How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon?

pritesh_ugrankar has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,

I've been here asking for help and guidance and always gotten far more than I could've asked for. I'm here again asking for your help and direction.

I'm currently working as a Storage guy who's used Perl to automate stuff. Considering the current job market where storage skills are not in much demand, I was planning to focus on automation and Perl programming to my skillset.

But then I'm really not sure how the Perl Job market is, what skills are required? Is the focus on Dancer/Mojolicious, or is Perl still used for automation by other organisations? Or may be it won't be wise of me to abandon my storage profile and completely move into a Perl job. In that case, how can I combine my storage experience with Perl scripting skills to make a good profile?

Ofcourse, companies are more looking for problem solvers or solution creaters rather than skillset in a specific language, but just wondering if there could be some jobs where Perl programming skills are sought after, especially considering the fact that Perl is a general purpose language.

I think another major consideration is where I live. I'm from India and I don't see much Perl related job postings. Are there any remote Perl jobs?

I apologise if the questions seem all over the place and nowhere. But would truly be thankful for guidance.

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Re: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon? by 1nickt (Canon) on Dec 26, 2020 at 19:35 UTC
My advice would be to use the most modern tooling Perl provides for whatever you are doing. If you are programming object classes, use an OOP framework like Moo and Type::Tiny. If you are building on a database, use DBIx::Class. If you are working with HTML use a proper DOM parser like Mojo::DOM. If you are building APIs use a modern application framework like Dancer or Mojo. Use Git, test everything using Perl's testing framework, make an S3 bucket and upload stuff to it, etc, etc. In other words, don't be a hacker. Be a modern Perl-experienced software engineer, the first and last part of which is what will get you hired. At work we use Perl for almost 100% of what we do and we are always hiring software engineers. Today the questions are about concepts: do you know OOP design? Do you know REST design? Do you use an ORM? Do you test your code? ... far more than about specific language experience. Theoretically we would take someone with no Perl experience, although that has not happened yet. We have hired people with rusty Perl experience who have been doing the same kind of work in Ruby or Python, however, and have -- in whatever language -- developed their conceptual knowledge and skills as engineers. And keeping your Perl skills up to date means that you will always be able to produce the "glue" scripts and one-off reporting that Perl has always been best for. Only nowadays, newer tooling in Perl allows you to produce such stuff even more concisely and quickly. Hope this rambling helps! The way forward always starts with a minimal test.	[reply]
Re^2: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon? by GotToBTru (Prior) on Nov 19, 2021 at 23:17 UTC
I understood all of that except for the S3 bucket, but Google fixed that. Stuck with 5.8.8 at work! Ugh. But no reason not to put together a modern setup at home and get familiar with what the 21st Century has to offer. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NASB)	[reply]
Re^2: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon? by pritesh_ugrankar (Monk) on Dec 27, 2020 at 01:10 UTC
Hi, Thank you for taking time to write such a fabulous answer. If this is what you call rambling, then I can only request you to "Ramble On" (one of my favourite Led Zep songs). While other tips were helpful, this was straight to the point and explanatory. Never a day when I've left this place without sound and real life advice. Thank you once again.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon? by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Dec 26, 2020 at 06:08 UTC
I keep a list of similar nodes here (see the "Recent Nodes (2020)" section at the end). See especially a very recent node How is Perl for automation? by fidodido (a later reply to this node asks about job prospects).	[reply]
Re: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon? by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Dec 26, 2020 at 14:31 UTC
«...the Perl Job market...» I’m not sure what this should be. But remember that on nearly any *nixish box there is some Perl required. Even on MacOS. Big surprise? And even Oracle requires Perl for their Enterprise Manager. Or how ever they call it now. You may read the nodes ¡ wrote in the thread eyepopslikeamosquito mentioned. «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe» `perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'`Help	[reply] [d/l]
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