Finding senior Ruby on Rails development work: holistic advice?

September 18, 2024 3:00 PM

I have 10 years of experience, mostly in Rails. Willing and able to switch tech stacks. Still employed, have been here 5 years. Out of touch with the market, but it sounds pretty bleak. What apps/sites/channels should I look on? What companies should I look at? How do I avoid wasting time?

I've searched the "ruby" subreddit, and I could follow the advice I see there from the past year: basically talk to recruiters and search job boards. But of course these are Redditors. I think much of the advice doesn't come from direct experience, and the people I do trust seem to value salary and nothing else. I'm wondering how advice from AskMeFi would differ.

Also, what are the most common wastes of time? For example, I don't want to customize my resume and complete long code exercises only to have the applicant tracking systems never show my resume to a human. What are some red flags suggesting my time is better spent applying elsewhere? Thanks in advance!

posted by commander_fancypants to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I've seen Ruby-on-Rails positions at Wrapbook.

I've found LinkedIn has been good to see what's out there. Postings on your feed may mention jobs or companies worth looking at. See if any of your LinkedIn connections have openings at their company, and use them to refer you for the position.

I've found a number of opening listed on Indeed.

My experience in my year-long job search is that companies are inundated with applications (recruiters have confirmed that to me). There's not a lot of leeway for any tech skills you don't have even though you'd have no problem picking it up with your experience (even a few years ago that didn't seem to be the case).

The above also means you should apply for positions as soon as the listing appears so your application is nearer the top. I've seen positions get unlisted within a day, I presume because they already got hundreds of applicants. Unfortunately, this means job hunting takes a lot time, constantly looking for new positions listed.

I don't think anyone is giving coding exercises without a human making the decision to after already screening the resume. I've had completely automated coding exercises, but most were with an interviewer and a shared screen coding environment. Sometimes the first interview is the coding exercise, sometimes it's after an initial screening interview.

It may make sense to have more than one resume with each focusing on what skills you want to accentuate, but I wouldn't customize a resume for every company, that would just take too much time.
I'd focus more on the cover letter than a customized resume. Explicitly mention your years of experience with Ruby-on-Rails (or other tech) and with enthusiasm why the job and company appeals to you. Save all the cover letters, and copy-and-paste the content as needed for others (and, of course, proof-read after copy-and-paste to make sure you're mentioning the right company and job).

And given the current tech job market, avoid quitting your job until you have a new one lined up.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:21 PM on September 18 [2 favorites]

I don't think blindly applying online to a position really works. I've had the most success with networking -- reach out to past colleagues and bosses (that you'd want to work with again) and see where they are now. Someone recommending you is much more likely to lead to an interview than submitting a form that goes into yet-another-inbox. I believe this has always been true.

When I was hiring, we received too many submissions to job posting to do a reasonable job of screening resumes or form applications. Only the most exceptional cover letters or resumes would get picked out of the digital pile. These days, it could just as easily be an algorithm screening the submissions.

Speak to real people and if you don't have much of a network yet, look for meetups or other groups (or conferences) where you can get to know others in your field. A lot of the meetups died post-pandemic but there are also now decent Discord communities. I'm not specifically in Rails anymore, but I'm also a web developer.

I also believe in contributing to open source as a great way to get hired.
posted by miscbuff at 8:09 AM on September 19 [2 favorites]

I'm was a senior RoR engineer until everybody's favorite fruit based technology company acqui-hired me about 10 years ago and converted me to a Java developer.

Honestly, I'd just work towards one of the Rails-eque modern frameworks while continuing your day job. Go and even Swift on Server are good candidates. If you watched the 2024 WWDC talk about it, we are about to go hard on making Swift on Server a popular choice. Wouldn't hurt to get in on the ground floor.

But in any case, you want to position your self as a Software Engineer that uses the "correct" tool for the job at hand, and not as a person who builds Ruby on Rails apps. A Software Engineer with 10 years in Rails that can also say "sure I can do that in Node/Go/Rust/Swift/etc given enough time to ramp up..." has a far better story than the same person who can only say they have 10 years in Rails. That story is even more powerful if you never plan on taking anything other than Rails jobs.

But to find actual reqs: Attend every local meetup, and even the virtual ones you can find. If someone gives a good talk and it sounds like it's something you might want to do, intro yourself and connect on social media. Tell them outright that if they have any reqs in the future, you'd like to know about them. If they have open source projects related to their business, join and contribute in anyway you can. Basically, you want to be a position where you hear about job openings that never get to LinkedIn or Indeed.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:09 AM on September 19 [2 favorites]