Ruby Developers Don't Scale

"Anyways, I have been quite busy preparing courses for classes I gave to a bunch a great Engineers at one of the Fortune 100 companies based in San Diego. I was also planning my big vacation trip to Europe and wrapping up few projects."

Translates to:

"I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

The basic fact is that a year or two of Rails development experience doesn't make you a good architect, systems programmer, or database administrator. Good back-end engineers are much rarer, and should command a premium, if only because such knowledge really does only come from years of hard-earned experience.

I think the client in this story tried to staff up the way a big waterfall or java project typically scales up: hire as many cogs as you can and give them each a little module to work on. In essence, they want a big group of mediocre developers.

A bummer, but perhaps a failing of the consultant. With any adoption of new technology or process, you have to prep the client for uncomfortable changes. Like paying more to fewer developers, or starting work without a 300 line mpp project plan, or whatever.

Sometimes in our roles as consultants, that's the most important job.

Sounds like a good strategy for many endeavors.