[Haskell-cafe] Employment

[Paul Johnson]

Tom Hawkins wrote:
>  Such a database would help me counter by boss's
> argument that "it's impossible to find and hire Haskell programmers."
>
>   
There was a thread last week where someone asked who would be interested 
in a hypothetical Haskell job.  He got about 20 positive responses.  
This agrees with the experience of Microsoft Research in 2006 when they 
advertised for a third person to help with GHC development.   They also 
had about 20 applicants.

So next time I hear the "you can't get the programmers" line I'm going 
to respond with something like this:

    "If you post an advert for a Haskell developer you will get 20
    applicants.  All of those people will be the kind of developer who
    learns new programming languages to improve their own abilities and
    stretch themselves, because nobody yet learns Haskell just to get a job.

    "If you post an advert for a Java developer you will get 200
    applicants.  Most of them will be the kind of developer who learned
    Java because there are lots of Java jobs out there, and as long as
    they know enough to hold down a job then they see no reason to learn
    anything."

Paul.