[LA.pm] Fwd: jobs available, going unfulfilled

[Ben Tilly]

I'm forwarding this for Felix because his attempt to send it bounced.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Felix Lin <Felix at pinpoint.jobs>
Date: Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:08 PM
Subject: RE: [LA.pm] jobs available, going unfulfilled
To: Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com>


hey Ben, I shot a response to the mailing list and Randal and got
automatically denied.  I wonder if my old email address
(felix at marclingroup.com) would be the culprit.

if you want to post it, please feel free:

We have seen a large upswing in demand for both direct hire and
consultant personnel over the past 6 months or so across the board,
even at higher level positions.

The supply is definitely down, from a few reasons - the technology
talent that is US born/citizen/green card/perm resident is way down,
still stemming from the dot com bust in the early 2000s as well as big
fear in being outsourced.  A lot of major universities BSCS graduation
rates dropped over 50% after 2002, as people just got out of
technology.

There still is a generous supply of non-citizen H1 type personnel,
however, the US Government is making it harder and harder for
companies to use them on a temporary consulting basis (direct hire is
still the same), but companies are tending to shy away from hiring
people needing H1 Visas.

The next biggest gap is the communication problem - with more
companies using an agile based methodology, communication between team
members becomes more important, and the communication skills are
severely lacking.  If I had a new career to go with, I'd start a
technology focused ESL type class for adults.

if you have any questions about this, please let me know, I'd be happy
to answer them.

Have an OUTSTANDING day!

Felix Lin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/felixlin

Precise . Results . Guaranteed

We excel in hard to fill and specialized searches, including
direct-hire, contract, contract-to-hire and confidential replacements.

 310-356-8123 x103 (Office)
 310-868-0663 (Fax)
 310-980-4335 (Cell)


-----Original Message-----
From: losangeles-pm-bounces+felix=marclingroup.com at pm.org
[mailto:losangeles-pm-bounces+felix=marclingroup.com at pm.org] On Behalf
Of Ben Tilly
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 11:53 AM
To: Randal L. Schwartz
Cc: losangeles-pm at mail.pm.org
Subject: Re: [LA.pm] jobs available, going unfulfilled

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Randal L. Schwartz
<merlyn at stonehenge.com> wrote:
>
> Twice in the last two days, two different organizations in the greater
> LA area approached me to help them find folks to fill mid-level Perl
> hacking slots (varying between IT and webdev).  They both said "it's
> getting *very* hard to find people."
>
> Now, I'm really curious.  Why is this?
>
> Is it a supply problem, or a demand problem, or both?

I believe both.

On the demand side, LA has a number of companies that started with
Perl, and continued to grow.  And also some serial entrepreneurs that
keep on creating new companies using Perl.  This creates a healthy
local demand for Perl folks.

On the supply side a lot more people who would have started with Perl
a few years back are starting today with PHP, Ruby and/or Python.  If
you want junior people that isn't an issue - you can just train them.
If you want mid-level people a lack of people entering the pipeline is an issue.

> As in, are there fewer Perl programmers here but the same demand?
>
> Or the same (or more) Perl programmers here, but even more demand?
>
> Or something else entirely?

I would add that the Perl community as a whole seems to be greying.
The result is that more Perl folks think of themselves as senior.
This is highly inconvenient for companies that would like to fill
bodies at a lower salary point.

> By the way... I'm not trying to make a buck out of this.  I'm just
> trying to help people who ask me to help, and I'm also genuinely
> curious about the state of hiring in the Perl community, particulary
> in LA since I'm also working here for a while.

I didn't think you were.

> (I'll also be sending this message to the other local PM groups, so if
> you see it multiple times, I'm sorry.)
>
>
> --
> Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777
> 0095 <merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
> Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
> See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside
> discussion _______________________________________________
> Losangeles-pm mailing list
> Losangeles-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/losangeles-pm
>
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