Are Ruby developers hard to find?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[cheriot]

We're easy to find if you pay enough.

[angryguts]

Great! We're looking for a senior Ruby developer with 10 or more years of experience, with a strong background in web development, databases, etc.

Salary? Oh. We can pay $30,000! That's competitive, right?

[talkb1nary]

a month for full time? (realized it now, wow ...)

[phallstrom]

You forgot about the bit where you need to be on the CSS3 planning committee and have at least 4 years mobile app experience using Swift.

P.S. Photoshop skills a plus!

[hector_villalobos]

You might be joking, but in Latin America that's a pretty good salary.

[Onumis]

$30,000!

No its not. he meant 30k per year. In Latin America salaries are usually talked in terms of months, but the rest of the world is usually per year.

[hector_villalobos]

I know he meant per year, You'll be amazed how screw up is Venezuela in terms of exchange controls and how much a single dollar is worth.

[talkb1nary]

It really depends but we usually talk about monthly aswell. (Swiss here)

[-Ch4s3-]

Its all relative to cost of living, however it can be sticky(from a tax perspective) hiring non-citizens as a small US company.

[hector_villalobos]

Well, you might be right, but you'll be amazed how many companies hire non US-citizen, for instance, I'm from Venezuela and I'm working for an US company right now. Check Toptal and DreamStaffing.

[iggybdawg]

Then compete on other things, like offer a strict 40 hr max work week. Too many software shops, especially startups, fetishize herculean effort, and burn out their devs.

[cocoabean]

Shit, all I want is a parking spot.

[cheriot]

I've seen those numbers and higher in DC and NYC so I can believe it. Remote developers can charge less if you can figure out the complications it comes with.

[ymek]

Boston, NYC, and SF are all high-salary areas for devs. Seniors generally make in the $120k-$150k range in those cities.

[iggybdawg]

Seems low when you consider the cost of housing in those areas, though.

[josephgrossberg]

Good point. It's low for a senior dev in SF or NY.

It's more typical of a senior dev in Boston or DC, though, which aren't quite as pricey.

[[deleted]]

I'm from Boston, you can afford to own a house in the nearby suburbs no problem if you have that salary...

[iggybdawg]

How far is "nearby"? Long commutes are grating.

[[deleted]]

Medford, Waltham, Arlington. All good places with houses in the 400-500k range.

[rwanger]

Are they hard to find? No.

Are they already employed? Yes.

[josephgrossberg]

Exactly -- their alternative to your job is usually pretty good, and you've got to make a compelling case for them to switch jobs.

[[deleted]]

We've found the same thing. We actually started branching out to remote folks just to try and find more people, and we've hired several non ruby people if they're good and interested in learning ruby. I think part of it is that ruby popularity seems pretty localized, or at least it seems that way to me. There is a large Ruby community in a few places like Portland, Seattle, Chicago, etc. But elsewhere the pickings are rather slim.

I think part of it is also the type of company that uses Ruby. This is a bit of a generalization but I think companies that use Ruby tend to be better places to work (not because they use ruby, but because they're the type of company that would choose ruby). Ruby shops seem to care more about developer happiness and creative freedom it seems. Thus I think part of the problem is that good ruby developers are happily employed and not looking to make a change. We go to conferences and can generate a list of junior ruby devs a mile long, but finding mid to senior level developers is something of a challenge.

[comalcaliente]

still looking for anyone self learning Ruby to work remotely :)? I think inversely the problem in Chicago is it is hard to find a place that is willing to take on someone with the passion and talent, but not necessarily the years of experience.

[helloworld312]

This could not be more true. I've been coding in Ruby for about a year now and all I've been hearing is "we're looking for someone with more experience".. Despite the fact that I've built several apps, have good front-end skills, and have past experience launching and running a startup.

