Trying to hire full-time Rails developer

Rails
1

I’ve been having some trouble tracking down someone to hire for a Rails
position, so I figured I’d try here. Monster and 37signals haven’t been
much help so far. I think getting people to sit at a desk in Milwaukee
is the tough part, but upper management isn’t willing to budge on that.
So here the current job posting we have. The right candidate would get
55-65k per year. Email me at [email protected] if you’re
interested.

Thanks,
Andre

Job Description

IMS, the US B2B barter industry leader, is looking to hire our first
full-time web developer for a recently rewritten Rails site. We need
someone who’s a programmer first, but can hold their own on the graphics
side… You don’t have to be a great designer, but you should easily be
able to explain the difference between a great site and just an okay
site. Good design skills would be a plus, however. You should be
excited about good UI, and have some ideas of how to implement it.

The IMS website currently offers our membership access to their accounts
(statements, balances, etc.), a searchable directory of what our members
are currently selling, and an e-commerce marketplace. In the near
future, the web developer position will extend our website to not only
make it easier for members to do business with each other, but also
offer tailored buying suggestions to help them save cash through barter.
To put it simply, the IMS website is like a combination of online
banking, yellow pages, and e-commerce.

When sending your resume, please send a portfolio of site(s) you’ve
created.

Job requirements:

  • 2+ web programming experience, and ideally have some Rails experience
  • Intermediate experience working with MySQL
  • Enough *nix knowledge to run an Apache/Mongrel setup
  • Excellent HTML/CSS with cross-browser compatibility experience
  • Enough Adobe software knowledge to get around
  • And pretty decent writing/grammar
  • Flash experience is irrelevant to this position
2

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 07:31:54PM +0100, Andre Robitaille wrote:

I’ve been having some trouble tracking down someone to hire for a Rails
position, so I figured I’d try here. Monster and 37signals haven’t been
much help so far. I think getting people to sit at a desk in Milwaukee
is the tough part, but upper management isn’t willing to budge on that.
So here the current job posting we have. The right candidate would get
55-65k per year. Email me at [email protected] if you’re
interested.

I’m probably wasting my time here, but I’m going to try to give you some
perspective on why you might have trouble filling this job.

First, let’s split your pool of candidates into those who already live
in
Milwaukee and those who would have to relocate. I’m not sure what the
going
rate for web programmers with 2+ years of experience is in Milwaukee,
but I
can tell you that your salary range falls short by tens of thousands of
dollars for where I am. I think you’ll have a hard time getting someone
to
relocate to Milwaukee with a salary offer like that. If someone was
willing
to relocate, there are much more lucrative jobs available even taking
into account differences in cost of living.

Now, for those who already live in Milwaukee, there are those who prefer
to work in an office, those who prefer to work remotely, and those who
could go either way. The ones who prefer to work remotely are right out,
so
you’re down to those who either want an office or will go either way. If
they’ll go either way, they can find much better paying work remotely,
so
you’re unlikely to be able to attract them with that salary range.

Out of the remaining pool you only want those who have some confidence
in
their aesthetic sense (or that second sentence will scare them away) and
not only have some design skills but are looking for a job that might
use
them.

Further restricting your pool is the Adobe software experience, however
cursory. Worse, you want *nix knowledge. So the Linux-heads who have
never
had cause to touch Adobe software are out, as are the Windows-heads who
have never touched a *nix box. This may or may not significantly
restrict
your pool.

So here you are, looking for a Milwaukee resident (or someone who has a
reason other than a job to relocate to Milwaukee, in which case they are
imminently Milwaukee residents anyway and the point is moot) who prefers
working in an office, has 2+ years of web programming, has some graphics
design ability, fulfills the various other requirements, and is actually
looking for a job in that salary range. You’re screwed.

While I’m willing to believe that the requirements you’re listing are
appropriate and reasonable, I don’t think you can find someone to do
that
job at that salary. Milwaukee may be a perfectly nice place to live and
work, but if you can’t draw from the larger pool of potential candidates
throughout the country, you won’t be able to find anyone. Even lifting
the
restriction on remote work (which you claim is a non-starter) may not be
enough since, as I mentioned, there is more lucrative work out there for
remote workers. You need to raise your salary range significantly.

Alternately, don’t publish a range and request a desired salary from
your
applicants. Maybe offer to pay relocation expenses. That will give you
some
sense of how much money people are expecting for the kind of job opening
you have. I can’t give you an exact number, but I can tell you that
you’re
aiming too low right now.

Thanks,
Andre
–Greg

3

Gregory S. wrote:

So here you are, looking for a Milwaukee resident (or someone who has a
reason other than a job to relocate to Milwaukee, in which case they are
imminently Milwaukee residents anyway and the point is moot) who prefers
working in an office, has 2+ years of web programming, has some graphics
design ability, fulfills the various other requirements, and is actually
looking for a job in that salary range. You’re screwed.

Hi Greg,

Most of the people responding that I’ve talked to so far are actually
asking for far less than what I’m offering. Now none of those people
have Rails experience, and are a year or two short of the ideal
experience, but I figured a $10k jump covers that.

