Sami Hoda says:

Welcome to the club!

7/16/08 11:44 PM

Raul Riera says:

Do you offer VISAs as well? :P hehe

7/17/08 6:18 AM

John Whish says:

FAQU is a great resource for those on a budget. They recently had an edition focusing on OO.

7/17/08 7:33 AM

simon says:

Where are you based, seems like the problem in Ireland is the opposite, there are no CF jobs out there. I’m based in Ireland and have all the skills you mentioned above and looking for my next contract

7/17/08 8:53 AM

Troy Allen says:

Where are you located? Maybe I can help you find some talent.

7/17/08 10:26 AM

John Farrar says:

How about some details for where someone could find you that might have what you are looking for in skills! :) That would help you find the talent, yes?

7/17/08 12:29 PM

Don Bellamy says:

Most the good ones I know are freelancers looking for opportunities to work remotely, myself included. ;)

7/17/08 12:42 PM

Sean Corfield says:

I agree that it's really hard to find available CF talent with those sorts of skills in California. We're adopting a distributed model with remote developers so we have a bigger talent pool to draw from. Instead of advertising our positions, we're going straight to people we'd like to have on the team and interviewing them directly. That's how the board ended up with me and Ray on board and how we just got Nicolas Lierman. I'm the only local one of the three.

7/17/08 6:24 PM

David says:

Well, I think there are a few answers to your blog post, for what its worth here's my opinion on them.

First of all, "Yes" it’s hard to find CF talent. I know in the past we have had to cast a wide net to build our team. I manage a CF user group, and I'm constantly getting emails looking for leads.

I'd ask, "Where is the talent", in general. Is it just me, or has the talent pool dried up significantly in the last few years. Sure, anyone can list languages on their resume, but when it comes to finding a decent person with a head on their shoulders...well, even that is proving tough. I think back in the .com days, we used to call them "soft skills" (aaaah, the good old days!)

I think a certification should be taken as what it is - a discipline undertook, and completed. It’s the same with a degree - it doesn't make you a better employee, it lays down a fundamental level of understanding.

For sure, Adobe was caught flat footed - Ben Forta posted recently that the biggest complaint they get from customers is the lack of CF talent. A victim of their success, to some degree, but you're right, any pushes into education is going to take a while to trickle down.

As far as keeping up to date on our chosen technology - first and foremost, I'd say joining a User Group is #1. We have 10 meetings a year, and I'd say at least 6 of them are MAX level. So if you can't get to MAX, CFUnited or cf.Objective (a colleague says the latter is one of the best, by the way), then you either need to join a group, or start a group.

For what its worth, I don't think this is just a CF problem (although the recent growth hurts a little more, I suppose). I have friends involved with other technologies and they are having trouble finding the right people too.

Best of luck in the search.

Davo

7/18/08 12:55 AM

John Farrar says:

What makes a good developer? The goal here is to hire good productive talent. The goal should be to get projects done on time and to communicate clearly project needs and achievement.

OK, here is my question. How does having someone in an office achieve this? Five years ago this might have been a point even. Today with high speed internet, IM clients, things like Acrobat.com (or GoToMeeting, etc.), Web Cams are built into laptops these days, it seems we are not "embracing our technology". We build "internet" business and tell our clients they should do business on the internet. Yet we are against doing our own business on the internet. (Perhaps this should be a blog post of my own! LOL) I have talked with Tom it's not pointed at him at all... rather it's time for us to be a bit less conflicted. :)

So perhaps we should start a discussion group on how to achieve success with the remote worker. Part could be a thread for the worker and part could be a thread for the people doing the hire side of things. Thoughts?

7/18/08 11:27 AM

Lola LB says:

I started to comment here but it got a bit long-winded, so I thought I'd better take it over to my blog at <http://www.knitgal.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/7/18/Th...;.

7/18/08 12:18 PM

Lola LB says:

Oops. That should be: http://www.knitgal.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/7/18/Th...

7/18/08 12:19 PM

David says:

I would be interested in hearing how Sean's company does this - since they have 3 (that I know of) developers spread out over multiple time zones.

Personally, I'll put my hand up and say that I'm more of a close-level collaboration person. I don't really like working at home, myself. We have remote people in my IT group, but none that report to me.

I"m not sure if thats just the style of development we have - getting people in a room and dirtying up a whiteboard. Documenting ideas on a napkin, etc. (don't worry, we have a formal place to store the documentation :-)

Bit of a ramble, I know, but I think our core fundamental for hiring, is to hire the person, along with "core" skills (e.g., good code structure, problem solving, SQL skills, etc) and then just apply them to ColdFusion.

