I’m relatively new to the Elixir ecosystem, coming from a Ruby on Rails and JavaScript background, but over the past few months, I’ve built around 8 production-ready demo projects with Phoenix and LiveView, all going beyond simple CRUD, with real architectural considerations.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Elixir hiring signals seem a bit different from more mainstream ecosystems, so I wanted to get a sense from people working in the field:
When you’re evaluating Elixir candidates, what tends to matter more in practice: strong personal projects that demonstrate OTP and distributed systems thinking, or contributions to established open-source projects in the ecosystem?
More broadly, what actually differentiates someone who “uses Phoenix” from someone you’d consider a genuinely strong Elixir engineer in a hiring context?
Nerves experience. Ash experience. Membrane experience. At least 5 years of Hologram experience
jokes aside
In the current market my impression is that people hire almost entirely on trust and relationships. These are best established by having worked with people. When that isn’t applicable open source contributions are a very decent proxy to many people. Demo/hobby projects are way better than nothing but also doesn’t say a ton, especially in the last year or two with LLMs being able to do so much.
I’d take significant contributions over apps you’ve built any day because contributions require interaction with other people and I could look at the back-and-forth or a larger history of work exchanges. Collaboration, communication and feedback processes are pretty important.
The point about open source being a proxy for trust and collaboration makes a lot of sense, especially the ability to see communication, reviews, iteration, and long-term contribution history. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
Do you have recommendations for good Elixir/Phoenix open source projects that are welcoming to contributors? Especially projects where someone can realistically grow into meaningful contributions over time.
This depends so much on what type of effort is more satisfying to you. Phoenix has open issues you can find and address and Steffen who does much of the Phoenix work came in just fixing assorted LiveView stuff and grew to where Chris is pointing to him as the de-facto primary maintainer of Phoenix now. A project like Phoenix doesn’t break a lot of new ground, it is way more about maintenance.
A project like Hologram is continuously breaking new ground. Then there are things where you can build up more niche skillsets that really distinguish you from the overall crowd of web devs. Membrane is all about the media domain and while there is a lot there there are way more elements that could be built out and either contributed towards the main project or offered as separate additions.
Nx is pretty quiet currently but Paulo Valente is pushing it along and there is definitely stuff that could be done all over the place there if you have the skillset or inclination to learn it.
Nerves is steady but there are always new areas to cover. BEAM Bots is brand spanking new so that’s about breaking new ground and stabilizing the current patterns through actual use.
The more niche stuff is a balancing act. People can decide you are overqualified or don’t know the usual web/SaaS stuff because you are doing embedded or whatever. But it also means you are in a different pool when applying for positions.
This all to say. There is no easy answer. You have to care about the thing you are contributing to in one way or another to make it worthwhile. The exchange rate between open source contributions and job offers is incredibly weird, vague and uncertain. But it is also the case that many of the people who are known contributors, who show up for conferences and who collaborate in various ways around the community tend to stay employed in the ecosystem. Your contributions and collaborations build up fibers and those fibers can become your network over time.
I would also strongly advice to not use LLMs to write posts, PR descriptions, comments, CV, cover letters, etc. People really really don’t like that and it’s very noticeable.
