[LRUG] OT: Programming services for businesses in mid-sized towns

[Louis Goff-Beardsley]

I’ve worked with a number of mid-sized teams outside of major rails hubs. Often companies never get going because the local talent pool doesn’t exist for them to draw from as you need Ruby teams in the locality to produce developers, and they can’t build a team big enough to produce developers to contribute to the talent pool, so it’s a viscous circle.

When a team does get going, they manage to get 1-2 good developers together and they begin hiring and training entry level developers and cross training local PHP & java developers. This can work well, but it all depends on the ability of the initial developers. I’ve seen it where teams lead by developers not quite up to a London standard, have built a team and the ability of their home grown developers is below the level that they would be at, if they were in a major rails hub.

Major rails hubs have an eco-system with meetups and the continuous movement of developers between different teams which fosters good coding practices and processes. When a team is left relatively isolated, this level of knowledge sharing with the wider community isn’t necessarily there so they can fall a little behind.

That said, there is always segment of the market of developers who are keen to get out of London (cheaper housing, they’ve just had kids, the state schools in London aren’t great, too noisey/busy etc) so I’ve always kept a few good Ruby shops outside of London/major cities on my books for such people.

Alternatively remote is a viable option. You have to shop around for a good job as they are not as plentiful as onsite London roles, but if you’re a good developer, you’ll find one within a few months.

Best, Louis

From: Chat [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On Behalf Of Jon Wood
Sent: 23 June 2016 10:05
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>; London Ruby Users Group <chat at lrug.org>
Subject: Re: [LRUG] OT: Programming services for businesses in mid-sized towns

In my experience the businesses you describe need developers for a one off project, rather than as a full time member of staff, and go to an agency to get that project completed. Mid-sized, non-technology, businesses usually won't have anyone in house with any real experience of managing a software project, or working out what it is they need - that's why they go to external agencies who will help with everything from working out what the customer actually needs, through to developing and supporting the software.

Unfortunately that means most of the work for developers outside of large cities is for those sort of agencies. I say unfortunately because you're unlikely to see many genuinely interesting projects working for one - you'll get a lot of cookie cutter e-commerce sites, and the odd internal CRUD app. You're also unlikely to see that application developing over time as small businesses buying software think of it in those terms - that they're buying a piece of software, rather than taking on something that will evolve over time.

My approach to that is to work remotely for a company in London, so I get to work on an interesting long-term project, and mostly avoid having to commute in. I'm in the office twice a month for meetings, and working from home and coffee shops the rest of the time. The other option is to find a business in the area you like the look of, and then persuade them that you can improve how they run by building software for them. It would be a tough sell in most cases, but if you can find somewhere that bites and then start delivering value to them then you've probably got a job for life!

Jon
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016 at 11:46 gvim <gvimrc at gmail.com<mailto:gvimrc at gmail.com>> wrote:
Given that programming is a skill which is relevant to businesses of any
size regardless of location why is it that programming vacancies are
almost exclusively concentrated in the major cities? What do mid-sized
business in, say, Ipswich do when they need a programmer?

I ask because I plan to leave London in the next few years and live more
in a more rural area but the prospects of finding work look bleak unless
you're prepared to commute to the nearest city.

This phenomenon also extends to the choice of programming language.
According to job postings by title at www.indeed.co.uk<http://www.indeed.co.uk> once you look
outside London the relative dominance of Java, PHP and JS is much more
pronounced.

gvim

_______________________________________________
Chat mailing list
Chat at lists.lrug.org<mailto:Chat at lists.lrug.org>
Archives: http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-lrug.org
Manage your subscription: http://lists.lrug.org/options.cgi/chat-lrug.org
List info: http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-lrug.org/attachments/20160623/476aaf9c/attachment-0002.html>