> Yes, there is still a developer shortage, at least for certain technologies. (...) its near impossible still to find a local Rails & Backbone developer I don

> Yes, there is still a developer shortage, at least for certain technologies. (...) its near impossible still to find a local Rails & Backbone developer I don't understand this. Why not hire a good programmer and give them few weeks to learn those technologies? Has anyone here hired a programmer who was good but failed at his job because they couldn't learn whatever language fast enough? I mean, I can understand certain companies want people with very specific skills -- say, embedded programming -- that can hit the ground running. And some companies have enough candidates that they can afford to exclude the ones who don't have those skills. But if you talk about shortage then it seems you're not one of those companies.