but where do you get a corporate experienced, clean-cut (75%, at least)
person willing to put on the tie 5 days a week and do mod_perl?
Josh:
I was with you right up to the part about wearing a tie :-)
I suspect that there are actually quite a few people on this list that
would _love_ to do mod_perl full time. after talking to a few
employers over the past year, it's getting them all in one place
that's the problem - you probably want them onsite and, unlike the
slurry of java programmers in your immediate area, what mod_perl
experts there are are spread over the globe and may be unwilling to
relocate.
open up to telecommuting and I suspect you would soon find yourself
fully staffed.
Geoff:
I agree, most of the interesting mod_perl gigs I've seen would involve
relocating, which isn't a good option for me right now. And I know a fair
number of people who would rather be doing mod_perl than what they're
doing now, or who do some mod_perl but would like to do it full time, or
who do it but are being gradually phased out in favor of Java.
But what do we do to change the perception (reality?) that mod_perlers are
hard to find? In terms of web services, I think the slurry of available
Java programmers compared to mod_perl programmers is a result (maybe in a
roundabout way) of assumptions that Java is the only way to go for
application frameworks. To a large extent, there are lots of Java
programmers out there because there are lots of Java jobs out there (gotta
go where the work is). We're hiring Java programmers to augment in-house
Java expertise, because we're building products on top of J2EE
technologies. Why are we using J2EE instead of a Perl-based application
framework? I don't know for sure, nobody asked me, although it's very
likely that no non-Java options were presented as viable alternatives.
But even if Perrin's OSCON talk (hint hint) gave me some valuable
ammunition to show that I could just as easily design on top of a
Perl-based application framework as on J2EE, we still come back around to
the perception that it's easier to find Java programmers.
