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2023-10-18
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Are there enough Clojure jobs in the US? I’m trying to get into the industry and I would like a Haskell or Clojure job. I have some experience with Common Lisp. Thanks
enough is pretty relative, but I'd love to see more
There are never going to be "enough" Clojure jobs -- there are always more people interested in working with Clojure than there are open reqs for Clojure developers. That's kind of a good thing: people love using Clojure and want to work with it, so employers generally have a fairly easy time hiring, if they can hire and train juniors. Of course, that level of demand means that a lot of wannabe Clojure developers will be perpetually disappointed. I will say that a quick search on http://indeed.com suggests that in any given location, there seem to be more Haskell jobs than Clojure jobs on average but the languages are so different that I think most people would specifically prefer one over the other.
Common Lisp experience is good for Clojure jobs IMO. Not too long ago I started with virtually zero professional experience except a bunch of Common Lisp projects and some Clojure projects.
My advice is going to be mostly unchanged from what I have said before here: just keep applying. Worst case scenario is getting a rejection letter, best case scenario is getting an offer! In my previous job hunt, I would say 60% of applications resulted in at the very least a phone interview, and half the phone interviews I did ended up going nowhere (i.e. recruiter just stopped replying to me), and I also had a situation where I did three rounds of interviews and still got rejected at the end of everything. However, I did get an offer somewhere after 1.5 months of applying to places and doing interviews
I will also admit that sometimes you just have to be lucky. It’s not easy finding jobs in the middle of a tech recession
I've found a slightly paradoxical(?) theme emerge after talking to many clojure employers. They mention it's difficult to hire clojure devs because the pool of workers is so small. At the same time they say that the clojure candidate quality is excellent. A lot of shops aren't willing to train people into a clojure role, they only want devs to be able to hit the ground running. Lastly, these shops often don't pay anywhere near the market rate for experienced, quality employees. So from my experience I'd say there are few clojure opportunities, and fewer well paying clojure jobs, partly because employers are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Oh, and also it seems to be the case that sharp/strong clojure dev shops simply don't need that many people because they can do a lot more with less.

> A lot of shops aren't willing to train people into a clojure role Smaller shops (which are perhaps more likely to use Clojure?) may simply be unable to afford to train people (both in terms of money and time) -- that certainly applies to where I work. > these shops often don't pay anywhere near the market rate for experienced, quality employees Surveys show repeatedly that Clojure is one of the highest-paid techs overall. > sharp/strong clojure dev shops simply don't need that many people because they can do a lot more with less This is definitely true. We couldn't do what we do at work as fast or with such a small team if we used other tech (and we can compare because we used to use other tech).
I don't disagree that a good clojure dev is worth their weight in gold to a business. I only lament that in the past few months I've been given 4 offers for senior to staff level clojure jobs at 30 to 50k below market rates compared to other environments :(. Maybe many clojure shops are solving more niche problems and don't have the cash flow?
That's also a possibility. Where I work can't pay FAANG-scale wages (but Big Tech has been laying off a lot of people and requiring return-to-office so that's a tradeoff with "more money" I guess)...
Yea, I'm in a similar remote-only position with smaller salary expectations, but right now seems very wonky. In the last 5 years I've made significantly more money than the offers I'm seeing now at the 4 clojure shops I've talked to. In general I'd happily work in a clojure shop with a much better quality of life at lower pay, it just seems like right now isn't the time to get an offer.