Comment by kyleburton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyleburton | Hacker News Reader

I'm at my 3rd organization with Clojure, started in late 2008 (I think). In the first I had used Jscheme as an extension and scripting language for one of our JVM based systems. I moved to Clojure for prototyping tasks, other developers working with me showed interest and we were able to use it for small development tools at first. Once those started to show productivity improvements we were able to leverage it for small and then larger projects. Part of getting it adopted was getting the other devs on the team interested and excited about it.

The second company was with a team that I joined who was specifically looking for Clojure developers. It ended up being 4 developers, only 2 of which really knew any Clojure previously. The other 2 were Ruby devs. We paired over the entire life of the project and it was a very effective way of transferring skill sets - for all involved. We all learned more and more quickly than I've experienced during any other equivalent time on a project.

At my current engagement, I'm the head of tech and was able to choose the technology. I have the permission of the rest of the executive team and given my activity with the local technology community I've had no difficulty finding good developers who are enthusiastic about using Clojure. This may change as we grow, but I know I've still got a pool to pull from.

Choosing a non-mainstream technology is often additional work for whomever is leading the decision in any organization. For me it's been worth it: we've gotten passionate people who are more engaged because we're using something they care about. The fallback is to just go with a more mainstream JVM language (Java) - hasn't been and doesn't seem like it'll be ann issue.

Do you specifically seek out these jobs so that you can use Clojure? I'm working with Clojure on a personal project for image-processing, and I'd like to find a job where I can do more with it than just late-night hackery.

In the 1st you could say I snuck JScheme in under the radar when I first introduced it.

For the 2nd I was actively recruited to the team. I personally believe that this was because I made a conscious effort in the fall of 2008 to start being much more active in the community at large. I started doing more visibile things on the internet: a blog, putting up a sandbox on github. I also started speaking at local user groups (god bless them for listening to my first talks and my horrible, horrendous presentation skills).

The 3rd (current) is a startup, where I was also actively recruited into, to join at the time the first technologist at the company. They subsequently left about 7wks later for another startup. Taking on the role as head of technology I became responsible. I mean that in all the gravity of what it implies: I chose Clojure and I am responsible for that - as part of such I must ensure that the organization can keep moving forward and has a plan if I am no longer part of it. To do that I've started a local Clojure group, we have meetings at our office and I ensure that the developers working on my team get every single ounce of technical experience I can transfer to them.

By 'recruited into' I mean that not in the sense that either side used a recruiter. I mean I was approached through my network because of the effort I put into building the netowrk and the effort I put into building a personal brand (as slimy as that sounds, it is working).

Actively working at networking has been wonderful. I can't recommend it enough. I was involved in starting a "tech breakfast" meeting that takes place 1x a month. The local groups (esp volunteering to speak), the breakfast sessions, and buying people lunch (an hour of interesting conversation is totally worth the $10, and every time it has come back to me) has gone a long way to building a local network.

Networking will help - you'll have access to more of the places that might be willing to use Clojure, and more places that would be willing to let you choose the stack.

Be happy to share more if you have more questions.

Regards,

Kyle

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