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#jobs-discuss
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2020-09-23
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Aron07:09:42

I prefer the way @seancorfield talks about this, even though given your comments, I would be one of the people getting "negatively filtered". But I believe I rather work with people who can take heterodox ideas that are not wrapped in weasel words, and comments that don't tip-toe around their egos. In fact, I believe that companies or any kind of project where people need to work together, function better as a whole if members can voice heterodox ideas that others might find revolting, without fear of punishment. Better to be filtered before we get there.

Aron07:09:43

I definitely dislike the general attitude of "just spend more time on doing clojure" since most people who have already been able to do that have been doing that for years. If you want clojure to spread more, you shouldn't just rely on people who have the same amount of time as the already joined people had. Why do you think clojure proggrammers is such homogeneous group?

slipset08:09:38

@ashnur as a datapoint, at Ardoq, previous knowledge of Clojure is not a prerequisite. We do however expect a potential candidate to have some idea about functional programming and a willingness to learn Clojure.

slipset08:09:24

In fact, I'd rather hire a great dev that doesn't know Clojure than a mediocre one that does.

orestis08:09:56

I just want to add that when hiring, I was OK with candidates not having any Clojure knowledge (but willing/excited to learn) but they would have to counter that with knowledge/expertise on some other domain: databases, front-end web development, ops… expertise in those domains travels quite well and can be a beneficial to bring from a different language.

orestis08:09:23

Note that we were a small team/company and unfortunately hiring juniors is something I haven’t figured out yet.

slipset08:09:33

I guess it's easier to hire inexperienced people if you're a bigger team.

slipset08:09:12

Another point is that I like to hire for the long run, so if I have to spend a couple of weeks getting people up to speed in Clojure, in the long run, that time doesn't really matter.

orestis09:09:02

Two weeks come and go in the blink of an eye

Aron08:09:29

@slipset yeah, I don't mean to hire people who have no experience at what you want to build of course, I was just speaking out against the almost general consensus I perceived for more than 7 years I was trying to learn clojure, namely, that the best thing to get into the community is to spend more time. I mean, I do not debate the obvious truth in this sentiment, only the morality of accepting it as adequate.

seancorfield17:09:13

Breaking into a new technology in the job world can be really tough. A lot of companies simply won't hire people who don't already know the language, except for fresh-out-of-college hires and of course those are entry-level positions so they're of no interest to folks who've been programming for several years but want to switch technology. I work for a very small company and it would be very challenging for us to take on a new developer who had to be trained up on Clojure and then mentored until they were fully up-to-speed.

seancorfield17:09:46

When we first introduced Clojure, we were all learning it on the job of course -- but we had plenty of legacy code to keep everyone busy and they all knew that codebase (and language stack) really well, so they could ease into Clojure at their own pace and work on new code in Clojure as and when they wanted. Two devs left: one to go back to that legacy tech at another company (because they never really got comfortable in Clojure) and the other to go on to an all-Clojure shop so they didn't have to continue working on the legacy code 🙂 Now I'm the only one who knows that legacy tech, so it's my job to rewrite it all to Clojure while also working on new code (in Clojure) and we hired a dev who knew Clojure already to replace the two outgoing devs.

orestis19:09:08

I’m in a very very similar situation

orestis19:09:33

Legacy and shitty stack, introducing Clojure, people leaving, hiring new people, trying to rewrite the whole thing while keeping the lights on.

orestis19:09:25

We hired two new developers and the business is super happy. “Things that took a year now happen in three months” is their words :)

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orestis19:09:51

Clojure was a secret weapon in attracting talent.

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marciol20:09:30

Nice @U7PBP4UVA, I was trying hard to don’t be dragged back to Elixir, as I like Clojure more, but the absence of Jobs makes me looking back to my old home (I worked full time with Elixir for 3 years)

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danielglauser23:09:50

Luckily you've got a strong dev on your team who's online name claims he's always hired...

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seancorfield15:09:59

@U7PBP4UVA My teammate at World Singles Networks is hiredman 🙂

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