[LRUG] Follow up to last nights talk

Paul Robinson paul at 32moves.com
Tue Feb 12 08:03:24 PST 2013


My 1p worth to the mix based on doing hiring on both sides of the coin on and off (i.e. including being hired myself) in the Ruby space for the last 6 years

Oh, and for the record, I don't get on with recruiters (as discussed here previously). But Louis is good. If you need a recruiter on either side of the coin, you should talk to him.

On 12 Feb 2013, at 15:22, "Louis Goff-Beardsley" <louisror at gmail.com> wrote:


> ·         I agree with you on the influx of new Ruby devs coming onto the market (I get multiple grads & PHP/Java/.net Devs looking to switch over to Rails get in contact a week for guidance).


This is by far going to be one of the biggest factors in ongoing rates, but the learning curve has kept us away from what you might call "beginners-PHP-hell", where there are tens of thousands of people undermining the bottom end of the market by copying and pasting code from forums, which in turn undermines the middle layer, and ultimately the upper layer.

However, motivated beginners are getting better and more numerous in the Rails space. We have an intern in doing work experience this week who is 16 years old and would give most 1st year undergrads of my generation a run for their money.

There are still a surprising number of developers out there whose first answer to a question about how to do something is to refer to a Ryan Bates video though...


> ·         I think that what you have missed out on is the room for new adoption of Ruby-on-Rails by companies. The current market is primarily being driven by start-ups. Eventually what you will see is more and more big companies such as BBC, Sky, News International etc adopting and expanding on their RoR usage.


This has been an ongoing (and convincing!), argument for some years now, but what I saw actually happening is the same small number of large companies were increasing their RoR footprint, but not many new larger companies were taking it up, scared off by the hoardes of .NET and Java devs within their ranks.

Who here hasn't seen, been approached about, or even interviewed - and in my case made an offer which I turned down a couple of years ago - for a "large media organisation" in "West London" for a "Developer in Test"? Oooh, I wonder who they might be...

So there seems to be a small number of firms with larger teams or larger numbers of multiple teams, but that small number hasn't grown much in recent years. If that's happening now, that's really interesting - it will be interesting to watch it unfold.


> ·         I think on the whole this balances out with the new developers coming onto the market so upper-mid-level / senior salaries will remain as they are now.


Louis, you had a client push out to £80k for a senior dev a few weeks ago, no? Does that not suggest that at least at the top end, supply is limited and demand is increasing at that level? Or do you think that was an outlier?


> ·         I’m starting to make my first few placements of Ruby contractors in financial companies and the day-rates are higher than normal. If RoR really takes off in the financial industry then we will all be very rich :D


I will bet you a pint now that the norm for those will be people with finance experience in another tech who cross-trained or taught themselves RoR and went away from finance for a while.

There are a ton of developers laid off by investment banks who have gone away, learned Ruby, and might now be heading back into finance. I think unless you have got finance on your CV early on in your career (why? You masochist!), there's still going to be a fence around that, much as there is for people with qualifications/experience not normal in Rubyists (Prince2, ITIL, whatever), or piece of paper saying they are mates with the right people at the right golf club (SC or DV).

It would be interesting if banks wanted to get more open and start hoovering up people from the start-up space though. A bit of competition for talent between the South end of Moorgate(*) and the North end/City Road/Old Street would be interesting... :-)

(*) or that other finance area I prefer to call "The Land of the DLR" - monsters be there... beware...
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