Cheers,

Davo

7/18/08 1:31 PM

Matthew Darby says:

I too am in the position of looking for qualified candidates, currently it seems to be tough to fill a position for just a entry/junior level position. We have even considered accepting PHP programmers with the hope of training them into OO and CF. I am here in North Carolina, and I know there has to be some qualified candidates out there.

@John Farrar: I like the idea about the discussion group on the remote developer. While I don't think it would work in our case, I know that in other positions it seems to be working out nicely. The key for that is ensuring your have a self-motivated worker who can handle a project from start to finish.

7/18/08 1:41 PM

Scott Bennett says:

@TomdeMan,

As someone who has been in management positions over ColdFusion development teams in southern California for the last 5 years, I know exactly how hard it is to find a decent(not even great just decent) procedural CF developer around here. So I can imagine that finding a CF developer with the OO experience you want would only be that much harder. But, I really want to address this question from my own personal experience:

"I evolved from good old procedural and spaghetti code, to working with design patterns and simulating OO programming. So I ask, where is everyone else?"

I personally have spent time researching some of the OO CF frameworks out there, and have done some of the "Hello World" style sample applications, and I feel like I understand them on a basic level, but I really need some real-world work experience to be able to put these vague concepts into practice and really gain a firm grasp on how to do OO. The only reason I haven't got that real-world experience is based on the following circumstances in my life:

1. I have mostly held full time employment positions for companies that already have an established procedural architecture to their rather large applications. So, while I have done some pretty cool things for those companies, and have added a ton of value to their applications, I have simply lacked any opportunities to apply any of the OO frameworks I have researched for those companies.

2. I have a wife and kids and a busy personal life, so I don't have a lot of time for side projects, and my day job pays my bills so I don't really need the extra money. That being said, I usually only accept projects that I can do in a few hours, so I have not had any real opportunities to apply a framework to any side projects.

3. I have applied to companies like yours that already use a particular OO CF Framework, but everytime I do I get shot down because I don't have the real-world experience and they don't want to wait for me to come up to speed.

It's kind of been a growing frustration for me for years now, becuase I want to get that job where I can grow and learn these new skills, but just haven't had any luck getting it. It's like there's this growing division between OO CFers and the Procedural CFers and I'm not seeing a lot of willingness from the OO side to reach accross to the Procdedural side and use their experience to mentor a new employee and invest their time/money to help that new employee get over some of the mental hurdles involved in switching from the one way of programming to the other.

I guess what I am saying for you is that perhaps you should go through that stack of resume's again, and interview some of the top notch procedural CF developers out there. I think there are probably more people out there like me, that would really embrace an opportunity to expand their skills and glean from your experience to expand their own ability. If you are willing to do that, and can find a bright, eager-to-learn candidate, you could end up with a kick but OO programmer in a few months who also has years and years of top notch procedural development experience to draw upon.

7/18/08 1:49 PM

TomdeMan says:

@Raul - Yes, we would be willing to offer VISAs, and even sponsor a Green Card.

@Simon, Troy, John - South Bay, California - Manhattan Beach

@John, Don, Sean, Matthew - I agree with adapting to a remote / telecommute model. I have worked remote in the past, and with the technologies available to us it's fairly efficient. However, it is harder to support the remote model with a fresh infrastructure, and a business side who wants to see head count until they see an actual site up. This is my dilemma.

@Scott, Lola - I understand where you are coming from completely. That is why I encourage pushing superiors and companies to fund training and get good programmers to conferences. The goal is to increase your personal marketability and skill level and bring it back to the company, on their dime. Most have busy personal lives, families, hobbies, etc, including myself. But you can't expect to get ahead by doing what everyone else is doing either. Which means you have to make it happen on work time by getting the resources you need from them, or by finding the time on your own.

I have nothing against taking a chance on a good procedural programmer. I have worked with many in my career, was one myself. I learned as much as possible, and more importantly relayed the information to those around me. I would love to aid in someones advancement.If the deadlines allowed for it, I'd have already hired a couple. Unfortunately, this is one of those situations that business has ya by the cahoones.

7/18/08 4:10 PM

Sean Corfield says:

We rely heavily on IM / Skype / video chat / screen sharing (we're all on Macs so that's easy with iChat and built-in iSight cameras in our MacBook Pros - standard issue at Broadchoice, along with an iPhone).

We also find that internal mailing lists and use of Trac (with email notifications) helps keep people in touch during development work.

As we expand our remote team, we're looking at adopting more Scrum-like processes including the daily "stand-up" meeting via Skype perhaps...

7/19/08 6:51 PM