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Tell HN: booking.com is looking for 40+ Perl programmers (in Amsterdam)
Note: I'm not affiliated with booking.com - they mentioned these offers at the open-source developer conference in paris/france this week-end, so I'm forwarding the information.
Booking.com is looking for more than 40 perl programmers (either seasoned or beginners willing to learn).
They are based in Amsterdam, provide a "competitive salary + relocation package".
They use Perl, Apache, mod_perl, MySql, Memcache, Mason, JavaScript, Git etc.
They are facing a huge growth, which definitely results in interesting scaling challenges :)
You can contact Sheila Sijtsema at sheila.sijtsema@booking.com or have a look at http://www.booking.com/jobs
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoLink: http://www.booking.com/jobs http://www.booking.com/jobs (although I believe email contact may be better).
- Jun8 16y agoHmm, so the news of Perl's deaths have been exaggerated then?
- misterm 16y agoPerl is still very much alive and well.
- borism 16y agounfortunately if I may add :)
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoWell, something that surprises me is why hasn't this post been upvoted at least once (after 25 minutes) ? I'm pretty sure it can be interesting to many more people (I would be if I loved perl, but I don't practice it).
- btilly 16y agoPerl is easy to learn. It also borrowed from a lot of languages, and a lot of languages borrowed from it, which makes it easier. If you already know C, bash, Ruby, Python or PHP, you will find a lot of carryover to Perl.
- Nate75Sanders 16y agoIf you search on indeed.com, perl has more hits than python and ruby combined by a solid margin. Certainly many of these are for sys admin positions, but I still think it's a pretty telling statistic.
- elliottcarlson 16y agoOh man, I <3 Perl... If it weren't for the whole family/rooted thing I would go for it - plus not to mention I already speak Dutch.
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoMaybe you can still try to get in touch with them. They are apparently struggling a bit (why I posted) to hire that many people; maybe they would agree to see some remote work at some point (just extrapolating!).
- kees 16y agoSpeaking Dutch is not necessary at Booking.com.
- jonasvp 16y agoBut definitely a plus in Amsterdam. You can get by fine with English but to really feel at home - you should know the language. This is assuming you want to make the place you live in feel like home.
- bjelkeman-again 16y agoAgreed, it is a plus in any country to know the local language. But you can get by adequately in Amsterdam in English. I would argue better so than in most northern European cities, non-native English speaking.
- jfarmer 16y agoI lived in Den Haag for three months and I was surprised at how little Dutch was spoken on a day-to-day basis. Everyone defaulted to English all the time, and the only people I met who didn't speak it were immigrants from other countries (usually Russia). I was eventually able to pronounce Scheveningen, though. Edit: All this is to say, of all the non-English-speaking countries to go to as an English speak, The Netherlands is probably the easiest to get by in.
- jacquesm 16y agoHere is the link to the actual job I believe: http://www5jh.openhire.com/epostings/submit.cfm?fuseaction=app.jobinfo&id=23&jobid=31&company_id=1006&version=1&source=ONLINE&JobOwner=992281&level=levelid1&levelid1=2726&parent=IT%20&startflag=2 http://www5jh.openhire.com/epostings/submit.cfm?fuseaction=a... 40 decent perl programmers in Amsterdam is going to be tough to fill. The only ones I know of that are good with Perl you wouldn't want to hire for any reason. First I thought they meant Perl programmers 40 years and older, but age discrimination is illegal here :)
- rjbond3rd 16y agoIf they are "good with Perl," then why would you "not want to hire them"?
- hvs 16y agoI think that he's saying that their other characteristics would make you not want to hire them, even though they are good with Perl.
- jacquesm 16y agoI was trying to be slightly diplomatic, but I seem to have failed. Let me put it more blunt: If you're looking for 40 people you'll be looking for team players, these guys are really good, on their, own doing something that will never need maintenance.
- andrewvc 16y agoAnd I thought I was crazy looking for 40 unicorn trainers in los angeles
- moe 16y ago40?! Are they trying to prove the infinite monkey theorem, empirically?
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoI don't think really. Based on some discussion, it seems they are more adding a pile of new servers everyday, and they also seem to do a very good job at automating their process etc.
- Empedocles99 16y agoCan't be that good if they need 40 more keyboardists.
- jrockway 16y agoThey do a lot of A/B testing. So you need to code each feature a few times to see which implementation results in more conversions. It's not what a startup would do, correct, but they are swimming in money and this practice apparently gets them even more.
- endtime 16y agoI don't think the number of servers you need is even loosely related to the number of devs you need.
- mustpax 16y agoYou need more people to manage 1,000 servers than you do for managing just 10. Sure, you can automate processes, but as automation becomes more sophisticated it takes more time and resources to build and maintain. So, yes, the number of devs does not grow linearly with the number of servers, but maybe it grows logarithmically, or even slower. But it does grow.
- moe 16y agoNote they are looking for developers, not sysadmins. Yes, 1000 servers translates to roughly 40 racks and you'd better have a team of sysadmins to babysit them. Imho that doesn't have much to do with hiring 40 perl developers in one fellow swoop, though.
- yoak 16y agoIt's probably a bad sign. Almost no one is in a position to bring that many on board and use them effectively, and I'm tempted to say no one is unless they're already a fair multiple of that size. When you combine that with being open to "beginners willing to learn" which almost no one can afford, it makes it sound like one of the "We need 5 times what our ten guys are doing and that means 40 more." bad decisions. Generally you don't need forty more. You need one or two geniuses and perhaps management and replacement. This is all based on information in this posting. I know nothing about the company or its situation or even if they really are looking for 40+. I'm just generally suspicious about this sort of recruiting.
