Ask HN: How hard is it to hire Rust developers?

From prior experiences, such as using Python from 1999 through 2005 and Common Lisp between 2005 through 2012, you have an advantage when recruiting for a language considered "exotic" by standards of the given day.

At two different startups circa 2007 and early 2008, we received many, many very high quality candidates with a one sentence description posted to the right place (e.g., planet.lisp.org) saying, "Use Common Lisp in Seattle."

I've had comparable experience with that approach for Rust in Vancouver, BC last year when looking for devs that were merely "familiar" with the language, even if no professional work experience with Rust but "Ideal Candidates" having "Rust, Go, C++, C, Python or Lisp family of languages". That was posted via this-week-in-rust.org.

That one was posted with relatively poor posted salary, yet we still saw high quality candidates for the senior level role. The intermediate level dev that was ultimately hired apparently worked very well for the company after I left.

Also consider viabale options for Plan B: on the job training worked well for us even before Edition 2018 landed.

We had a senior level Java developer learn Rust on the job and be very productive within a couple of weeks. I joined shortly after and was experience with Rust. This former Java dev and I shared knowledge equally: I learned the Diesel ORM and our PostgreSQL integration from him with a few short conversations, and I perhaps helped abbreviate his remaining Rust learning curve with maybe three 1-2 minute conversations.

Another person at that same company was primarily a React developer, and he picked up Rust in fairly short order as well, but I had less involvement there.

A third person was fresh out of an extended bootcamp-style co-op program, and knew Java and React & React-Native, but this her first position after graduating. Note that she came from a non-programming background prior: goods trading industry. Also English is her third or fourth language. I walked her through potentially tricky bits of syntax and semantics (such as descructuring-bind for Structs) in an afternoon. Edition 2018 had long-since landed by her arrival, so that helped.

Modifying existing Rust code and following the patterns worked well. She started small but progressed quickly. Within a few short months, she was adding back-end API endpoints (actix-web pre-1.0) for her front-end needs, and she was creating new .rs files with most PRs merged as-is.

A related question that I would argue is equally relevant: how hard is it to become productive on a Rust code base if you're good at other languages? And how much does it vary by language?