Ask HN: How hard is it to hire Rust developers? - it
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dpezely
From prior experiences, such as using Python from 1999 through 2005 and Common
Lisp between 2005 through 2012, you have an _advantage_ when recruiting for a
language considered "exotic" by standards of the given day.

At two different startups circa 2007 and early 2008, we received many, many
very high quality candidates with a one sentence description posted to the
right place (e.g., planet.lisp.org) saying, "Use Common Lisp in Seattle."

I've had comparable experience with that approach for Rust in Vancouver, BC
last year when looking for devs that were merely "familiar" with the language,
even if no professional work experience with Rust but "Ideal Candidates"
having "Rust, Go, C++, C, Python or Lisp family of languages". That was posted
via this-week-in-rust.org.

That one was posted with relatively poor posted salary, yet we still saw high
quality candidates for the senior level role. The intermediate level dev that
was ultimately hired apparently worked very well for the company after I left.

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dpezely
Also consider viabale options for Plan B: on the job training worked well for
us even before Edition 2018 landed.

We had a senior level Java developer learn Rust on the job and be very
productive within a couple of weeks. I joined shortly after and was experience
with Rust. This former Java dev and I shared knowledge equally: I learned the
Diesel ORM and our PostgreSQL integration from him with a few short
conversations, and I perhaps helped abbreviate his remaining Rust learning
curve with maybe three 1-2 minute conversations.

Another person at that same company was primarily a React developer, and he
picked up Rust in fairly short order as well, but I had less involvement
there.

A third person was fresh out of an extended bootcamp-style co-op program, and
knew Java and React & React-Native, but this her first position after
graduating. Note that she came from a non-programming background prior: goods
trading industry. Also English is her third or fourth language. I walked her
through potentially tricky bits of syntax and semantics (such as
descructuring-bind for Structs) in an afternoon. Edition 2018 had long-since
landed by her arrival, so that helped.

Modifying existing Rust code and following the patterns worked well. She
started small but progressed quickly. Within a few short months, she was
adding back-end API endpoints (actix-web pre-1.0) for her front-end needs, and
she was creating new .rs files with most PRs merged as-is.

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smt88
A related question that I would argue is equally relevant: how hard is it to
become productive on a Rust code base if you're good at other languages? And
how much does it vary by language?