I guess it just didn’t seem so far-fetched to me. There are three
people sitting here who can do the work now, myself included, and two of
us have RoR experience. Light design , coding experience, and the
ability to configure Apache by hand don’t seem that big of a deal.

Thanks for the insight, though. Maybe that’s what the job pool has to
offer these days.

4

On Nov 30, 2007 1:45 PM, Gregory S.
[email protected] wrote:

I can’t give you an exact number, but I can tell you that you’re
aiming too low right now.

Way too low, especially for a good Rails coder. Even if it’s
successfully sold as an “opportunity to work with Rails” ( I’ve seen a
bunch of those the past year), the coder will no doubt find a better
job after gaining a few months experience.

Nice response post there Greg0r. I had very similar thoughts when I
read the initial post.

–
Greg D.
http://destiney.com/

5

On Nov 30, 2007 2:24 PM, Trent B. [email protected]
wrote:

or maybe greg. but he don’t sound cheap.

Thanks, but I’m not currently available for hire. I just got my dream
job a few months back. Genetics research application development at a
local medical university using, you guessed it… Ruby on Rails. I
deploy to Oracle which is damn yucky, but locally I use Postgres. You
couldn’t pry me away from this gig if you had all the New Castle in
the world.

–
Greg D.
http://destiney.com/

6

Greg D. wrote:

On Nov 30, 2007 1:45 PM, Gregory S.
[email protected] wrote:

I can’t give you an exact number, but I can tell you that you’re
aiming too low right now.

Way too low, especially for a good Rails coder. Even if it’s
successfully sold as an “opportunity to work with Rails” ( I’ve seen a
bunch of those the past year), the coder will no doubt find a better
job after gaining a few months experience.

Nice response post there Greg0r. I had very similar thoughts when I
read the initial post.

–
Greg D.
http://destiney.com/

I am not moving anymore. I am tired of moving.
It is cold there, and I can get $120,000 in DC/Baltimore,
if I want to move back.

You ARE looking for a top coder. Now, there are a lot of
news paper jobs, work remote, that requires the same experience,
that pay a LOT more.

My friend just got a call from a lady looking for someone with 3 years
ROR experience, C#/ASP back ground, .net, flash, UML, php, and SQL. He
told her to try god or the guy that wrote ruby.

or maybe greg. but he don’t sound cheap.

7

On Nov 30, 2007 2:42 PM, Andre Robitaille
[email protected] wrote:

So you’re thinking that I would get better results by including a year’s
supply of Newcastle?

I’m not sure what you need to do. I just know I wouldn’t do Rails
development for $65K/year. I, like many others on this list, have
spent a great deal of time and effort teaching Rails to ourselves and
we want to get paid for it.

Rails is shiny and new and people who know it well, right now today,
have proven initiative to go out and learn new technologies all on
their own. That can-teach-myself personality trait is what is going
to cost you at this point in time. But it’s a temporary situation…
until enough “average” Rails coders get taught Rails through courses
and whatnot, that’s when you can probably get yourself a cheap Rails
coder.

And do you really want a web developer with only 2 or 3 years of
experience? I just think back to how inexperienced I was at the 2 to
3 year mark. If I were a hiring manager I couldn’t see myself wanting
to hire that old inexperienced me to do any serious Rails development.
Rails is advanced. You want someone who already knows at least one
or two other programming languages besides just Ruby.

–
Greg D.
http://destiney.com/

8

Greg D. wrote:

You couldn’t pry me away from this gig if you had all the New Castle in the world.

So you’re thinking that I would get better results by including a year’s
supply of Newcastle?

9

Just a quick search on WorkingWithRails:

http://workingwithrails.com/search?q=+Milwaukee&submit.x=227&submit.y=16&submit=Find

Turns out there are only 4 people listed! Compare that to Washington
DC with 10+
http://workingwithrails.com/search?q=+Washington+DC&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Find

Or even my own hometown of Charlottesville with 8
http://workingwithrails.com/search?q=+charlottesville&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Find

10

If it’s a given that a Rails programmer is who you need, then it
might be time to live outside your comfort zone a little. Ok, maybe a
lot. Find a reputable freelancer – and you can probably tell some of
the people who’ve got the secret sauce by reading this list carefully
– and give them a small slice of work to do offsite. For an agreed-
upon rate.

When that slice (or iteration, or whatever you want to call it)
completes, see if the results are better, worse, or about the same as
if you had the person’s butt parked in a chair in your office. I’ll
bet you will find that a good Rails dev working in his or her own
environment will save you tons of time and money. Further, I believe
you’ll probably get a superior end result if you choose carefully
from a larger talent pool. It’s just the initial anxiety you have to
overcome :slight_smile:

If you really want face time, I’m sure most freelancers would make a
periodic business trip (at your expense) to attend meetings.

So, if you can sell the “baby steps” approach to freelance
development offsite, you certainly will improve your chances of
finding someone. Additionally, you can pay a bit more because you
have no cost burden for office, support staff, benefits, or other
infrastructure.

Just my $.02