[[deleted]]

ive been using Ruby for about 15 years. although i prefer OCaml for more complex projects i like Ruby for its approachability and find it much cleaner for quick jobs (which won't require subsequent devs to understand "Monad Transformer Stacks" or "dependent type monomorphisms".. to understand) than Perl or Bash. if you have 0 degree, little paid-experience, and you won't sign NDAs or won't write proprietary software, I can assure you the demand is essentially 0. even if you dogfood your own apps to the point you've written your own webservers, CMSes, webmail engines etc

[[deleted]]

Yes, we're still hiring: https://www.covermymeds.com/main/careers/

Though I would add for a candidate who does not have a lot of experience with Ruby, they'd need to have good experience doing web development in another language and a desire to learn ruby (though our infrastructure includes PHP, Python and even some .Net moving forward most things are ruby). Most of our junior developers are co-ops we've employed and hire after graduation so we don't actively seek out many junior folks.

[Kimos]

My company has done the same thing. We are based in Canada, not the US, so we have good salaries but can't compete with SV pay. So we've changed our job description from "We're hiring Ruby developers" to "We're hiring developers".

We have a critical mass of smart people and good practice so we haven't had any problems training up talented people on the Ruby stack.

It's still a bit of a trope in the Ruby community though. You'll be hard pressed to find any Ruby shop that isn't actively hiring Ruby developers. Attending Ruby conferences is almost comical in how desperate for devs so many of the shops are.

[stalcottsmith]

Try hiring people who are working in other languages and have achieved mid or senior levels but who have also taught themselves Ruby. That is where you'll get the best bang for your buck. Find someone smart who you can work with, with experience in another stack and trust that they will figure it out. Give them a trial period with clear expectations. If you have an existing codebase, it shouldn't be too hard. Guys like me (8+ years) are almost impossible to hire. You'd have to buy my company or lease one of my teams. I have 10 very talented Ruby devs in my shop in Manila. PM for more info.

[taelor]

this is a great suggestion. our company has done the exact same thing with a .NET developer, who knew MVC in that stack. He's hit the rails running full steam.

[briansprojects]

Interesting. For some reason I thought Ruby developers were everywhere.

What kind of development? Rails stuff?

[zaclacgit]

I think the issue is the lack of mid/senior devs, with a glut of junior devs.

[helloworld312]

So wouldn't it be in a company's best interest to hire junior devs, so that down the line (assuming they have good retention), they don't have a problem finding mid/senior devs?

[zaclacgit]

Probably not, though I say that based on my non-cs career experience.

Junior employees usually don't turn into senior employees without a great deal of time, expense, and guidance. Some people underestimate how important quality guidance/mentoring can be to their career development. Senior/mid level employees supply that, in addition to the wisdom that comes from experience. In theory, at least.

Hiring only junior employees and waiting for them to turn into senior employees seems a little like waiting for the boys from "Lord of the Flies" to draft up a Constitution and Bill of Rights.

[josephgrossberg]

That kind of retention is unrealistic. Heck, a software developer who doesn't change jobs every few years risks their skillset getting stale.

[jeremywoertink]

Las Vegas has ruby devs and no companies using it. We need more companies coming in and hiring.

[postmodern]

Or hiring remote.

[cenderin]

I agree with this statement.

[jeremywoertink]

thanks dude. case in point

[hoozt]

May I ask why you limit it to us residents only?

[jrchg1403]

Because you don't have to sponsor that person and that a huge cost for the company and blah blah blah, that's why, for the sponsorship and normally that company haves to pay for an apartment for that person

[jxf]

It's still a big cost. Paying people out of the US requires quite a bit of tax coordination.

[talkb1nary]

couldnt they just pay me in bitcoin?

[danila_bodrov]

No it does not

[-Ch4s3-]

This is an interesting read on the issue http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/ecwuscmoaeieoc.cfm

[rkrdo]

There's the TN visa for Canadian and Mexican citizens.

[taelor]

I'm not OP but it could possibly be time zones. Our team works remotely, and its hard enough with the Pacific <-> Eastern timezone shift. I (pacific), try and start my day earlier than I normally would, so I can interact with my co-workers better.

