It is not my own writing, but find it very interesting and want as many people to read as possible, especially those with high demand of IT in their organization. It answers a lot of question, definitely. It obviously leaves or even create new open questions. Whilst it talks specifically to Perl programmers, I believe it commonly applies to other languages as well. Anyway, enjoy !!
I was invited to a wonderful dinner party (I swear it wasn’t too spicy Sarah!) with some St. Louis Perl peoples this week while I’m here on business. At one point we were talking about hiring programmers, specifically Perl programmers.
We agreed on the following:
(1) Finding good programmers is hard in any language. And that a good programmer can be as effective as 5-10 average programmers.
(2) Average pay rates between equivalent programmers are out of sync and are based more on the language used than the skill of the programmer.
(3) You don’t need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over from being a novice in any language in a matter of a few weeks.
(4) You should seriously consider allowing your expert developers to telecommute full-time. Restricting your search to programmers who live in your area or are willing to move limits the talent you can acquire. Arguments regarding “face time”, productivity, etc. can easily be nullified when you look at how some of the largest and most successful Open Source projects such as Linux, Apache, and Firefox are developed by individuals rarely living in the same time zone or even country.
(5) We love Perl and think it’s a great language that you graduate to after you have been forced to use less agile languages such as Java, C/C++/C#, etc. Not necessarily a first language you get your feet wet with and then move onto a *cough* “real” language. Read the rest of this entry »
