i think Elixir is gaining a lot of popularity the last year

@seancorfield I only began looking for work today 🙂. I've been taking some time off... more than a year! But my personal project is dragging on a bit, and my female copart is getting a bit antsy. So it's good for me to find something more socially accepted. When it comes to other languages and technologies, it's just purely for income. But I happen to really admire Clojure (it's a language I suppose that fits in my small brain!). I haven't enjoyed programming as much since I moved from Java to Ruby

when you get a coding challenge as part of the recruiting process, is it a good idea to use enterprise level architecture like component and cutting edge technology like spec even if its just a small toy app or is it better to complete it with a lean project.clj file?

Thanks @fellshard and @mikeb

this is the first time I've been seriously considered for a full time Clojure job and I'm freaking out I'm so excited

Depends on your age 😉

@gdeer81 I would ask first whether they expect you to use those. It might be overkill for what they’re really asking.

if you're young, do what you think they want. If you're older, do what you think is right and defend the reasoning. If they don't want you because of it, then you may not want to work there

@michael_teter Getting into a new company as a Clojure “newbie” can be difficult. There’s a bit of a chicken’n’egg situation there.

That’s why finding companies that do Clojure + X and joining as an X developer is often easier (esp. if X is something you don’t mind doing as a day job). There are quite a few Clojure + Ruby shops, for example. Well, at least over here in the U.S. 🙂

I would hope that companies that actually use Clojure would be thinking people. Maybe that's my filter 🙂

We originally considered hiring an entry level Clojure dev but realistically we’re too small to have the bandwidth of mentoring someone as they grow into the role (we’d previously tried cross-training existing devs to Clojure and that had varying levels of success). So we decided to hire mid-to-senior level Clojure devs instead 😞

Ahh interesting

My limited experience has been Clojure meetups in Amsterdam. I recall one company explaining that as a Scala/Ruby (and presumably Java) shop, they had very little trouble teaching their guys Clojurescript (Scala didn't have a ->JS option yet)

I guess it depends a lot on your existing primary language. The shift from imperative to functional was a bit of a jump for me

there are a good number of companies hiring for clojure, but not so many that there a lot in anyone place, and few are interested in remote hires

I see a lot of clojurescript positions or clojurescript + python/ruby etc

I have five years experience writing clojure professionally and it took me about 4 months to find a nice remote job, and while I was dotting the i's and crossing the t's on that job a new manager came in and said no remote hires, and then it took me another 4-5 to find another, and now I am employed again.

I have some suspicion that some companies including Clojure are just looking for people willing to think Clojure... not that that's bad, but it typically leads to a hedge fund with a magic technology wish based on what I've seen

@hiredman that's not inspiring 😛

I would say the job market really is a lottery, I am not sure if clojure's nicheness counts for it or against it in the odds, fewer places but less competition

@hiredman probably not. Using marketing/psychology skills and naming the according tools/technologies would probably result in more income and freedom to choose the actual technologies. That seems to be the real trick. Most of what I've learned, I learned by being a bit subversive at companies I worked at (and they profited)

I actually had to convince companies that Java was legit at one time...

(or not, and just do it and show-and-tell)

I should say my previous clojure job was pretty much the only thing on my resume, so if you have more than that your odds may be better

Thanks. It's nice to have perspective. I guess like so many other improvements, I'll have to take another job and morph it into what I want 😉

@michael_teter If you’re based in Amsterdam, it’s the best city to be in to get a Clojure job I think

@borkdude I'm in Rotterdam, but trains are easy... and I want to move back to A'dam or Den Haag

@michael_teter There have been some open jobs at e.g. StudyFlow, AdGoji, Elmar

I just applied to StudyFLow 🙂. I'll check the others!

@dottedmag oh man, me too! But my SO is Dutch...

@michael_teter I worked at Finalist in Rotterdam and did quite some Clojure there. You might want to talk there, since they have a lot of languages (Java, Ruby, etc.) and that might be a good way to do a bit of both

@michael_teter @thomas also just started there, don’t know if they are looking for more people

I admit one of my internal problems is that since I'm a broad generalist, I always cower a bit at the excessive "requirements" list on job posts. I never have 100% of the reqs, even though I've always met or exceeded my needs

@borkdude I'll look. Thanks!

@michael_teter https://www.finalist.nl/werkenbij

I've been lazy and have not learned Dutch. Translator works well enough, but I'm obviously excluded from some opportunities

@michael_teter oh, if you want to apply there, please let me know beforehand, so I can win an iPad or something 😉

Willdo! 🙂

I always wonder about that obsession about programming languages. I mean, part of the point of going to university is to learn concepts that you can apply in every programming language. Of course I have preferences and would love to code in clojure, but in the end I just dont care which language earns me money and fullfills the job.

I think that how much you enjoy your (programming) job is a quality of life issue — and there are several languages I would be unhappy programming in.

At some point you get a feeling for which language really fits for which problem, and then using other languages (especially languages that strongly do not fit) becomes an emotional drag

Java would just be crushingly miserable for me — unless, perhaps, it was completely green field in Java 8, but it would still depend on the environment.

But to be fair, focusing on one long-lived and commercial language might be better (ignorance is bliss, and expertise brings $$$ ?)

you can't put a price on sanity, at this point I'd rather be a junior Clojure dev on a good dev team than be a senior java developer on a team full of people just doin it for the money

As long as certain amount of income is covered, more money won’t make you much happier, but using your favorite programming language will. That’s my 2cts.