- AdamN 16y agoObviously a management issue. 40 Perl developers is overkill on many levels. If I were a Perl developer who wanted to live in Amsterdam, I would be scared of a place looking for 40 people - it means that their management is doing something nonsensical.
- moe 16y agoNonsensical is an understatement here, imho. Unless this is their humorous way of celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Mythical Man Month... 40 salaries + X! That's at least ~2mio down the drain, even if someone comes to their senses and pulls the plug within the first year.
- isotopp 16y agoThis company is part of the Priceline group of companies. Comparing http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=PCLN+GOOG http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=PCLN+GOOG shows size-related statistics that are about 10% of GOOG, whatever that may mean in reality given the difference of marktes in which they operate.
- mmaunder 16y agohttp://jobs.perl.org/ http://jobs.perl.org/ While Erlang and Haskell may get you laid, Perl remains the glue of the web.
- jrockway 16y agoI never realized until recently how hard something like this is. People do not want to move. People that hear about your job post usually have some reason to have heard about your job post, like they can't program at all and their last employer finally figured it out. Unfortunately, you can't know this until they show up and you ask them a few questions about Perl. (I love how one candidate tried to BS me on a basic Perl question. "Do you know OO Perl?" "Yes." "What's the first argument to a Perl method?" "$_". "Don't you mean $_[0]?" "They're the same thing." Congratulations, you have clearly never written any Perl.) I work at a bank, and we need Perl programmers too. We can afford to pay a lot better than booking.com, but we can't find anyone, either. It's very odd. (And it's not just Perl, we had the same problem with Java and C#, and are having the same problem with C++. Might as well rewrite our app in Haskell... at least those languages have a community.) The other thing that I see as being difficult for booking.com is that people don't want to work with 40+ other people. Between learning "the rules" from the people already there and teaching the new folks how to program, there is never any time to get anything done. (My second "real job" was like this; I was not even a "team lead" and yet all I did was teach other people basic Perl + Database stuff. We got exactly no work done. At least if I was by myself I would have been able to do one person's work.) In fact, I find the other Perl team in my office to be too big -- and they only have 4 people!
- snarkyboojum 16y agoI have an almost diametrically opposed experience. I have good Perl skills, and 8+ years experience, and can't get Perl work in Sydney Australia, primarily due to the fact that recruiters looking for Perl devs here don't know anything about Perl tech. The few Perl dev jobs I've interviewed for and taken have relied on unbelievably basic programming tests.
- jrockway 16y agoYes, recruiting basically sucks for Perl, and probably programming in general. The only way I have ever successfully found people to work with is through pre-existing relationships. (In the case of my current job, Perl Mongers; in the case of past jobs, people I know on irc.) You also mention location specificity -- this hurts employees and employers. Employees don't want to relocate, and employers don't want the communication barrier that telecommuting raises. (And FWIW, having telecommuted at an all-telecommute company... it kind of sucks on both ends.)
- sgt 16y agoNo you got it all wrong. These are dutch people after all. They are looking for 40 grams of "perl".. You know what I mean? Shmoke it wiff a pancake.
- avar 16y agoOdd to see this on HN now. I took the job with Booking, just finished packing and will be flying out to Amsterdam tomorrow. See http://blogs.perl.org/users/aevar_arnfjor_bjarmason/2010/10/moving-to-amsterdam-to-work-for-bookingcom.html http://blogs.perl.org/users/aevar_arnfjor_bjarmason/2010/10/... For anyone considering this I can tell you that their whole relocation package (including the assistance they give you) is very impressive.
- sigzero 16y agoOvid signed on as well. Do you know if they mentor well? I can program in Perl and have created a few websites and internal stuff but some things are best taught.
- jrockway 16y agoPrediction: SocialText 2.0.
- LoonyPandora 16y agoWorking with both Ovid and Avar makes this a great opportunity to learn from two big-hitters in the perl world.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- warfangle 16y agoIf this was about four years from now, I would be all over it. I've been toying with the idea of someday expatriating to the Netherlands.
- KevinMS 16y agoDamn, being 41 years old I thought I finally find a ".com" that wasn't practicing ageism! Guess I'll have to take my 15 long years of perl experience and keep looking!
- hendler 16y agoMaybe they'll finish Perl 6?
- draegtun 16y agoBooking.com are a heavy user and investor in Perl5: * http://www.booking.com/general.ja.html?tmpl=docs/pressreleases/20081216 http://www.booking.com/general.ja.html?tmpl=docs/pressreleas... * http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/12/bookingcom_makes_a_major_contr.html http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/12/bookingcom_makes_a_ma... * http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/grant_proposal_fixing_perl5_co.html http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/grant_proposal_fixing... NB. Last two links look a bit naff at moment! I think they're in process of some CSS amendments. So Booking.com want perl5 developers and not anything related to perl6. However if you are interested in perl6 then you can find the latest version of Rakudo (perl6 on Parrot) here: http://rakudo.org/announce/rakudo-star/2010.09 http://rakudo.org/announce/rakudo-star/2010.09
- Dilpil 16y agoHiring 4 people at the same time to work on the same project is a questionable idea- 40 is just absurd. I hope we eventually hear about the aftermath of this.
- balding_n_tired 16y agoGee, I'm a 40+ Perl programmer. But Amsterdam is a few time zones away...