Would you use Elixir/Phoenix in a country with few Elixir developers?

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I really need some advice here: would you base a project on Elixir/Phoenix if you lived in a country where you cannot recruit experienced senior developers ? in the US/Brazil maybe but in Europe ? Should we wait till more people use Elixir ?

I really like Elixir, I’m trying hard to convince everyone here but there are constraints we cannot ignore. My java/go-oriented CTO being one :slight_smile:

Thanks

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If Elixir and Phoenix were the perfect fit for the job - absolutely!

It’s not difficult to train experienced developers a new programming language or framework - especially when they are relatively easy to pick up, as Elixir and Phoenix are :003:

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It might me a hard sell and understandably so.

You might have more luck if you convince your CTO to let you code a side/pet project in Elixir/Phoenix were you know you can show off its advantages and capabilities.

Incremental adoption is the way in, in my opinion.

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I have a feeling that Elixir is used here (in Europe) very actively, if you look at the poll results it’s Germany second, Poland third and UK fourth. so even with these 3 combined you get the most adoption judging by the polls results :slight_smile:

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Problem recruiting developers is likely overstated I would be guessing this is greenfield project and I doubt you guys are looking to hire more than 10-20 people. Also in this day and age offering remote work options should really not be a big issue. My personal un pc observation targeting a more niche language you are likely to get better quality people.

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I’d agree with the above two posts - I think Elixir is popular enough now that if you want good developers, you will be able to find them. And if you can’t, train them - we have some of the best learning material of any language - which is awesome given the age of the language and framework :slight_smile:

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I would say that if you’re open to remote, it’s relatively easy to find very good people. At least that’s my experience from recruiting people for Elixir in European time zones. But yeah, if remote is not an option, it might be a bit harder.

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Unless you’re building the next Internet backbone I don’t see how you’re going to entertain 20 or even 10 developers. People build entire game back-ends (for example) with 5-7 developers and not all of those even need to be super experienced with the BEAM before hand.

In reality I’d say a lot of those projects are actually started by one guy trying to convince the rest so he makes a proof of concept that eventually just turns into the actual back-end, so there’s even less of a requirement of manpower.

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Thats not an atypical team size for security products

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@merlin: I believe that you can find more developers that would prefer to work remotely (like me). If you will allow developers to work remotely then you will have much more bigger chance to collect a bigger team.

I saw lots of job offers in USA, but think a bit about it… Relocation requirement from Poland (in my case) to USA (as in example) is not something that (at least people like me) would like see for every new job offer.

I think that depending on language popularity there are valid scenarios in order:

  1. Teach developers that are already on-site
    Developers don’t know language. You need to introduce them into it. No matter if on-site or remotely, so you probably prefer all of them to work on-site.
     
    pros: all developers are in one place
     
    cons: you need to reserve a lot of time
     

  2. Allow all to work remotely:
    People know the language, but they are still too small group
     
    pros: you have a big chance to collect full team of experienced developers and time for learning is much more reduced
     
    cons: you don’t have any employee in office
     

  3. Collect team from mix of remote and on-site employees
    Still not enough developers that want to use this language, but it’s going better and better. It’s definitely a good step forward.
     
    pros: developers could learn without your help - they will cooperate
     
    cons: you need to reserve some time
     

  4. Build a full team on-site
    There are lots of employees which are applying for job offer in their countries.
     

I believe that Elixir is between point 2 and 3. Still it’s easier to find remote developers, but it’s not like that in my country there are no on-site job offers …