Todays post is a quick little rant of mine.  I noticed recently that there are areas in the world that are begging for Ruby on Rails devs.  If you list RoR on your Linkedin account you will get hammered by recruiters.  Read all of the RoR jobs that are posted around the world.

So I think that we can all agree that there is a high demand for Rails devs, right?

Then why the Hell do so many companies want to hire local devs?  I mean specifically for Rails and all other web applications, why?  We are making apps for the INTERNET.  Now, most of you have probably already been on the internet or at a minimum, heard about it.  Then there is another term that has been floating around for a bit that you might have heard of; Telecommute.

We are building apps for the internet but it seems that too many employers do not want their devs to work via the internet.  Uh, WTF? (Again, this is my RANT)

A friend sent me a link the other day to a blog post from 37 Signals but the main this was this :

So stop whining, spend a day to get up to speed on remote working practices, and hire outside of your commuter zone.

Now I think that most would agree that 37 Signals is rather successful so maybe there is something to that.

Now, I will agree some people NEED to work with others present.  Those are the ones that thrive on others energies.  They are also maybe those that find it hard to commit to working from home and going to an office is what they need to be in the right mindset.  Why do you think that so many co-working places exist?  People do not pay more money than what they pay for internet at home just to go to a co-working place and use the internet there.  Co-working places are great for those are the ones that work better with others around.

Then there are the "others" and they are the ones that work better alone.  The programmer persona of the guy sitting in the dark and coding is not necessarily because those people are anti- social (all though that may be the case) but rather they work better when not interrupted. I can get more QUALITY work done at home than when I go to a co-working place and mind you that this is not to be meant as to demean co-working.  I need to focus and when there is too much going on I get distracted easily.  At home, I have no distractions BUT thanks to the INTERNET, I can Skype, IM, Email, use Campfire, use Basecamp, use Github and all is well.  I can even use my telephone if need be.  Like to pair-program?  There is this thing called screen sharing.

So my point is this, if you NEED to have a dev on location, then good luck with your search.  If you DO NOT NEED a local dev and you need a web application built, then hire a dev to work remotely.  I work with RebelHold and we do Ruby on Rails web apps.  If you need a web application built, then we can do it!  Now you do not have to worry about hiring anybody locally because we can all use the internet to communicate (This assumes that you have Internet access).

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