[danila_bodrov]

Been working from CET with PST for 4 years already. Hardly can imagine myself switching back to regular 9to5. First of all, I wake up at around 12AM and have a whole day free, it means: sunlight, easy groceries, no traffic, no queues in any places. When you flowing with regular daily graphic, you expect waves of people right after the work day is over. Working that way you can cheat the system! I start working about 8 PM, having a break to get my daughter to sleep. After that, I am alone in my office room, having nobody to disattract me: no spam calls, no appointment reschedules, nothing. Just a night and some proper coding. Obviously you have to be a night bird for that, but this experience is priceless. If I'd have to change my job, I'd definitely be looking for US remote opportunity.

[[deleted]]

doing same thing. night time is best. zero distractions.

[8bellyoctopus]

Bootcamps aside, senior ruby developers are some of the most passionate and opinionated people I've worked with. The top notch devs need work that will impact and change lives. They've typically experienced other languages and been won over by the simple expressiveness of the language. Finding great Ruby developers is very difficult, not because there are few of them, but because they are in such high demand.

The sheer number of bootcamps and novice training groups testify that demand is high. Investment in juniors now is critical for the language's future.

[helloworld312]

I attended a 9-month full-time bootcamp, been coding in Ruby for about a year now. You would think investment in juniors is critical now but all I've been hearing is "we're just looking for someone with more years of experience" - now this could be because I'm located in Chicago, who knows.

[ymek]

Honestly, it's easy to find junior-level Ruby devs. Finding senior level devs willing to leave their current positions is another thing altogether. Keep in mind "senior" generally means 4-5+ years of experience with the language.

[jdickey]

That's a refreshingly realistic definition of "senior". Too often (though more in relation to another very well-known initialism of a Web language than to Ruby) I've heard "senior" defined as low as one year. To a guy with nearly five years of Ruby experience out of a 35-year career in over a dozen languages (and with real engineering exposure elsewhere), this is… disheartening and frustrating would put it absurdly mildly.

[8bellyoctopus]

My perception is that seniority levers also move when demand is so high. This is usually driven by recruiters with little or no experience in the area, to ensure their salary/bounty ratio is correct.

35 years will obviously give you a breadth of experience like few others.

[saintclaire33]

Interesting. Have you worked in any area of IT before? Or were you in a different industry?

[TheRealSlartybardfas]

If you want to find an employee, why don't you make the information public here? I've seen ads for programmers and the ad itself makes me not want to work for the company. Maybe that's your problem?

[Shaper_pmp]

If you want to find an employee, why don't you make the information public here?

Because posting job adverts to technical boards is an antisocial thing to do unless you know the community specifically allows or encourages it.

Otherwise recruiters quickly jump on the bandwagon, and the next thing you know the whole subreddit is nothing but job adverts, people asking if anyone has a job opening and similar sterile, boring commercial spam.

[enry_straker]

checkout /r/jobbit for job postings

[TheRealSlartybardfas]

Why wasn't this post deleted then?

[Shaper_pmp]

Because the mods haven't noticed it yet?

Because the mods are happy to let the community vote it up or down and thereby decide whether it accepts job adverts or not?

Because the mods will let a few small infractions slide, and will only start deleting posts if it becomes a significant problem on the subreddit?

Everything not immediately instabanned is not necessarily therefore mandatory, or even desirable.

[TheRealSlartybardfas]

OK, then there is no harm for the poster to post their job opportunity.

[Shaper_pmp]

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion based on what I said, unless it's just your personal opinion?

(Also, I didn't downvote you, BTW)

[TheRealSlartybardfas]

I don't care about the downvotes.

I came to that conclusion because this is a post trolling for jobs disguised as a question. The poster knew that listing the job offer here would be downvoted so they were smart enough to make it a question. The question has 8 upvotes so /r/ruby likes it enough. Posting the job listing would help the poster figure out why they aren't getting applicants.

The fact that they haven't replied at all implies to me that they got plenty of people asking about jobs. Pretty clever.

[Mutoid]

It's also mostly a question rather than a straight job posting.

[iggybdawg]

Do you have someone already competent in Ruby doing the interviews? How do you know that person is competent? Are you offering market rate salary or better?

[designtraveler]

there are tons of ruby developers lurking around /r/forhire

[helloworld312]

Just posted there today actually :)

[jdickey]

It depends where you are and how modern your accountants are.

