Randal,<br><br>I'm glad that you bring this out in the open. As you all know, I'm a recruiter so, well... I live the local job market. Here are my replies to Randal's initial comments...<br><br><div style="margin-left: 40px;">
Is it a supply problem, or a demand problem, or both?<br><br><font face="times new roman,serif">I would say both... employers have not had the budget to open new jobs and now that they do, they're under pressure to justify each opening. This justification doesn't usually equate to just needing more "hands on deck" and instead seem to be more geared toward fixing specific skills or business knowledge gaps (or both). These types of roles have a tendency to be more senior (i.e., management responsibilities or requirements for strong client handling/management) and are linked to specific, unique skill sets. These are, be definition, not jobs that provide opportunities for someone to "grow into."<br>
<br>Candidates on the other hand have a tendency to have more generalized skills, a strong conviction in their ability to take on new challenges given the opportunity, etc. I also believe that candidates are actively avoiding becoming a "niche player" in technology when it has been proven in the past that niche skills can be outsourced. There are however exceptions to that rule, especially for obviously very "hot" new technologies (e.g., Flash/Flex, HTML5, Java spring/hibernate expertise, virtualization, cloud computing, mobile app dev, etc.). Which basically means that the jobs that are being offered, are not the jobs that people are necessarily prepared to walk into from day one (or if they are, candidates are not making this obvious). So, yes, this is a supply problem but also a disconnect between management and people looking for work.<br>
<br>Schools are not helping the situation because they are clinging to producing engineers who are extreme generalists. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this IF I saw students who knew the foundational knowledge of CS inside-out-and-backward, but I'm not seeing that either. Preparing students for possible employment by providing a single class in web technologies or a token class in mobile/gaming engineering is really not doing the job. Students need a good foundation but they have to also be heavily exposed to real-world frameworks, languages, platforms etc. or it's tough going in this job market for all of the points noted above.<br>
<br>You all know I'm a huge fan of open-source and I'm convinced that the OS world can provide an alternative educational track than going the college route. That being said, people looking for work are going to have to make the hard choice to specialize or not to specialize. If you do specialize (which the market would indicate is important) you then have to decide what you're going to specialize in... of course, to add complexity, you'd like to specialize in something that stands a chance of having some job "life" and will not be outsourced relatively soon. It's a moving target out there!<br>
<br>Finally, along with missing senior-level candidates, there is also a hole in the availability of associate- and mid-level engineers with these special skill sets. The lack of mid-levels is not really that surprising since employers have not been hiring in recent years and the skill sets they are looking for are mostly learned on the job. If you don't hire associates, you won't have mid- and senior-level candidates in the coming years.<br>
<br>Any thoughts on these comments? Does any of this reflect what you have been seeing?<br></font><br>
As in, are there fewer Perl programmers here but the same demand?<br><br><span style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">I can't give insight into the next two questions because I have not been recruiting for perl talent in years. That being said, I would guess that the demand may have gone up a bit simply because the market is beginning to heat up, but... I would say that the demand for other languages and technologies would be growing at a faster pace (e.g., Java/spring/hibernate as the corporate standard, anything mobile, PHP ever present and growing, all things javascript-like for RIA dev, etc.).<br>
<br>I'd love to hear from others specifically about the growth of opportunities in the perl sector.<br></span><br>
Or the same (or more) Perl programmers here, but even more demand?<br></div>
<br clear="all">Regards,<br><br>Todd<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Randal L. Schwartz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:merlyn@stonehenge.com">merlyn@stonehenge.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
Twice in the last two days, two different organizations in the greater<br>
LA area approached me to help them find folks to fill mid-level Perl<br>
hacking slots (varying between IT and webdev). They both said "it's<br>
getting *very* hard to find people."<br>
<br>
Now, I'm really curious. Why is this?<br>
<br>
Is it a supply problem, or a demand problem, or both?<br>
<br>
As in, are there fewer Perl programmers here but the same demand?<br>
<br>
Or the same (or more) Perl programmers here, but even more demand?<br>
<br>
Or something else entirely?<br>
<br>
By the way... I'm not trying to make a buck out of this. I'm just<br>
trying to help people who ask me to help, and I'm also genuinely curious<br>
about the state of hiring in the Perl community, particulary in LA since<br>
I'm also working here for a while.<br>
<br>
(I'll also be sending this message to the other local PM groups, so if<br>
you see it multiple times, I'm sorry.)<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
<font color="#888888">Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095<br>
<<a href="mailto:merlyn@stonehenge.com">merlyn@stonehenge.com</a>> <URL:<a href="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/" target="_blank">http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/</a>><br>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.<br>
See <a href="http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/" target="_blank">http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/</a> for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion<br>
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