncan Garland
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
Dominic Humphries
2013-05-14 14:02:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Vinnerd
I have to travel
50 miles per day to get to my clients office (and back)
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Post by Ben Vinnerd
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?).
I got offered that last year - at the time, at least, Jobsite themselves
were very definite about it not being WFH.

djh
Joel Bernstein
2013-05-14 14:09:23 UTC
Permalink
Jobsite have been very definite for over a year that the job is not WFH.
They are still plaintively asking for someone to come and work in their
offices somewhere[0] just East of Portsmouth. Presumably they're soon
either going to crack and hire a telecommuter, outsource the damn work
entirely, or rewrite in Java.

/joel

[0]: technically more like "nowhere" (particularly the arse end)
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Ben Vinnerd
I have to travel
50 miles per day to get to my clients office (and back)
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Post by Ben Vinnerd
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
Post by Ben Vinnerd
WFH (is this the agent not allowing me? Or Jobsite?).
I got offered that last year - at the time, at least, Jobsite themselves
were very definite about it not being WFH.
djh
Dirk Koopman
2013-05-14 14:24:20 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joel Bernstein
Jobsite have been very definite for over a year that the job is not WFH.
They are still plaintively asking for someone to come and work in their
offices somewhere[0] just East of Portsmouth. Presumably they're soon
either going to crack and hire a telecommuter, outsource the damn work
entirely, or rewrite in Java.
Not on their website though, so it can't be that plaintive...

Dirk
Peter Corlett
2013-05-14 14:59:04 UTC
Permalink
Jobsite have been very definite for over a year that the job is not WFH. They
are still plaintively asking for someone to come and work in their offices
somewhere[0] just East of Portsmouth. Presumably they're soon either going to
crack and hire a telecommuter, outsource the damn work entirely, or rewrite
in Java.
I've had several recruiters approach me with this role over the last few
months. Each time, I've had to patiently explain to them that it's the arse end
of nowhere and if they want me to do the role, it's either telecommute[1] or
they pay my "travelling to the arse end of nowhere" rate[2], neither of which
were acceptable to them. The most recent recruiter mentioned that Jobsite are
finally considering relaxing the on-site requirement in the face of everybody
saying "Havant? You must be joking!" and he'd get back to me, but of course he
never did.
[0]: technically more like "nowhere" (particularly the arse end)
It's Havant, as in "We Havant much chance of finding anybody prepared to
commute here for what we're offering".


[1] For which I'll even offer a discount over my on-site in London price!

[2] Which was nearly double my discount WFH rate. Which seems fair, since the
5-6 hour round-trip commute is practically a second job in itself.
Ben Vinnerd
2013-05-14 14:20:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
Joel Bernstein
2013-05-14 14:36:15 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dominic Humphries
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
Aha! Do you have any opinion on the pedestrianisation of Norwich city
centre? I'll be honest, I'm dead against it.
Dirk Koopman
2013-05-14 15:05:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joel Bernstein
Aha! Do you have any opinion on the pedestrianisation of Norwich city
centre? I'll be honest, I'm dead against it.
Yar a bit late for tha' Bor...
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-14 14:54:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?

Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)

A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Paul Johnson
2013-05-14 15:40:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
I can just about better that with 707 miles (Zurich to Bristol) a few
years ago.

But to echo what has been said before, work from home, decent money and
mail to jobs.perl.org. Yes, there are caveats, some of which are
different to the caveats for onsite hiring, but it's a good solution for
some people and for some companies. And I think I'm quite safe in
saying for more companies than are currently working that way.
--
Paul Johnson - paul at pjcj.net
http://www.pjcj.net
Schmoo
2013-05-14 15:56:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paul Johnson
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
I can just about better that with 707 miles (Zurich to Bristol) a few
years ago.
A colleague of mine travels to London (on a weekly basis) from
Copenhagen, Denmark.
He's been doing that for quite a few years now.
He takes a flight, and that seems to be about 593 miles ATCF
(estimating Zurich to Bristol as 574 miles ATCF).