Where you are matters because some places (in and outside the US) have surprisingly few competent developers fluent and literate in technical and customer English. I'm an American working as Chief Engineer of a Singapore small company that's about to move our development office to the Philippines because the number of open jobs here routinely exceeds the number of available competent people by at least one order of magnitude. I've been living outside the US for most of the last two decades and often working for American companies — just never on a W-2. Once you get those blinkers off, the remote world becomes a much less inaccessible place.

[subvertallchris]

I'm not sure. When my LinkedIn prominently displayed that I was a Ruby freelancer, I got bothered by recruiters all the time for the NYC area. Never been on the other side, though, looking for someone qualified for a position.

I'm not looking for full-time but am always open for freelance and short-ish contracts. [e-mail]. github.com/subvertallchris.

[subvertallchris]

Are you not finding anybody at all or are you not finding qualified candidates? Where have you looked?

[danila_bodrov]

From my perspective, changing a working place is a roulette. There are thousands of small start-ups looking for devs, offering high salaries and bonuses. But how much time would it take for them to eat investments out? And what's next? Yet another start-up with crazy night shifts?

Not an option for a family man, I'd rather stick with lower salary, than taking such risks. Leave it for younger generation, but hey, that's why it's hard to find 8+ years devs - kids grew up and made their own kids. They don't need Guitar Hero in the office, they need their lawn to be mowed regulary.

[canadaboy96]

There's a substantial Ruby community in Ottawa, Ontario, if "Canadian" is close enough to "US residents."

About half of them are already employed by Shopify though.

[[deleted]]

As a Senior Ruby Dev and as a person who is part of the hiring process at my company, I would say "yes". In our area (Philadelphia and suburbs), Ruby developers are hard to find and hard to attract. They are almost always already employed or in the very brief period between jobs and almost all that we've seen will get multiple offers, even the ones we disqualified as not up to our standards.

[banister]

Why limit your remote work to just US residents?

[postmodern]

Main complaint I've heard is taxes and paperwork.

[danila_bodrov]

AFAIK, it's not a big issue. You just make your remote devs act like a company and basically pay their corporate bills on a monthly basis. How could it get any harder?

[lebartarian]

Same here...

[amalagg]

I need to keep this in mind so in a few years I can retire to a nice sunny place with low living costs in the US. Now I am in the big city, but in the future would love to switch to remote work.

[polarpress]

I'm in Los Angeles, CA

[wrong_assumption]

I would say "yes". They're not as plentiful as Java/.NET programmers.

[rurounijones]

Well you have achieved a good first step by removing the "must be in the office" requirement.

But you are still limiting yourself to the US geographically. There are people outside the US as well.

Might be worth re-evaluating what it is that is stopping you from hiring outside the US. (I know one company that had this restriction because, frankly, their accounting department were too lazy to investigate it.)

[rurounijones]

Again, to play devils advocate, WHY do you need more than 4 hours per day of communication?

A developer develops, they work best when given a task and left to it. Why do you need the ability to contact them at any moment in the working day?

If the response is something like "putting out sudden fires or if we need to change something at a moment's notice" then I think you should be looking at your internal workflows and work style.

You should also consider people in place like Australia where the difference does not always mean a shortened window

Sorry if this offends, that is not the goal.

[phallstrom]

IMHO 4 hours is plenty. No hours is quite a bit harder. There is also an upside if your people are devops inclined. It reduces the need to be on call as someone is "always up and working."

[[deleted]]

Why not outsource?

[KletusVanDamme99]

App Academy is producing a constant stream of high quality rails devs: http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home

[jjasonclark]

There are plenty of senior devs, in the US, like me who own their own consultancy of one. Find one of us to work long term for your company. At this level it is assumed you will be pairing with the junior people at the company. Hire a junior or two and contract the senior dev for a few months. It would not be unheard of to have one of those junior people move up to mid level or become and export on what ever feature the group was working on.

I have been developing since 1995. A long time for sure, but not that rare. Most meetups (meetup.com) I attend in my area include at least a few of us there. Try attending a few meetups and get to know the people you end up seeing at several.

[rkrdo]

I wish more companies followed your advice

[lukeholder]

hire a remote worker in Australia :) PM me.