I've had to interview hundreds and learned a lot of lessons. With that, here's my best advice to anyone else who wants hire a Rails developer:
Don't use Monster.com or recruitment agencies. Use your feet instead; find out where Rails developers meet each other and go there. In San Francisco it's the Ruby Meetups, in Toronto check out PubNite. WorkingWithRails.com can also be useful. If you must post to job boards, try 37 Signals and add your job posting to SimplyHired.
A personal Rails blog is required. Every Rails developer should have a blog to engage with the community. On a related note, I've often asked candidates to list their favorite Rails blogs or even show me their newsreader. They should know most of the top Rails blogs and who's behind them.
Special compensation. Money is just one technique of persuasion, everybody wins if you are more creative. First, Rails developers need their MacBook Pros and fat external screens, obviously. Trip to RailsConf should be included. I've also noticed they enjoy free lunches now and again.
Have a company Rails blog with useful, meaningful posts (like our Email Veracity post which made it to del.icio.us/popular) to spread awareness and goodwill.
Regarding holes in proficiency... web development is increasingly vertically integrated. In Java and .NET worlds, its quite customary to have front end, business tier, and DBAs all separated. The highly integrated Rails philosophy--convention over configuration, and all that--requires a top to bottom perspective. Rails is not that different from any other MVC framework. Anyone who has used Struts+Hibernate in the Java World can start working on Rails easily. I think working with Rails and being a good Ruby developer are different things. Finding a good Ruby developer is harder. A good Ruby developer with decipher the internals of the Rails implementation , understand the philosophy , and extend it, the average one will just follow the book.
Don't use Monster.com or recruitment agencies. Use your feet instead; find out where Rails developers meet each other and go there. In San Francisco it's the Ruby Meetups, in Toronto check out PubNite. WorkingWithRails.com can also be useful. If you must post to job boards, try 37 Signals and add your job posting to SimplyHired.
A personal Rails blog is required. Every Rails developer should have a blog to engage with the community. On a related note, I've often asked candidates to list their favorite Rails blogs or even show me their newsreader. They should know most of the top Rails blogs and who's behind them.
Special compensation. Money is just one technique of persuasion, everybody wins if you are more creative. First, Rails developers need their MacBook Pros and fat external screens, obviously. Trip to RailsConf should be included. I've also noticed they enjoy free lunches now and again.
Have a company Rails blog with useful, meaningful posts (like our Email Veracity post which made it to del.icio.us/popular) to spread awareness and goodwill.
Regarding holes in proficiency... web development is increasingly vertically integrated. In Java and .NET worlds, its quite customary to have front end, business tier, and DBAs all separated. The highly integrated Rails philosophy--convention over configuration, and all that--requires a top to bottom perspective. Rails is not that different from any other MVC framework. Anyone who has used Struts+Hibernate in the Java World can start working on Rails easily. I think working with Rails and being a good Ruby developer are different things. Finding a good Ruby developer is harder. A good Ruby developer with decipher the internals of the Rails implementation , understand the philosophy , and extend it, the average one will just follow the book.
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