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There seems to be a very common perception that it is hard and expensive to find employees who can be productive in less mainstream languages, but I rarely see

There seems to be a very common perception that it is hard and expensive to find employees who can be productive in less mainstream languages, but I rarely see evidence to back that up. I can't speak for Greg, but in my experience, hiring is hard in every language, but not materially moreso in Haskell.

kpmah 12y ago
Anecdotally, as somebody who has tried to find a Haskell job, there seems to be a LOT of competition for them.
sanderjd 12y ago
It's interesting, I meant my question to be about finding companies using Haskell or willing to hire contractors that build projects for them using it, but of course I did take it in the hiring direction, so it's my own fault. Rephrasing: Is it easy to find work using Haskell, despite the perception (whether deserved or no) that it is difficult to hire for, which may limit the number of companies willing to build in it?
- nbouscal 12y ago
  It is very interesting, because the dominant narrative seems to be both that it's hard to hire for and hard to find jobs in, which can't both be true without massive communication inefficiencies, which I'm fairly sure don't exist. My experience has been that it's somewhat harder to find a job writing Haskell than it is to find a job in a mainstream language, but that it is still very doable.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    This doesn't seem inconsistent at all. It's a classic feedback loop - it is hard to hire because most people don't want to invest in becoming experienced in a technology that not many companies are using, and it is hard to find a job because companies don't want to invest the resources in using a technology that not very many potential employees are experienced in. Very similar to social network chicken/egg problems. Seems to usually be solved by either investment from one or more large companies with an interest (Sun, Oracle), or a "killer app" (Web browsers, Rails, college students for Facebook). My little theory here is woefully inadequate to explain Python's and Go's success, so maybe another way out of the trap is "lots of people just really like it". Not sure if that will or won't work for Haskell...
    - nbouscal 12y ago
      My point is that "hard to hire" implies more jobs than candidates, whereas "hard to find jobs" implies more candidates than jobs. They can't both be true. You can say things like "there are few candidates" or "there are few jobs" in an absolute sense, by comparison to other languages, but that actually isn't very relevant. This is an oversimplified model because it doesn't take into account engineer skill level, which actually does seem to be the primary problem. Companies want skilled engineers, but it's hard to become skilled without having a job in the language first. So we end up with several companies trying to hire seniors, and several juniors looking for jobs.
      - taeric 12y ago
        Both "hard to hire" and "hard to find jobs" are satisfied by a disjoint set of job locations to candidate locations. That is, there could be plenty of X jobs in City Y, but that does little for the X candidate in Z city. Flip candidate/job as desired.
        nbouscal 12y ago
        That's true, and there does seem to be a disproportionate number of Haskell jobs in Singapore, but overall I don't think it has a huge effect.
        taeric 12y ago
        More likely you are just seeing a fairly common network effect, where once you are in it is easy to see many connections. So, if there are some fairly good quantitative treatments of this, I'd be interested. I suspect it isn't too shocking. Probably more than the parent poster and friends think. Probably less than you do. :)
        sanderjd 12y ago
        I actually really don't have much of a hypothesis at all. I asked my original question out of pure curiosity, and my reply was along the lines of it seeming very plausible for there to be both a shortage of candidates to hire and a shortage of companies hiring. But I also think the opposite is plausible. I think so far the most specific answer to my initial question of "is it easy to find Haskell work?" is "yes, in Singapore it is".

kpmah 12y ago

Anecdotally, as somebody who has tried to find a Haskell job, there seems to be a LOT of competition for them.

sanderjd 12y ago

It's interesting, I meant my question to be about finding companies using Haskell or willing to hire contractors that build projects for them using it, but of course I did take it in the hiring direction, so it's my own fault. Rephrasing: Is it easy to find work using Haskell, despite the perception (whether deserved or no) that it is difficult to hire for, which may limit the number of companies willing to build in it?

nbouscal 12y ago
It is very interesting, because the dominant narrative seems to be both that it's hard to hire for and hard to find jobs in, which can't both be true without massive communication inefficiencies, which I'm fairly sure don't exist. My experience has been that it's somewhat harder to find a job writing Haskell than it is to find a job in a mainstream language, but that it is still very doable.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  This doesn't seem inconsistent at all. It's a classic feedback loop - it is hard to hire because most people don't want to invest in becoming experienced in a technology that not many companies are using, and it is hard to find a job because companies don't want to invest the resources in using a technology that not very many potential employees are experienced in. Very similar to social network chicken/egg problems. Seems to usually be solved by either investment from one or more large companies with an interest (Sun, Oracle), or a "killer app" (Web browsers, Rails, college students for Facebook). My little theory here is woefully inadequate to explain Python's and Go's success, so maybe another way out of the trap is "lots of people just really like it". Not sure if that will or won't work for Haskell...
  - nbouscal 12y ago
    My point is that "hard to hire" implies more jobs than candidates, whereas "hard to find jobs" implies more candidates than jobs. They can't both be true. You can say things like "there are few candidates" or "there are few jobs" in an absolute sense, by comparison to other languages, but that actually isn't very relevant. This is an oversimplified model because it doesn't take into account engineer skill level, which actually does seem to be the primary problem. Companies want skilled engineers, but it's hard to become skilled without having a job in the language first. So we end up with several companies trying to hire seniors, and several juniors looking for jobs.
    - taeric 12y ago
      Both "hard to hire" and "hard to find jobs" are satisfied by a disjoint set of job locations to candidate locations. That is, there could be plenty of X jobs in City Y, but that does little for the X candidate in Z city. Flip candidate/job as desired.
      - nbouscal 12y ago
        That's true, and there does seem to be a disproportionate number of Haskell jobs in Singapore, but overall I don't think it has a huge effect.
        taeric 12y ago
        More likely you are just seeing a fairly common network effect, where once you are in it is easy to see many connections. So, if there are some fairly good quantitative treatments of this, I'd be interested. I suspect it isn't too shocking. Probably more than the parent poster and friends think. Probably less than you do. :)
        sanderjd 12y ago
        I actually really don't have much of a hypothesis at all. I asked my original question out of pure curiosity, and my reply was along the lines of it seeming very plausible for there to be both a shortage of candidates to hire and a shortage of companies hiring. But I also think the opposite is plausible. I think so far the most specific answer to my initial question of "is it easy to find Haskell work?" is "yes, in Singapore it is".