As a current non-Elixir developer (mostly java, SQL/RDBMs, python, {type,java}script, react, in that order) but one who as admired the ecosystem from the outside and done a lot of reading about it, I was wondering what I would be stepping into if I made the leap into an actual Elixir developer role.
Assuming I really love it, and then personal satisfaction aside (I realize it’s important, but not what I’m trying to get at here), what are the tactical advantages of being knowledgeable about Elixir and likely Phoenix?
I’ve been a dev for a few decades so I well understand the ‘soft’ advantages; knowing more languages and paradigms influences how you think, makes you a better dev, etc., but what I’m really wondering about is does knowing this somewhat niche system make you MORE valuable, since there are fewer of “us” to fit the need, or does it matter? Is the adoption of the ecosystem rising (hopefully rising!) at the same rate as the number of people required to fill them? I’ve actually had recruiters tell me they’ve never heard of it.
Maybe more philosophical than practical, but curious what you’ve found; particularly from people new to the environment - what are you seeing?
When I first started looking for a job in Elixir, it was limiting because I was looking for companies in my city who had Elixir opportunities. However, as soon as I opened up my search to remote opportunities, I had a greater range of job opportunities than I could have ever imagined. After joining my current gig for Elixir, I had the chance to engage with the Elixir community further, and talked to dozens of companies about their thoughts on hiring with Elixir. A strong majority of them said that hiring in Elixir gave them a distinct competitive advantage when looking for passionate devs. Their candidate pools were stronger, and they felt great about their hiring decisions.
I’ve had a lot of difficulty finding any fulltime opportunities with Elixir, even remotely. At this point I’ve almost given up hope for working with Elixir, and am applying for work with more “mainstream” programming languages, hoping that my Elixir experience will at least count for something.
On one hand I got to know a lot of people that teached me more about software development than my years of studying alone from different sources(I don’t have any formal education on software engineering or computer science).
Until very recently I was working as an optician selling eyeglasses(a family business) and had no prior professional experience in software development other than personal projects, open source libraries and helping other people. I wasn’t actively looking for a programming job because after a bunch of bad experiences with interviewers at local companies I had pretty much given up on that idea(why they want a graduated computer scientist to write some html and css escapes my comprehension).
But a couple weeks ago I got a job offer, and now I’m working remotely as an Elixir engineer at Packlane(there is a job listing in this forum).
So in terms of adoption and job opportunities, I’m inclined to say there are opportinities, and judging by the amount of new listings that appeared in the last couple weeks, I’d say that there is increasing demand.
The deeper you go with your Elixir and OTP knowledge, the better you’ll get at building concurrent systems. The same might apply to building distributed systems, but that depends on what you’ll be working on specifically. Knowing Phoenix will help you get on board with Rails and Django faster if you even need to. The downside is that it’s hard to go back from Elixir to “I-want-to-be-functional-and-immutable-but-I’m-not” world of React and TypeScript, etc. I also disliked the magical aspect of Rails as compared to Phoenix. It would be hard for me to go back to verboseness of C# and Java after working with Elixir codebases.
I tried leading an adoption of Elixir in one of my previous gigs, but the management pulled the plug on it, partly due to the pandemic. That’s why I decided to go all in and find a full-time Elixir job. It took me some time, but the upside of the COVID is that - I think - it accelerated the shift towards remote and async work. This allowed me to find a great job at a US-based company, which in terms of salary is a huge leap for EU-based people.
Now I’m coding Elixir full-time, I have time to be engaged in the lovely Elixir community, contribute something back. I think joining an “Elixir-based” company is the way to go.
It seems that the amount of posts per week in the Elixir Jobs section has grown significantly over the last 6 months or so. I highly recommend spending some time there.
There’s a big Java bubble in my city. Whenever I talk to any of those people, they’ve barely heard of Elixir, if ever. But it’s similar with Ruby with them. So the recruiters that revolve around that corporate bubble most probably never heard of Elixir either.
I’ve read opinions on HN that if you’re a good and/or senior developer, you’ll be fine with any technology: even if you want to code full time in a super niche language, you’ll find the right employer. I tend to agree with the premise, and with the flipside too - if you’re a junior and you aren’t determined to work in Elixir, I would recommend going with something mainstream for starters (Python? React?).
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Elixir to become mainstream, but I’m not shying away from React work, so I should be fine either way. That’s important for me in terms of job security.
Thanks for your detailed input. I have years of java and unix-y based development (so lots of shell and other scripting; python, ruby, even perl!) and most recently full time python and even more recently *script (react/js, express/ts). I’ve wanted to work with Elixir for a long time, being an old Erlang (and Joe/Ulf) fanboy but haven’t had the opportunity. But, I’m making some headway there.
I’m a Frontend React developer professionally and an Elixir developer on my personal projects.
My interest for the Elixir language has always been a benefit when I was looking for jobs in React:
I co-organized Elixir Workshop Meetups in Paris, France before the pandemic and I’m very interested in this language. Saying that on interviews help me demonstrate my involvement in Tech communities and it shows that I’m passionated about programming.
Once, a recruiter wanted me to work for him because he was a tech person who loves FP and he saw that I organized these Elixir meetups.
