> Just check out the Rust newsletter - the open positions for each release can be counted on one hand.
IMO there's only a tiny selection on that newsletter, it's just not a canonical source for rust jobs. E.g. and again anecdotal, we don't post our rust job openings there either as such more widely read publications are seldom a good fit, just like the monthly HN "who's hiring" thread - we don't want a flood of applications whom a good percentage of cannot even bother to read the few basic "must haves" for the job.
Also, in house fillings need employees that can program in rust too.
> You have narrowed down your hiring pool to expert Rust developers
I don't think that's really that big of a deal. Any above-average developer should be able to become useful in a new language in a pretty short period of time. They don't have to know the language on day 1, they only have to know how to develop software.
That's actually the reason why I posted this. There is a lot of interest from programmers in rust right now, but the jobs in it aren't well known at all. Companies that have difficulty hiring now could benefit by switching some of their engineering to rust.
Except for the fact that the blog post literally starts with the premise that there are no Rust job boards out there. That's simply not the case as I pointed out in my earlier comment.
That said, I hope this project succeeds by making it easier for Rust developers like myself to find jobs!
Question for the creator: how do you plan to compete with the existing Rust job boards?
We were not specifically talking about present availability of jobs. I am personally aware of many projects being done in Rust and from my experience, it seems to be growing still.
That isn't a programming language's potential. Those job posts reflect current market demand, not potential. How much demand will there be for Rust programmers three or four or ten years from now, not just today.
Anyway, if you're going to take a purely mercantile approach to evaluating programming languages, you should consider the salaries these employers are offering rather than the number of job listings. Consider supply as well as demand.
> But why should one choose Rust when there're plenty of alternatives with much larger and much more stable ecosystems.
In my experience, and this is just a data point: because it is much simpler to write correct Rust code and to refactor large Rust code bases correctly than doing the same for Javascript, Ruby, Python, C++, C, Java, etc.
That Rust has great perf and uses little resources is just a bonus, but not something that most apps will care much about.
The downsides you mention about the ecosystem, libraries, frameworks, are real.
I disagree with your claim that there is no "talent pool" for Rust. The "talent pool" for javascript or C++ is _only_ "all javascript experts" or "all C++ experts" because if you are not very good at Javascript or C++, you can't really be trusted. A Javascript programmer can start being productive in Rust without issues quickly, but the same wouldn't be true if they had to program in C++ instead.
The "talent pool" for Rust is "all programmers with domain knowledge". If they are not experts in Rust, that doesn't matter. Smart people you want to hire all pick up Rust very quickly, and the amount of dangerous mistakes anyone can make by not being a Rust expert is very small.
Offer/demand wise, the demand for Rust jobs is much higher than the Rust jobs that are currently available. If you post a Rust job on reddit you'll get 100 CVs in a day...
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IMO, your main point still holds: right now Rust web frameworks are not as feature full as Django, Rails, etc. and if Rust frameworks are missing features you need, picking it up for a professional project probably doesn't make sense. Unless... you are willing to implement those features yourself...
The not hiring but using bit is based on not seeing Rust jobs despite companies actively using Rust, and many anecdotes of "I wasn't hired for rust, but we use it" over in reddit on r/rust when people ask how to get a rust job.
> experienced C++ hiring is still considerably easier
Perhaps, but you can take experienced devs with a background in other languages and expect them to write solid Rust code. You probably only need to hire 1 or 2 people who already know Rust.
> If you want to onboard people to your code base with no familiarity with the language or your system and have them be 'productive' (for some definition of productive) within the week, Rust is probably not the right choice for you.
But this is more or less why Rust isn't popular for LOB apps yet. If a business has a long-term, critical project, it needs to have relative certainty of its ability to hire programmers to work on that project, at least in case some of their current programmers leave the company, let alone wanting to hire more developers.
Right now there aren't many Rust developers, and training new Rust developers past the steep learning curve is hard. So employers, even if they recognize the value of Rust as a language for a potential project, have a hard time getting off the ground.
The good news is that the Rust 2017 Roadmap understands that this is one of the primary inhibitors of adoption and that the team is committed to making progress on this front. But it's why the language just isn't there yet.
I think you have a point. But the number of openings is a way easier thing to measure than the number of jobs, because you can just scrape public job boards. I think the goal of the post was to bring at least some data to the many anecdotes about Rust being so permeated by crypto (and personal experience agrees with that).
That requires someone to actually post a job; I'm not sure how well people know of that site. I forgot it existed until you mentioned it.
Most of what we're seeing in the "Rust jobs" space is companies hiring people to do Rust work, but also other work, and so they're not pure "Rust jobs". For example, take Dropbox, one of our oldest production users. They have a job opening for a Senior Software Engineer right now: https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/735139
Nowhere in this listing do they mention any specific technology. Will you get to use Rust in this job? Maybe! Maybe not. They tend to hire good programmers, and expect them to be flexible, in my understanding.
This posting said that knowing Rust was a plus for the job. Does that mean you get to write Rust? I can't say, as I don't know the details of what that job entails, but it might be a good way to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
Anyway, I think jobs using Rust are extremely important, and want to see more of them. It takes time though :)
I landed a job doing embedded Rust, and the company had been looking for someone to fill the role for 6 months with only one qualified applicant who bailed, and external contractors with C/C++ experience only. They surely were bad at looking, since neither they nor the recruiter consulted the local Rust meetup group. But there are starved companies looking for specialists out there even in an employers market.
IMO there's only a tiny selection on that newsletter, it's just not a canonical source for rust jobs. E.g. and again anecdotal, we don't post our rust job openings there either as such more widely read publications are seldom a good fit, just like the monthly HN "who's hiring" thread - we don't want a flood of applications whom a good percentage of cannot even bother to read the few basic "must haves" for the job.
Also, in house fillings need employees that can program in rust too.
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