[erlang-questions] Erlang for managers

[Martin Hässler]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Nathaniel Waisbrot
<nathaniel@REDACTED> wrote:
> > On Feb 26, 2016, at 7:12 AM, Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
> > <mahesh@REDACTED> wrote:
> >
> > Slightly off-tangent, but you might want to first consider why your
> > manager asked you for this, and tailor your answer appropriately :-)
>
> A good point. In my experience, this question is often based on the
> worry that if you use Erlang you won't be able to hire any
> developers. I haven't heard many satisfying answers to this, either.

Yes, that is right. She had heard that another part of the company
which also uses Erlang/OTP said that they only wanted Erlang
programmers. That caused some concern among the management as the
company has thousands of highly experienced C++ developers but very
few available Erlang developers.

I got a bit shocked about this as our (Erlang) team's main recruitment
focus is to find great developers who are eager to learn and not
afraid to talk to the end users. It is also good if the new developers
have some domain experience. Prior Erlang knowledge is not important
at all in a team who already has long Erlang experience.

My guess why the other group only ask for Erlang programmers is a
combination of two things: Paul Graham's selection process and that
they already have a lot experienced C++ programmers who need
guidance.

I think it is a good sign that my manager is interested to know more and
this thread has been great input for me. Thank you all!

> Fairly well-known is http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html where Paul
> Graham suggests that hiring for a more esoteric language mostly
> filters out candidates that you wouldn't want to hire anyway. That
> seems to work better as a justification after making the choice,
> rather than an argument in favor of picking a language.