Gaz
Joel Bernstein
2013-05-14 16:04:56 UTC
Permalink
Your estimates are wonky, the relevant distance is a (section of a) great
circle, not ATCF:
http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=LHR-CPH,+BRS-ZRH
*From* *To* Initial
*Heading* *Distance* LHR <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/LHR> (51?28'39"N
0?27'41"W)CPH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/CPH> (55?37'05"N 12?39'21"E)
56.9? (NE)610 miBRS <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/BRS> (51?22'58"N
2?43'09"W)ZRH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/ZRH> (47?27'53"N 8?32'57"E)
113.7? (SE)575 mi
/joel
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Paul Johnson
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became
Travelodge
Post by Paul Johnson
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
I can just about better that with 707 miles (Zurich to Bristol) a few
years ago.
A colleague of mine travels to London (on a weekly basis) from
Copenhagen, Denmark.
He's been doing that for quite a few years now.
He takes a flight, and that seems to be about 593 miles ATCF
(estimating Zurich to Bristol as 574 miles ATCF).
Gaz
Dirk Koopman
2013-05-14 16:26:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joel Bernstein
Your estimates are wonky, the relevant distance is a (section of a) great
http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=LHR-CPH,+BRS-ZRH
*From* *To* Initial
*Heading* *Distance* LHR <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/LHR> (51?28'39"N
0?27'41"W)CPH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/CPH> (55?37'05"N 12?39'21"E)
56.9? (NE)610 miBRS <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/BRS> (51?22'58"N
2?43'09"W)ZRH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/ZRH> (47?27'53"N 8?32'57"E)
113.7? (SE)575 mi
/joel
Cough, I think you will find that most of this will be on airways and
not GC. Sadly RNAV has yet to catch on in a big way, largely thanks to
the inertia in the various air traffic services that such a flight would
traverse.

Dirk
Joel Bernstein
2013-05-14 16:30:26 UTC
Permalink
Yeah, I realised this (and discussed on IRC) almost as soon as I posted it.
Still, I managed to be a smartarse, and that's the main thing.
Post by Joel Bernstein
Your estimates are wonky, the relevant distance is a (section of a) great
http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=**LHR-CPH,+BRS-ZRH<http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=LHR-CPH,+BRS-ZRH>
*From* *To* Initial
*Heading* *Distance* LHR <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/**LHR<http://www.gcmap.com/airport/LHR>>
(51?28'39"N
0?27'41"W)CPH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/**CPH<http://www.gcmap.com/airport/CPH>>
(55?37'05"N 12?39'21"E)
56.9? (NE)610 miBRS <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/**BRS<http://www.gcmap.com/airport/BRS>>
(51?22'58"N
2?43'09"W)ZRH <http://www.gcmap.com/airport/**ZRH<http://www.gcmap.com/airport/ZRH>>
(47?27'53"N 8?32'57"E)
113.7? (SE)575 mi
/joel
Cough, I think you will find that most of this will be on airways and not
GC. Sadly RNAV has yet to catch on in a big way, largely thanks to the
inertia in the various air traffic services that such a flight would
traverse.
Dirk
Theo van Hoesel
2013-05-14 15:54:14 UTC
Permalink
No Contractors heer in the Netherlands ?

Verstuurd vanaf onze gratis iPad
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
2013-05-14 15:42:12 UTC
Permalink
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
I sense a contest starting...

I've been a full-time employee for 6 years, and the office is (according
to Google maps) 932km (579 miles, so I do not win the distance contest)
away, in a different country, with no shared borders (yeah, not counting
the one in the Pacific). Do I win?

And I'm not working from home either, because I can go and sit in a
local office (opened last year, full of real (non-dev) people, part of
the company network; before that, the company rented one for the two
devs working from Lyon), which is about 20 minutes walk from home.

Surely there's a badge for "I go to the office either by foot or by plane"?

On the other hand, we've not hired any remote dev since 2009.
So I can probably claim the "endangered species" badge too. ;-)
--
Philippe Bruhat (BooK)

All life affects us... even that which is far from our gaze.
(Moral from Groo The Wanderer #59 (Epic))
Paul Weaver
2013-05-15 10:48:50 UTC
Permalink
I work in a variety of offices around the world. This year my most frequent office has been Jerusalem, about 12 days there, and a couple more up the road in Ramallah and a bit further in Gaza, but I've been to another 8 or 9 on top of that.

I'm almost up to 70,000 miles this year, and on my 51st flight of the year while I write this.

When I'm not abroad my commute is down stairs into the study.