For my latest work, showing my interest on Elixir proves that I make efforts to learn cutting edge technologies. Also, when I explain why I care about this languages, it proves that I can make good business decision (because Elixir is a good business solution)
Overall, learning Elixir has really helped me on interviews and obviously, for developing my personal projects.
But that’s the side perk, I care about Elixir because it’s the perfect tool to build my projects.
I’m surprised because I see new job posts daily, and I have read recruiters saying it’s not easy to find an elixir developer. I have myself received job offers, but have to refuse for the moment as I’m working on my own project. So what you’re saying seems different to what I see and personally experienced so far.
It would be nice to know how easy/difficult it was for other elixir developers to find a job.
I’m a new elixir developer, I worked as a intern for 3 months (unpaid one because I wanted to get some elixir experience) and looking for junior roles since 3 4 month’s,
I’m doing lot of cold calling to recruiters and attended multiple interviews as well but could not get hired, I didn’t loose my hope and still trying, I have decided to pursue my career in elixir ecosystem.
What I observed was that there are very few or no company hires new and junior elixir developers and most of the recruiters say they are looking for more experienced and senior level developer’s,
Even most of the elixir tutorials also assumes some kind of experience from learns to have, I started my programming journey with python so I knew some basic concepts,
I tried flutter framework for some time it started in 2017 but it’s so popular in the market (I know it’s backed by Google and they are pushing it very hard into market) and there are lot of job openings for new developer’s
But question is elixir brings lot of power’s and capabilities onto the table still no mass adaption across the industry.
Because elixir ecosystem is not on boarding many new elixir developer’s that’s why?
Or elixir need’s more marketing?
True I rarely see a job open for a Junior developer.
But what is a Junior/Senior developer? For me the number of years working as a programmer doesn’t define that title at all. I have worked with devs that work in big corporations for 20+ years and they never heard of programming principles like SOLID, loose coupling, TDD, etc. They want job security, a company car, a maximum number of holidays, spend all their time with their family, and are not passionate in programming at all and never improved over their 20+ years of programming. Just get the job done, hack the code, accumulate a huge technical debt over time, short term vision.
For me a Senior profile is a developer that can produce clean, maintainable, extensible and readable code, and that knows the language. You may work for a year and be a Senior, if you grasp things fast. If a company considers you Junior only because of lack of working experience, it’s just an excuse to get you cheap, or I think most commonly that don’t understand that time spent working doesn’t define your skills. Ofc time spent programming still counts as you improve over time, but that is relative to each person.
I guess companies looking for Elixir developers are smaller companies, and they are then in a more fast-paced environment, and don’t have the resources to train beginners in programming. Also a company going for Elixir is probably that some tech person pushed that technology in the company because they care about software quality, and a junior developer can quickly compromise a clean codebase if he is not assisted, and if he doesn’t know the art of producing clean code. Big corporates that tend to use more mainstream languages don’t care so much.
Yeah it’s true, most of the elixir users are small teams doesn’t have have resources to train beginners and new elixir developer’s,
One more of my observations: Nowadays blockchain technology is gaining lot of attention on the market and elixir adaption is happening significantly on blockchain development because I being interviewed for blockchain development roles(multiple times) and I see lot blockchain related startup’s using elixir as their main programming language
It’s kind of Elixir and blockchain made in heaven pair, because whatever technical requirements blockchain needs it’s already there in elixir,
Built-in concurrency, scalability, long run able software, distributed systems, achieve lot with less code, Immutable data, cryptography
And I’m thinking to start YouTube channel and create free elixir tutorials targeting blockchain technology and IOT technology for beginners so that I can learn elixir and do contribute something to elixir ecosystem.
My personal thoughts are that there are companies hiring junior elixir developers, but that these roles are not advertised as specifically elixir roles. You’re going to be much more willing to teach a junior your stack VS a more senior person, the expectation is that the onboarding time will be less, so they want you to have a strong grasp of the language before you start working there.
If you look at the job postings, at least for the remote ones the vast majority is for senior if not lead positions, often with extensive professional experience in Elixir.
Exactly. They want people who can hack around the codebase right away because someone quit or their workload is too important and they didn’t plan it beforehand. So even if you have experience with other stacks it’s not easy.
I know what you’re saying - when I was just reading about job experiences online, it seemed like Elixir is in high demand and not many devs, so finding a job should be easy. But whenever I apply for an Elixir position (in the USA), it seems like there are many other qualified applicants, because I will get passed over without even a technical interview. Maybe it is the sources I use to look for positions (Elixir Forum, Elixir Slack, Stackoverflow) where the other applicants are also very experienced in Elixir.
Regarding looking for a job, I would strongly encourage you to attend ElixirConf US or ElixirConf EU, especially this year. The virtual ticket is just a fraction of the cost and you still get access to all the hiring companies. Last time I did that, I got in touch with something like 5 interesting companies.
There are companies hiring elixir developers (my employer for example, hit me up (Twitter binarytemple) if you want to discuss). Thing is, most of the work is backend, high performance stuff and there’s a general moratorium on anyone without a computer science degree as its considered (rightly or wrongly) the easiest way to filter out the more “framework oriented” software developer. Anyhow, point is, if you’ve got the educational qualifications there’s lots of Fortune 500 work out there, if you don’t, you better get entrepreneurial and start your own company like Ellison, Zuck, Gates, Jobs, etc.