@gdeer81 Are you implying the the senior java developers are not a good dev team? 😄

indeed

hehe

@sveri let me clarify, I'm a senior java developer with a really good team of contractors and a nice group of on-site developers and it's still kind of soul sucking

I said it a few times here already and am willing to repeat again. Where I work, we have such good circumstances that I would even code in Fortran / Assembler or Cobol. For instance we have a strict "Customer defects > internal defects > tech debt | features" philosophy and one of our team lead target agreement is to keep the defect count below 10. That alone is way more worth than a lot of certain PL language features.

@sveri that's a rare and great situation

true, you can't sprinkle Clojure over a terrible company and expect magic, but that's a whole different topic

Indeed, our last release cycle (6 months) was spent completely over tech debt, no feature work 🙂

@sveri To me that sounds a bit soul sucking 😉

Hm, it was not for me, also, in the end its not about developer vs management but about how does a company gain value and the insight that part of a long living product is reducing tech debt.

A good company is rare. I'd do VBA for that

🙂 exactly 😄

@sveri True

That said, TIL that junit does execute only one @BeforeClass annotated method if two have the same name and one class extends the other. While it executes both @BeforeClass annotated methods if the method names are different while one class extends the other. Took me several hours to debug -.-

@sveri At least you have unit tests! 😂

@borkdude haha, thats true too 😄

Seems to be a dearth of those.

I had an initial phone call with someone who posted in #remote-jobs around this time last year. He said he would schedule a follow up interview and I never heard back from him, of course. Companies just going dark in the middle of the interview process happens a lot.

That's a horrible feeling - being left in the limbo without knowing either way

yep

I find it extremely rude and insensitive, but that's just my opinion

At least if you've made it to the first round

A lot of companies think they have “too many” applications to warrant sending a thank you note to each person but, really, how long does it actually take to send a copy’n’paste response even if the candidate is completely unsuitable?

I understand not letting 200 applicants know without reaching a first round call

Exactly

I saw a posting for a job on twitter, contacted the guy (via email), he handed me to his hiring manager, had a call with his hiring manager who said "you will hear from me no matter what" at the end of the call, never heard back from the hiring manager and never heard back from the original guy when I sent him a short email asking about it

(alts!! [company-channel (timeout 604800000)])

^^ how do I usually react to this :)

The time you spend sending a canned rejection to a candidate should be negligible compared to the time you spend reading their cover letter / résumé and deciding to reject them...

(we have a JIRA process for handling applications and part of that workflow is to contact the candidate, even for a rejection — that said, even we occasionally miss a follow-up)

I think it stands as a testament to the loss in human connection that the business world has developed over many decades

Link that in with the internet, LinkedIn, etc and the plethora of recruiters alive today

Most of whom are probably half my age

Say, people who grok Clojure and also interested in "teal organizations" / "Holacracy" stuff.

Though probably going straight to Amsterdam would increase changes for that a lot.

I find that the best people to hire tech people are the rare people who are both successful technical people and also social/business people. And as you can imagine, those are .00001% of the population

~750 on Earth? Yes, that'd be pretty rare.

I think that might be accurate 🙂

anyway, the whole thing left me with a pretty dim view of technical hiring in general, and a tendency to want to scowl when I hear people talk about community

Heh, you and me both. Most tech companies are terrible at recruiting.

A company fly me from London to Dallas for an interview and it was so awful I got up and left about 3/4 through it and went back to the airport early. When I got home, they called and offered me the job anyway… I turned them down.

I've spent a lot of thought on this. Typically a person quits. Then HR (or the non-tech manager) thinks, "what did person X do?..." Then they make a laundry list of technologies (because that's what actually goes on), and that becomes the Req

Hah! I did Denver->Hamburg for the same situation. Then the VP apologised

(yeah, they did at least have the grace to apologize… but still…)

the problem is that everyone, even us, underestimate what actually is needed for technical systems. non-tech people have it really bad, and they tend to be the people we deal with

no one, not one company I interviewed with asked for references

Well in the US, references are pointless. Companies are legal targets (be precendence) if they provide a negative review). So they usually just say "so and so worked here from period X to Y and had this title"

basically name rank serial number

In Europe, they may want your age and photo. I find it shocking 🙂

sure, but personal references from former managers, coworkers, etc

In Europe, we can ask pretty much any questions we want (or at least we could in England back when I was a hiring manager over there) 🙂

Like I said, in the US that is grounds for lawsuit. So they are taught to avoid giving anything subjective

I worked at a place in Amsterdam that internally said one of the reasons they didn't hire a young woman was because she would be uncomfortable with their constant boys' talk (finance)

(that was only one reason)

possibly valid

culture is what it is

I tried asking a few people I've worked with previously to write reviews for my on LinkedIn and not one person bothered to take the time which really surprised me. This would feel like a much better reference than blindly listing employees I've previously work for/with on a CV with some contact details that may/may not still be valid

I’ve had some companies pursue references with surprising vigor (World Singles, where I work now, tried very hard to track down two of my former managers, both of whom were almost untraceable after several job changes!).

that is nonsense, other fields ask for references and use them just fine

@yogidevbear I get asked for LinkedIn references a lot, but I’ll only write them for folks who have worked directly alongside me, not just some random person in the community.

I find Linkedin a bit watered down

Yeah, I'm talking about people I've worked with directly though, which is why it surprised me so much

It may be useful, but I know it's more of a game than personal/email contact

What, having references via LinkedIn?

I suppose so. I can see how it might not hold value for some as people could manipulate situations

Linkedin in general seems to be more watered down, more a marketing and numbers game. More like a twitter or SEO effort

Fair point

Not to say it doesn't achieve a user's goal