Clojurians Log v2

I’ve seen those type of adverts too and it totally puts me off. Working in Haskell/Scala/Clojure are 3 entirely separate paradigms. Each approach/paradigm has its fans and I imagine that each fan isn’t going to want to be stuck doing something that they’re not comfortable with. Learning these languages takes time and becoming proficient in them takes even more time. Just because I may be qualified for one doesn’t mean I’m qualified or interested in another.

there's the nuance though that some companies specifically seek "product-centric" engineers more than tech-centered... Sometimes I've even seen that explicitly worded, so it wouldn't surprise me if sometimes these adverts were seeking the same filtering, just more subtly.

@the2bears Re: that Ericsson job -- a lot of these very large corporations are poly-lingual and are happy to take engineers that have any combination of skills that fit with their existing tech stacks. I've spoken to several Bay Area companies, for example, that have small Clojure teams alongside Scala, Java, Python, etc, etc. They look to hire good engineers, preferably polyglots, that they can move from project to project and train up in other tech that they also use.

I think that there's a strong argument for not being identified by "just" your current favorite programming language.

I know that there are also a lot of people who look for a job that uses a specific piece of tech and want to be sure that's exactly what they're applying for 🙂

Fair point, and I actually work at such a company. I do Clojure, Scala, and Java... with varying levels of happiness depending on the project and which one 🙂 The difference with where I work, though, seems to be that despite it being a large company individual teams have quite a bit of autonomy compared with the bootcamp model of FB, or Google's model. I guess I just like a job description to include the "what you'll be working on" section if possible.

I hear ya. I did a phone interview with Google, years ago, after they'd been pestering me to interview for a few years, and they couldn't tell me much about what I'd be working on, nor what technology I'd be using.

But remember that Apple is often lumped in with FAANG as an example of "Big Tech" and it can also be infuriatingly vague about what a job actually is until you're onboard 🙂

I've talked to both Amazon and Microsoft in the past and both have assured me that teams have a degree of autonomy that often lets them pick their tech stack, even if it isn't like their neighbors'... I can't speak to Facebook or Netflix (but I get the sense the latter also has polyglot teams with a high degree of autonomy, based on some of the stuff they've presented at conferences).

I think, in general, if you want a specific job, you're more likely to find it at a smaller company that has fewer projects and fewer tech stack options!

(I was just browsing software engineer jobs at Apple and found one looking for Java or Scala or Clojure, but also HTML5 and CSS3, and JavaScript, React.js or similar, familiarity with Gimp or Photoshop, understanding of Oracle or Teradata or Vertica, plus Storm or Spark or Flink or Flume... 👀 @the2bears 🙂 )

(and that was just a section of the Key Qualifications part of the job spec!)

@seancorfield as I am indeed at Apple I guess different teams will write their JDs differently. I happened to get my position because they were specifically looking for Clojure at the time 🙂 I've seen Netflix also look specifically for it as well. The one you mention is hilarious... Gimp + Teradata + Flink? What an odd combination 😂

Yeah, the further I scrolled down, the more my mouth opened 🙂

@the2bears I actually worked at CENX - the Ottawa company acquired by Ericsson that I believe that posting is meant for. Almost the entire stack is Clojure. There was a little bit of Java, Go, and Python going on - but most developers there are spending 100% of their time in Clojure(script). If you'd like, I can get in touch with someone I know who is still a dev there to see if that is still the case!

@trailcapital interesting, and thanks for the clarification. Sean's explanation, that there are multiple tech stacks and the job descriptions are written as such, looks very accurate. No need to contact anyone there for further information, at least for my sake, but others may be interested.