[Haskell-cafe] How easy is it to hire Haskell programmers

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2010-06-30 at 20:34 +0100, Paul Johnson wrote:
> I'm starting to see job adverts mentioning Haskell as a "nice to have", 
> and even in some cases as a technology to work with.
> 
> However right now I'm looking at it from the other side.  Suppose 
> someone wants to hire a Haskell developer or three.  How easy is this?  
> I'd appreciate replies from people who have actually done this.

We have been doing this very recently, in fact we are currently half way
through interviewing.

> * How many applications did you get?
> 
> * How many of those applicants knew what a monad is, or how to write 
> FizzBuzz in Haskell?

When we are done we intend to write up a blog post more details, e.g.
numbers and the range/distribution of experience among candidates. I
hope that will be useful to people who are interested in hiring Haskell
programmers.

We don't know how many can do FizzBuzz or equivalent because we picked a
shortlist before doing interviewing. In general we have been very
impressed with both the number and quality of candidates. As Felipe
says, not restricting to applicants in the same country helps.

-- 
Duncan Coutts, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/