There are at least 8 companies that I'm aware of recruiting for "Perl developers" in London. I think that are all expanding, rather than replacing existing staff, most want "senior" people, and in a couple of cases I believe that they're wanting 12 or so people over the course of the next months. So even if some of these posts are filled, it just starts the merry-go-round by transferring the vacancies elsewhere.
Herein lies a problem.
There aren't that many "senior perl" people looking for new jobs in London. In particular, a lot of these companies seem to want someone with 3-5 years experience in template system of choice, who likes making websites, knows the current web standards, and is keen on the salary ranges offered.
Trouble is that everyone else is looking for exactly the same sort of people. And that they seem surprised that they can't find anyone. Or that people start asking
It's probably a side effect of Perl. It's not taught at universities, so there isn't a ready made supply of cookie cutter graduates to slip into dull jobs. It's not used by major IT contractors (think Capita or EDS), so they aren't busy generating people moving on with 3-5 years' experience of Perl. Perl is something people tend to find by themselves, so is likely to bias itself to the more self-motivated (and potentially therefore, on average, above average) IT person. Also Perl is seen by some as a fun language - this has lead to a class of people who preferred to stick with Perl and let the money go down during the quiet times, rather than change to other skills and follow the money elsewhere. But when "Perl" jobs dried up after the last bubble burst, what do people do? If you want the money, you shift your CV to emphasise the well paid skills, i.e. not Perl.
The upshot is that there aren't enough "Perl" people for these new jobs. There aren't the less experienced developers who would see these "senior" jobs as a move up, because there weren't the more junior jobs for them over the past few years. There are people with more experience than the range the employer suggests, but strangely they've been working elsewhere, so earn more than the employer wants to offer for just the skills they seek. And there are people who used to do Perl, who aren't now, who are likely to be earning more than the employer wants to offer.
So what can the employers do to recruit and retain staff? Logically:
After all, we pride Perl on its shallow learning curve, so its similarity to many other languages (sed, awk, C, C++, Java, PHP) means that smart people don't take long to become effective in it. Sure, you can't fill your entire team this way, but you don't need everyone to be the same cookie-cutter Perl expert.
The place I'm working for is looking for up to 4 Perl programmers at the moment (well, I think they'll start the proper search in a few days..). And there are some other companies looking for people, too.
Ony of my co-workers (how technically is in another team (front end, while I'm doing back end stuff)) in fact didn't know Perl when he started, but had several years of experience with PHP (gasp!). Now that we've converted him to the good side, he seems to be quite happy with Perl.
So the point is, if you're looking for Perl people, you might want to also target other P-language speakers...
/me has to tell HR to consider this, too
I'm trying to convince my company to start hiring more people outside the EU. The available pool of top-notch Perl people is very small and you have to have something "special" to recruit them in London. I think that if a company can be patient, they can easily fill their staff with work permit holders who won't demand top of the line salaries. The problem, of course, is that once they're over here, they'll see what they could be making and then they'll start to chafe.
Re: if there was a job in Birmingham ...
drhyde on 2007-05-01T18:17:02
... then I'd not be interested, even if it seemed perfect and was well paid, because when it's time to move on (because they hate me, or I hate them, or they go tits up) there'll be nothing else in the area, and moving sucks:-) The impression I get is that IT in the UK outside London is predominantly either academic or, umm, lower skilled. In both of those cases, the employees don't expect to be as mobile as the good people in London do. Re: if there was a job in Birmingham ...
barbie on 2007-05-01T23:22:07
IT outside London is predominantly either academic or lower skilled.Where are you getting that impression from? There are plenty of VERY skilled opportunities all over the UK, and I see an acedemic job once in a blue moon.
In both of those cases, the employees don't expect to be as mobile as the good people in London do.You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Both employee and employer in London don't need to think long term because they find another job / can (usually) fill the position. Contracts are often short as they work on short term projects. Outside of the capital most employees and employers are thinking more about career progression, or developing their skills by specialising in certain areas. Employers seem to put more effort into retaining their good people, and employees are often looking for somewhere to settle, where they can bring their kids up.
In fact I'm more inclined to think there are more academic and low skilled IT jobs in London than in the rest of the UK. That and finance
:) It'll be interesting to see how the IT recruitment fares for the "technology corridor" between Birmingham and Worcester, specifically for Longbridge and Pebble Mill technology parks. I suspect (and hope) that there'll be some very specific IT skills being advertised soon.
I have written an essay titled "The End of Info-Tech Slavery" about exactly that. I should note I started writing it last month, sometimes after I got fired from my last job, so it's been brewing for a while.
You know there are a number of things about this "problem" with finding Perl programmers in London that surprise me.
First of all, I'm still amazed that employers don't see that London is as close to most senior and seasoned Perl developers as their cable modem. What's with the still-lingering demand that people be geographically located? It's insane. Wake up; the world's a different place.
Second of all, in line with numero uno above, there are a lot of senior, seasoned Perl developers in the US. Even if I lived in the UK, as someone else (someone local to the UK) mentioned, I don't know that I would want to put up with London right now. So by eliminating the possibility of case-in-point #1 above, workers IN the UK and good workers in the US are eliminated.
Third, it's plain out insane to insist that the people you hire are familiar and have 3-5 years working in the templating system of choice. I personally am an HTML::Template enthusiast, but that's never kept me from learning TT or Text::Template, Mason or anything else based on the same concept in relatively short order.
Fourth, I think these companies get what they ask for. I monitor jobs.perl.org, and have yet to even get a sniff when I reply to openings in the UK. Now I readily attribute this to item #1 above, because I KNOW what my Perl skills are like (and so do over a DOZEN Fortune 100 companies in the US who have used my skills and asked for me again and again to do new work).
All those points together lead me to say this: I'm not so "convinced" that employers in London are as "desperate" as I'm reading here. Either that, or they just aren't clued into the market and how it all works. As the OP mentions, people senior in Perl aren't your run-of-the-mill IT people. They generally picked up Perl on their own and have a little bit of "maverick" in them, and don't go about their work or their careers in the straight "Visual Basic developer" fashion. If anything, we are the anti-thesis of that.
The solution is to change the approach, again as has been suggested. The Perl people are out there. They just aren't in the same neighborhoods the employers are searching in and again when we do come knocking on the front door, the employer doesn't have the good sense to see who's there and open the door.
-pj