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Clojure hiring — experience from a SaaS company (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by mtruyens@alien.top to c/lisp

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About two weeks ago, I posted a vacancy in the monthly "Who's hiring" thread for our legal drafting SaaS company.

To be honest, I really didn't know what to expect. There were a few anecdotal stories that talked about a "hiring filter", i.e. that the amount of available Clojure-developers was small, but that the quality of those developers tends to be very high when compared to other languages. I also assumed that our 100% Clojure(Script) stack and our completely remote working policy would help. At the same time, I realise that we are a small company in the legal sector, which many developers probably (incorrectly!) do not associate with cool work.

So I was hoping for a few interesting reactions, but the amount of reactions that I actually got, was far, far better than what I had expected.

In total we got 27 reactions, in a matter of a few days, from all over the world.
None — literally none — of the reactions were a mismatch. Of course some developers were a better match for us than others, but based on the CVs, I could have hired every single developer that applied. We honestly had a hard time choosing.
For about 60% of the reactions, the accompanying email or cover letter went into specific detail as to why the developer in question would be a good match.
Only one woman replied.

Our company exclusively consists of lawyers (we all worked at these large law firms in our previous life), so we can only compare these results to a recent hiring process for a lawyer, where we applied equally flexible hiring criteria (remote, anywhere from the world, having credentials or experience in a relevat legal subject matter), and got the following results:

About 15 reactions.
12 out of 15 had no, or only limited, relevant experience.
Limited cover letters.
A nice mix of gender.

And please take into account that, unlike what I guess many developers think, "legal tech" is seen as very hot among lawyers nowadays.

So if any company, or investor, is doubting Clojure based on the talent pool, I can assure you: a non-issue.

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[–] nzlemming@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Congratulations Maarten, that's a great result, and I'm really glad the company is doing well enough to be hiring!

[–] npafitis@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's a nice share, as a developer I can also say that there's plenty of jobs for Clojure enthusiasts, and it's usually like minded companies. Whenever I'm between jobs, I have a hard time choosing.

[–] ii-___-ii@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

As someone learning Clojure and in between jobs, I hope this is true

[–] YoniElBravo@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

In your experience, how likely is it that a company hires an experienced .net developer with no clojure experience? I've tried to get some interviews before, but no dice. My guess is that the talent pool has reached that critical point in which you can always find experienced clojure devs if you look for them. Is that the case?

[–] lgstein@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

The "hiring problem" is when headhunters try to sell 10 Clojure devs into the same some company with a 50% marge as they are used to from reselling Spring and React CVs.

[–] maxw85@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

That's great to hear :-)

It's also my experience. Back then, I wrote a single message into the #remote-jobs Slack channel of Clojurians. Afterward, I was busy for two weeks doing interviews. In the end, we hired two instead of one Clojure freelancer.

[–] skyfio@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

maybe it works when it's really remote and true worldwide hiring but a lot of company hire on-site. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] coloradu@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

It also means that 27 highly experienced people are competing for 1 position at a small company. It might be a good sales pitch for companies, but not for job seekers..

[–] J_M_B@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Readability by others (and a future you) is more important than being very clever

100% on this. The problem with Clojure is because you can do anything (via macros), people do everything. Just keep your code simple and concise.

[–] ericchuawc@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I’m curious. Do you have to throw a high salary package to attract candidates? I’m looking at employer side .. throwing high pay to attract.. not all companies have such budgets though especially those non US or Europe base. Or people on clojure are more open to salaries or they only aim for high paying ones? Mind to share.

[–] coltnz@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I hired through the same thread for my Australian client. Bit different case as shortish term contract, fully remote but with some Sydney overlap. Large variety of Clojure experience levels and quoted prices. We ended up struggling to choose and hiring two! So seems a win for us and community.