[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is it worth learning Elixir, from a jobs per...
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Ask HN: Is it worth learning Elixir, from a jobs perspective?
How long does it take for an experienced programmer to learn Elixir
good enough to get a job? How good is the Elixir and Phoenix job
market?
Author : akudha
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-08-14 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If you are an experienced programmer I suppose you already have a
| job or can get a job with your experience, unless your skills
| have become devalued because the field they apply to are no
| longer sought after.
|
| I would expect though that your experience is somewhere in the
| web area, so it seems unlikely that your skills would be so
| devalued that they are no longer sought after.
|
| So if your skills are still relevant in the job market you should
| be asking not what job you can get with a tech you learn now but
| what job you can get in a future where your current skills have
| become devalued, or in a future where those skills have become
| suddenly much more valuable.
|
| There is a view that what languages you learn have to do with
| improving your understanding as a programmer of different
| paradigms - in this view you learn Elixir because it will make a
| you a better programmer, but for a job market what languages and
| skills you learn maybe should be ones that complement what you
| are already highly competent at - as long as those skills are
| going to continue to be marketable.
| rememberlenny wrote:
| Founder of a team of five here. For a sample size of one, we have
| a Rails based backend and it's on our roadmap to migrate parts to
| Elixir.
|
| We have a video based tool and the low compute plus multithreaded
| aspects of Elixir make it ideal for web based FFMPEG processes.
|
| We are three engineers, all of whom are senior/principal level
| SWE.
|
| If we were hiring someone next, we'd likely optimize for their
| frontend skills, given the app is the complicated part, and the
| API is trivial. That being said, we would expect them to have
| some advanced experience with a backend language, and to be able
| to pickup new things quickly.
|
| I can confidently say we wouldn't hire someone who has only done
| a few projects in a programming language, and hadn't worked in a
| production environment. On the other hand, we would definitely
| hire someone without relevant experience in our entire stack, if
| we knew they have proven deep expertise in their own stack and
| the ability to learn/move quickly.
| snarkypixel wrote:
| Most companies hiring for Elixir devs will still hire you as long
| as you have experience in other languages. imho it's more
| important to show you have production experience, can ship and
| are willing to learn. If there's a company you particularly like
| that is using Elixir, you could do a small side-project in it to
| show willingness.
| hit8run wrote:
| No. If you know ruby not so long. Otherwise long. Not good.
| learc83 wrote:
| I didn't have a problem switching over with no professional
| experience and only a few small hobby projects under my belt. It
| took me a few weeks before a I ramped up enough to be able to
| start being productive.
|
| This is coming from a Ruby, C#, F#, C, and JavaScript background.
|
| My company is hiring btw if you're looking for an Elixir job.
| https://grnh.se/b87ce54f2us
| aenis wrote:
| You may want to call a professional staffing agency like Randstad
| or Addecco and ask if they are looking for people with that
| skillset. They have databases with skill scarcity per area and if
| you are lucky enough to find a diligent recruiter they will tell
| you.
|
| Btw, The way recruiting works for niche jobs is largely keyword
| based (yup). Learn Elixir, put it in your linkedin and wait; the
| jobs will find you.
|
| Disclaimer: I work for one of those staffing companies and know
| how automated job matching algos work.
| gregors wrote:
| It depends on your goals. If it is primarily a Phoenix gig,
| things aren't that different from any other MVC type framework.
| Especially if it's a rest or graphql endpoint for a JS framework.
| If it's a Liveview app or something with heavy OTP going on it's
| going to take the average dev a bit longer to grok what's going
| on. I've met JR devs who are coding Elixir in their first
| professional developer job at this point.
|
| There are quite a few open positions for Elixir currently. Are
| there enough open positions that that you can find one that suits
| your experience, salary, position, location, benefits, product,
| team dynamic, time zone, etc..... Thats where I feel everyone
| involved both hiring managers and developers need to give and
| take a little.
|
| I say learning Elixir will absolutely stretch your programming
| mind and introduce you to other ways of solving problems. Give it
| go!
|
| I actually took a job to bring Elixir to an organization. My most
| recent hire joined primarily because of getting to work with
| Elixir without previous experience. Have some conversations you
| might get lucky right out of the gate.
| peterbonney wrote:
| We use Elixir, and basically every developer we've hired has had
| zero Elixir experience prior to joining our team. Like any
| language it takes some time to get up to speed with the ins and
| outs, but I'd rather have a good developer with no Elixir
| experience than a mediocre-to-poor developer well versed in the
| language.
|
| I can't speak for any other company, but I suspect that any team
| that has made the decision to use Elixir is (a) well aware of the
| low market penetration it has, and (b) not screening out resumes
| based on inexperience with the language.
|
| Edit: I should add that, despite all of that, I think it's a fun
| language and any developer would probably enjoy dabbling in it
| regardless of vocational prospects.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I started applying to some Elixir jobs and have gotten a ton of
| screening rejections. I haven't written it before but I have
| done a little Erlang, albeit not professionally.
| conradfr wrote:
| From my experience loosely looking for an Elixir job, Elixir
| ads has more chance to ask for Ruby experience than Elixir.
|
| Or maybe I notice those more because I don't know Ruby and RoR.
| tapvt wrote:
| As someone who is currently hiring for a non-Elixir role, I would
| consider experience in Elixir/Erlang/OTP as a positive signal on
| a CV, even though the current role does not require it.
| nick_urban wrote:
| I'm currently hiring Elixir developers at TalentWall, but since
| there aren't a lot of them out there, I'm willing to hire people
| who have only a moderate amount of Elixir experience, as long as
| they are experienced in related tech (MVC, Ruby, a functional
| language, SQL, etc.)
|
| I would say that because of the Elixir dev shortage, it's easier
| to get hired for an Elixir job if you only have moderate Elixir
| experience than it would be for more mainstream languages if you
| had limited experience with them.
| donotlikefb wrote:
| > Btw, The way recruiting works for niche jobs is largely keyword
| based (yup). Learn Elixir, put it in your linkedin and wait; the
| jobs will find you. > Disclaimer: I work for one of those
| staffing companies and know how automated job matching algos
| work.
|
| Maybe a better way to test whether knowing Elixir is valuable
| would be, test it by saying you know Elixir (put on your
| LinkedIn) and see if you get recruiter outreach
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> How long does it take for an experienced programmer to learn
|
| I'd guess about 2 weeks but I'd be interested to hear other
| people's take on this. I'd break that down as:
|
| 1. The syntax: an hour
|
| 2. The rules of the language & the grammar: Under 2 days
|
| 3. Ability to write all the idiomatic constructs from muscle
| memory: Under a week. Timebox yourself to 1.5 days reading the
| compiler, std library, popular big projects in the language and
| dedicate the rest of the time to writing
|
| 4. The landscape: the common tools, popular and essential
| libraries, some tidbits of latest news in the community: Under 3
| days
|
| You're clearly NOT going to be an expert in the language after 2
| weeks but you're going to be productive as an already experienced
| developer.
| Areading314 wrote:
| Do some searches on linkedin -- you will have very slim choices
| of company if you are trying to be working in a niche language
| like this.
| asdev wrote:
| Programming languages don't matter for most backend roles. Most
| companies just look for general programming expertise or relevant
| expertise to what the job position requires.
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