My effective line manager has an insane schedule. He's in Moscow this week, Delhi next week, Singapore after that then Bangkok. This helps a lot, as my real line manager hasn't got a clue about the stresses of (economy class) travel.

I'm hoping to be Europe bound for the next 2 weeks, with just day trips or maybe an single overnight, but Delhi, Joburg, sydney, Jakarta, shanghai, new york, kabul, washington and Singapore all need my attention in the next few months.

I'm looking forward to my next long haul day flight as I'll get a change to get my teeth into writing some new code (Perl of course). The lack of distraction from email and phones is really useful, but it makes network development a bit harder, and I get funny looks when I string two laptops together on the plane!
Post by Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
Post by Aaron Trevena
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
50 miles? Luxury! I have to do sixty! :)
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
223?
Pah! my last contracting gig was 682 miles each way (Threemilestone,
Cornwall to Groningen, Netherlands)
I sense a contest starting...
I've been a full-time employee for 6 years, and the office is (according
to Google maps) 932km (579 miles, so I do not win the distance contest)
away, in a different country, with no shared borders (yeah, not counting
the one in the Pacific). Do I win?
And I'm not working from home either, because I can go and sit in a
local office (opened last year, full of real (non-dev) people, part of
the company network; before that, the company rented one for the two
devs working from Lyon), which is about 20 minutes walk from home.
Surely there's a badge for "I go to the office either by foot or by plane"?
On the other hand, we've not hired any remote dev since 2009.
So I can probably claim the "endangered species" badge too. ;-)
--
Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
All life affects us... even that which is far from our gaze.
(Moral from Groo The Wanderer #59 (Epic))
David Cantrell
2013-05-15 11:34:00 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paul Weaver
I'm looking forward to my next long haul day flight as I'll get a change to get my teeth into writing some new code (Perl of course). The lack of distraction from email and phones is really useful, but it makes network development a bit harder, and I get funny looks when I string two laptops together on the plane!
That's one of the reasons my latest laptop has eleventy bazillion
gigglebytes of memory, so I can run loads of VMs with a private notwork
between them. Of course, since buying it my little networky project
has been decidedly on the back burner, due to laziness :-)
--
header FROM_DAVID_CANTRELL From =~ /david.cantrell/i
describe FROM_DAVID_CANTRELL Message is from David Cantrell
score FROM_DAVID_CANTRELL 15.72 # This figure from experimentation
Greg McCarroll
2013-05-14 14:31:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Vinnerd
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?).
I don't want to unleash the dogs of war and also the hyena of paranoia
but this could be related to IR35 and the differences between the
control/tax/etc in a services contract and a contractor employment for
the agency.

G.
Peter Corlett
2013-05-14 15:10:30 UTC
Permalink
[...]
Post by Ben Vinnerd
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?).
I don't want to unleash the dogs of war and also the hyena of paranoia but
this could be related to IR35 and the differences between the control/tax/etc
in a services contract and a contractor employment for the agency.
Is that not bass-ackwards? What looks most like disguised employment falling
under IR35 to you:

a) Somebody working in their own office, using their own equipment, and working
whenever the hell they like so long as the job gets done; or

b) Somebody going to a company's premises, using the company's equipment, and
doing so every day, nine-to-five?
Peter Corlett
2013-05-14 15:58:18 UTC
Permalink
Post by Duncan Garland
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.
It seems that every Perl job advert lists a collection of Modern Perl modules,
a database, and a Linux distribution, and asks for expertise in them all, and
none of them stand out from the crowd. I don't know if I've even seen your
advert as you didn't say who the company is. I've certainly not had my interest
piqued by it if I did.
Post by Duncan Garland
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?
Well... I'd consider firing that agent for a start, as it almost sounds as if
he's passively waiting for candidates to turn up rather than aggressively
hunting them, or perhaps he has such a poor reputation in the community that
people are refusing to deal with him.

Another problem is that more or less all of the good Perl hackers are already
working on things they love, or at least don't despise enough, that they're
disinclined to jump ship based on a bland description that doesn't sound better
than what they've got already. Offering more money is the obvious motivator,
but not necessarily the best. Working from home, an unusually large amount of
annual leave, seven hour days, foreign travel, training, conference visits,
career advancement, that sort of thing. If that's not in the job description,
we'll just have to assume the job is unappreciated code monkey, sat in a
horrible open-plan office eight hours a day, 232 days a year.
Chris Jack
2013-05-14 16:18:24 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dominic Humphries
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became Travelodge
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
I commuted from England to Finland (around 1200 miles each way) on a weekly basis for about a year back in my Trema Finance Kit consultancy days. And yes, it involved Perl programming.

