OK my take here, first on Cedric's original point. > If you use obscure languages that nobody else knows, you > will have a very hard time recruiting.
I'm currently working for BSkyB. All my work is in Groovy and Grails, but I'd not touched it until I started there. They recruit engineers who can demonstrate the ability to learn and adapt, not just to repeat what they've been doing for the last 'x' years. They also use Ruby. Neither skill is particularly common, but the benefits outweigh the costs of using a (relatively) obscure language. A nice bonus is that I've yet to meet a contractor who's mindset is fixed and inflexible (I imagine that they tend to be self-deselecting at or before interview because they don't want to do something different). The results are pretty good! As to Cedric's more recent point: > my original claim stands: a random company using a non mainstream > technology in-house will have a harder time recruiting than others. I agree. But my original point was that Google specifically can do this if they choose - because of their size - if they perceive that the benefits outweigh the costs then they have the money behind them to simply say "we can make this better, and it is in our interest to do so". On Sep 12, 8:34 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: > 2011/9/12 Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]> > > > Hmm... So are you saying that there are lots of people that could work for > > Google and say no just because they would work with an obscure language? > > You seem to be implying that if people are offered a job at Google, they > will take it no matter what they do or what technology they use. This might > be true today because of Google's popularity as an employer, but my original > claim stands: a random company using a non mainstream technology in-house > will have a harder time recruiting than others. > > And probably a harder time being competitive as well since the fact that the > technology is not mainstream means that there will be very little external > support for it (StackOverflow, books, etc...). > > Whatever you are using internally, there is very little (no?) drawback to > wishing it to be as mainstream as possible. > > -- > Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
