in reply to This isn't a job offer.

Who is doing the searching? That would be my first question...

Perhaps your HR department is not doing a good job. Or maybe they don't understand Perl developers. OR...

Your company might also have a bad reputation. I can think of one LA company that is well-known for using Perl and for being something of a sweatshop. Word of mouth travels fast in the Perl community. I know of many Perl developers who keep clear of this big company, despite their HR person's heavy involvement in the Perl community.

Also examine your product. Some people don't like working in advertising. I can think of 2 big LA companies (one located in Westlake Village and another in downtown LA) that use a lot of Perl but also focus on advertising. Some developers don't like working in the advertising/marketing industry. Your company's product might be something that developers want to stay away from or just find boring ....

Try to keep the focus on your people and the challenges you face. Good Perl programmers like working on good teams and facing challenges. I tend to avoid big companies who like to remind job seekers about how big they are.

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Re^2: This isn't a job offer.
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 04, 2007 at 08:08 UTC
    "...despite their HR person's heavy involvement in the Perl community." Ticketmaster? What are the other ones? No need to be secretive.
[reply]
      Dont know what flurry of activity this one will start, but would just like to point out that there are many in India who would love to move to the US for short-term/long-term projects, given no visa restrictions. So either the guys within the US offer themselves to being more flexible, or soon we may find even mid-sized companies in the US moving to India for one additional reason - the flexibility of the guys there. Or companies in the US may actually start handing out short-term visas for professionals from other parts of the world citing shortage of skilled people. The world is a big melting-pot...
[reply]
        I think that this is an interesting point. Having worked in IT for many years, whenever my employers would see an applicant from India, they would always roll their eyes.... (The joke was that there was always one Patel who would send a resume.)

        I think the problem here is that many small to medium sized companies don't want to jump through hoops to hire someone. The LAST thing that want to deal with are visa issues. Yet there are a lot of Perl programmers in India who are willing and capable of filling Perl positions here in the US.

        Many companies rather not fill the positions and let their software departments suffer for a long time, before even considering the idea of hiring someone from abroad. It is sad because I have noticed how well qualified many India programmers are. Most of them are very well educated and have accomplished quite a bit.

        What is ironic is that Indians (along with Chinese) make up such a large percentage in US computer science graduate schools.

[reply]

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