I win.

Chris
Joel Bernstein
2013-05-14 16:22:16 UTC
Permalink
And if you turned up without your Trema Finance Kit did you have to do it
in your underwear?
Post by Dominic Humphries
Post by Dominic Humphries
Indeed. My previous contract was 223 miles, each way! (I became
Travelodge
Post by Dominic Humphries
guest of the year during that gig!! lol)
I commuted from England to Finland (around 1200 miles each way) on a
weekly basis for about a year back in my Trema Finance Kit consultancy
days. And yes, it involved Perl programming.
I win.
Chris
Graham Feegan
2013-05-14 08:23:10 UTC
Permalink
Hi Duncan

I'm a Perl specialist recruiter.

The candidate market is very tough. Over the last 3-6 months there hasn't been many new candidates making themselves available or open to new opportunities, therefore I can probably understand why your agent might be struggling. Your agent needs to think outside the box a little, just advertising and searching Job boards, just doesn't work at the moment.

I disagree with your agent about "there aren't many Perl vacancies". There are plenty of Perl roles out there; they are just slightly tricky to fill.

Finding PHP Developers is fairly straight forward and offering to cross-train would be appealing to many candidates. However if depends on timescales, can you afford to spend time training someone?

I forgot to ask is this a permanent or contract role? If you're considering contractors, then remote workers should definitely be considered! I work with quite a few guys based in Poland, Romania, Germany and Sweden. My clients tell me that the work is brilliant and they can keep track on what's being produced.

The other benefit of remote workers is that sometimes they can be cheaper on a day rate, because there aren't any commuting costs involved etc.

Don't just rely on the recruitment agency to find you people. Direct advertising and networking can work just as well.

Regards
Graham Feegan
Consultant
IT Executive Group Ltd
Direct Line: 0845 250 8634
Mobile: 07787 227 079
Office Line: 01908 506506
LinkedIn IT Executive - Twitter IT Executive - Facebook


-----Original Message-----
From: london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org [mailto:london.pm-bounces at london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Duncan Garland
Sent: 13 May 2013 22:22
To: 'London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers'
Subject: Alternative sources of Perl programmers

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
Aaron Trevena
2013-05-14 17:32:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Graham Feegan
The candidate market is very tough. Over the last 3-6 months there hasn't been many
new candidates making themselves available or open to new opportunities, therefore
I can probably understand why your agent might be struggling. Your agent needs to think outside
the box a little, just advertising and searching Job boards, just doesn't work at the moment.
Indeed that's why you have headhunters like perlhunter and shoeless
who know how to reach perl talent.
Post by Graham Feegan
I disagree with your agent about "there aren't many Perl vacancies". There are plenty of Perl roles out there; they are just slightly tricky to fill.
From the new hires I've seen in both London and in Cornwall at my
current and new employer, I wouldn't it's that tricky.
Post by Graham Feegan
Finding PHP Developers is fairly straight forward and offering to cross-train would be appealing to many candidates. However if depends on timescales, can you afford to spend time training someone?
Compared to how long it takes to recruit somebody with just the right
skills and years of experience - sometimes training is both quicker
and cheaper, and the right person is more important than the right
skill set - we've found C++ developers with a few years commercial
experience can transition to perl pretty quickly.
Post by Graham Feegan
Don't just rely on the recruitment agency to find you people. Direct advertising and networking can work just as well.
+1

..but -10 for top posting without trimming ;p

A.
--
Aaron J Trevena, BSc Hons
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Consulting
Chris Jack
2013-05-15 12:21:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by Joel Bernstein
And if you turned up without your Trema Finance Kit did you have to do it
in your underwear?
I wear underwear on all my assignments however... I am cycling off road from London to Paris on behalf of the
British Heart Foundation at the end of June.

I will guarantee to do it commando if I get ?100 in sponsorship from this list. All donations will be doubled through matching funds.

You can sponsor me here: http://www.justgiving.com/Chris-Jack4

Chris
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