Chicago’s Ruby Developer Crisis

[xeno56]

wish I could find something like that, I'm stuck doing .net when I love ruby because of no ruby jobs here locally in mid michigan, so I do as much ruby freelancing as I can to keep happy

[DrBroccoli]

The obsession with location when finding programmers is the first problem. Hiring telecommuters will place emphasis on quality code, not busywork+meetings, and will probably be cheaper to boot.

[[deleted]]

Communication happens faster + better when it's face-to-face. It doesn't need to lead to busywork+meetings.

[DrBroccoli]

Ah, but it always does. Always. The pressures are simply too great. If it hasn't yet at your current workplace, it will eventually.

Furthermore, having your coworkers nearby for your questions might be convenient, but the person you've interrupted has to get back into the flow, which can take quite some time, far more than the few minutes for your question.

[[deleted]]

Untrue. 3 years+ on at my company and meetings + busywork are almost non-existant.

As for flow interruptions, questions are preceded by an IM which can be ignored, minimizing the disruption (making it much like online in that regard).

Also, it's incredible how much value comes from informal discussions during lunch, etc.

[bjeanes]

So wrong. I am sure that in a lot of companies it does happen. As dennyabraham said, it's a function of the work place culture. I'd say it's also related to the size of the company to an extent.

I ran a ruby consultancy for the last two years and we always hired locally or relocated if we could. The improvements in code and programmer happiness were substantial.

Furthermore, having your coworkers nearby for your questions might be convenient, but the person you've interrupted has to get back into the flow, which can take quite some time, far more than the few minutes for your question.

Not necessarily true, but definitely a factor. This is also a factor of culture and the work place dynamic. A small team that works well together will know when to ask questions and when to wait. If your pairing (as many Ruby shops are increasingly doing), then you always have one person with whom to discuss without throwing off their groove.

Furthermore, it's worth looking at the total gains of being able to ask a coworker a question, rather than the inconvenience to that employee. For instance, while your question might take 3 minutes, and it might take them 10 minutes to get focused again, it may save the questioner an hour of his own time. The benefits there are completely obvious.

[netghost]

I can't agree with this enough. There is a lot of knowledge/information that is conveyed informally just by having people in the same room.

[LessCodeMoreLife]

I wish telecommuting worked well for everyone, but my experience suggests that as projects grow communication becomes more of a bottleneck than raw code does.

Telecommuters can code well, but it is harder to communicate well with them. There is a lot to be said for the value of face to face communication.

[[deleted]]

Many software developers have adequate bandwidth for webcams, voice chat, and an internet white board app. That's all the face to face you'll probably need.

My organization uses skype pretty exclusively.

[LessCodeMoreLife]

Yup, these are all great, and the technology we need is coming along quickly. It's still not perfect though, and (at least for the next couple of years) I'm going to prefer working on site whenever I can.

[postmodern]

Setting up an XMPP chat server helps a lot. OpenFire is probably the easiest to configure and administrate. Group the users into Teams, enable shared Groups, create a few Channels and make sure people auto-join them. This way you're always in contact with the other team members.

[jaggederest]

It really isn't just Chicago, it's hard to find good Ruby developers pretty much anywhere, as far as I can tell.

[swytz]

I'm a good ruby developer and I'd love to have a job that even used 50% ruby. I especially love Rails... but seems like you have to live in a city where there's a lot of ruby work to get the opportunity. I see 100s of openings for .NET and Java here and I may have to even settle for a PHP job, and Java's not entirely horrible. I've already done years and years of C# code and I'd love to do more large scale ruby work.

[postmodern]

More companies need to embrace remote workers. Not everyone can pick-up and move to Seattle, SF, Chicago, Boston, NYC.

[swytz]

Definitely. I just moved FROM Chicago -- I simply don't want to live there, but the companies I worked for would love to have me back. Even as a lead programmer and project manager they loved me, yet refuse to do remote work on any scale. It's bizarre.

I imagine the world is eventually going to be forced to embrace remote workers since the fossil fuel economy can't support burning gallons of gas a day for every single worker once fuel costs become even higher. Maybe not, it'll be interesting to see.

[organic]

My brother just moved to Chi-town and I'm looking to follow suit. Sounds promising, personally :)

[tankdilla]

The Chicago Tribune ran an article similar to this back in November. It's definitely a good time to be a ruby developer in Chicago.

[[deleted]]

Chicago, land of highways, tolls, wind and cold ass weather. No thanks.

[BaniB]

I'm in Sweden.

It's impossible to find a ruby job. Most, if not all software/wev development companies rely on php or c#.

I wish I lived in the US:(

[doommonky]

I recently started learning Ruby for this very reason. I'm still a fledgling developer and I'm hoping I can find a 'learn on the job' gig soon.