

Some thoughts on finding mobile developers or finding work as a mobile developer - avalore
http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/12/non-deterministic-problems-aka-finding.html

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chopsueyar
Here is the deal. You want a good mobile app developer, find a good coder, and
train him/help him learn.

As dinedal noted, it is slow going, as it is outside his day job.

There used to be a time where employers would recognize an employee's
abilities, and provide for his learning of new subject matter.

Sadly, today, you either have to be able to demonstrate the knowledge out of
the gate, or be damned.

There are plenty of good developers who could easily immerse themselves in
mobile app development for two weeks, and become pretty skilled mobile devs in
little time.

Nobody wants to pay for that, though.

~~~
ardit33
"There are plenty of good developers who could easily immerse themselves in
mobile app development for two weeks, and become pretty skilled mobile devs in
little time."

\-- That's not true at all. It takes a lot more time to learn a platform well,
and know how to tackle mobile client side problems especially coming from the
server side. Nobody will let you close to their production code without some
bit of experience as you are more likely to fuck up things. It is very easy to
introduce bugs on a client, and there are no unit tests to help you out on
tricky things such as deadlocks.

Also the fact that you are not learning on your own means that you are not
passionate enough for the space. Most good mobile devs I know have created
some silly app at some point, just to kick the tires.

You might not have a full blown commercial app developed, but you should have
some significant demo on your hand to show.

~~~
okaramian
I don't like the argument that if you don't practice this particular piece at
home, then you're not a passionate developer for some particular platform.

Good devs are good devs, and it's difficult to parse time out to learn each
individual platform.

The good devs I know can learn stuff really quickly and the ability to
engineer things well is fairly platform independent.

If we were talking about different layers (like say a Systems Developer trying
to do UI work) that's a completely different story.

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dinedal
As a developer aspiring to be a mobile developer, I have published one Android
app, working on a second, but this is slow going as it is outside of my day
job.

A question I don't have the answer to is, how do I know when enough is enough
to start calling myself experienced? I can launch intents, activities, use
SQLite, get to the GPS, Accelerometers, and more, but I have a hard time
getting apps to market that prove all of this, since an app is more then just
a technical checklist of features.

How can I effectively demonstrate to a potential employer I have the technical
chops?

PS. I can relocate if you were wondering =)

~~~
nootopian
Were hiring, <http://portablepixels.com>

~~~
flashgordon
Is working remotely an option? Just asking.

~~~
nootopian
Yes sure.

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rbritton
Just by having a reasonably successful non-game iPad app in the App Store,
I've begun to receive a number of requests for custom-tailored enterprise
versions of the app. I've solved the arguably "hard" problem of larger image
viewing within the RAM constraints of the device and have a working, modular
set of views that are easily adapted to almost any purpose.

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tomh-
It is a good article, but I think they might overestimate the necessity to
have several successful mobile projects under your belt. See
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/11/the-5-myths-of-building-
a-g...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/11/the-5-myths-of-building-a-great-
mobile-team/)

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wiseleo
Perhaps you can mitigate the "mobile" aspect somewhat. The model and the
controller can be written by any competent developer without requiring the
mobile skills. Then you can have a mobile specialist developer concentrate
solely on the views.

At least that's how I am addressing this problem in my application. My mobile
interface is just another view that talks to my API. Anyone can write it
without having to understand what my application does. I am finding myself
writing views for all kinds of environments and it's certainly much easier not
to have to change my other code at all. :)

