Ted On Flash: How to find Flex developers!

How to find Flex developers!

DIGG IT! 23 Comments Published Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 4:21 PM .

Finding Flex developers is getting very difficult as demand is far greater than supply. This has induced a rise in rates and salaries for Flex developers. In many cases, Flex developers are seeing salaries and rates some 30-40% higher than last year. Personally I only see the problem getting worse and demand continuing to outstrip supply even as we grow like mad. If you know Flex today, you are in a great spot, the market is white hot, party on! So what are projects and employers to do? Where can a team/company find Flex developers?

DON'T LOOK FOR FLEX DEVELOPERS!!!

LOOK FOR COMPONENT AND APPLICATION DEVELOPERS!!!

(illustration by alex eben meyer for www.patentlysilly.com)

Looking for developers seasoned in Flex is hard and there is a limited supply. You will get frustrated looking for them and you will most likely have limited success. Learning Flex is quite easy for application developers and the development model was designed to fit developers coming from Java, C#, C++, VB, PowerBuilder, Delphi or any component/class based development paradigm. I highly recommend recruiting developers seasoned in application development and training them in Flex for the project at hand. This might seem like a strange tactic but 2 of the most successful Flex projects were built from teams with no prior Flex or Flash development experience. A good application developer who understands component development, object oriented development, and who has written desktop software are an ideal fit for Flex. The key is that they already know all the patterns and skills that are needed to understand Flex. These are also the skills that are very hard to teach and can only be learned on real projects.

Look at Buzzword by Virtual Ubiquity. This team had ZERO Flex experience, ZERO, when they decided to build a document editor in the web and chose to deploy to Flash Player and selected Flex for development. At the time Flex 2 was at Beta 2 and they wrote a prototype and proved that they development model would scale to produce a full document editor on par with desktop software. The team has over 100 years combined development experience building document editors. This team is wildly proficient in C and C++ for real desktop development. This team adopted Flex and has literally taken the development model farther than any team yet. They were application developers with deep knowledge of object oriented development and learned AS3 and Flex easily.

Look at Yahoo Web Messenger. This team had ZERO Flex experience, ZERO, when they decided to build an instant messenger in the web. I met the team while teaching at Yahoo earlier this year and they had 5+ developers on the project with no prior experience with Flex or AS3. The key was the team were all experienced application developers. By my estimate that team went from scratch to release in 6 months implementing the native Yahoo Messenger protocol in AS3 using flash.net.Socket.

Look at many of the top Flex developers and several key evangelists for Flex, they all have come from a component development background. What is even stranger is that many were once upon at time PowerBuilder developers. It is this component based legacy that is a strength in learning/adapting to the Flex development paradigm. If you look closely at Farata Systems and Cynergy Systems you will see several of the leading PowerBuilder developers who migrated to Java and then onto Flex.

Here are 5 skills/experience to look for:

1. Component Development
2. Desktop Application Development
3. OOP Skills - Classes, Interfaces, Composition, Inheritance
4. Languages - Java, C, C++, C#, PowerBuilder, Delphi, VB
5. Compiler skills are a must! (Flex/AS3 are not interpreted, they are compiled)

I am sure we will see a day when there are millions of Flex developers but given the market shortage today, we need to recruit them from other development markets. The best way to do that is to port developers with application skills and experience and teach them Flex. There are 5-10 Million developers out there that qualify and many are already employed in larger organizations. In many companies, there may already be the makings of a great Flex team in house.

There will come a day when recruiting Flex will be easier, but today, focus on finding good application/component developers for your Flex project and train them. I wish it were easier and that Flex developers grew on trees but we are not there yet.

Go Flex!

My 2 cents,

Ted :)

23 Responses to “How to find Flex developers!”

# Ted Patrick July 12, 2007 11:19 PM

Then again, you could always just post to FlexJobs!

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexjobs/

Cheers,

Ted :)
# Abdul July 12, 2007 11:40 PM

Nice post...

There is very interesting thread going on flex-india group. I posted some of my views on building a RIA (Flex/AIR) development.

http://groups.google.com/group/flex_india/browse_thread/thread/443da3477a802837
# Jensa July 13, 2007 1:52 AM

And here's 5 more tips when looking for Flex developers :)
# Flash Prayer July 13, 2007 3:06 AM

Yes indeed at this time it might be hard to get a Flex developer for a reasonable price. But has always that will change, and one day you will only have to pay small budgets to get your Flex app's running.

It's too soon yet, but prices will drop i guess...
# FlexHacker July 13, 2007 7:00 AM

Ted, an idea on:
- the number of Adobe Certified Flex 2 developers in the world at the moment?
- the average pay rate?
# Sergo July 13, 2007 7:39 AM

@ted: Worth to mention Ajax developers (or DHTML developers as I use to call this technology). I firmly believe that it's relatively simple to move from JS + HTML to AS + MXML. And Flex after all the struggles with diversity of JS libs and browsers' (in)"comtatabilities" is a great relief.

@flexhacker: Do you still trust in "the number of Certified Developers Of Anything? Personally, I saw too many "certified professionals" and "experts" in Java world with zero value. Actually, I saw so many of them, that when I hear from people about their "certified blah-blah-blah developer" status disguised with special fanfare I reply typically that I am the self-proclaimed Benevolent Dictator of Universe :)
# Eric Feminella July 13, 2007 8:04 AM

I always suggest the following:

1.) Find an experienced object oriented programmer, one with real experience on real world projects, from a solid object oriented background - typically Java, ActionScript, .NET, C++

2.) Find someone who WANTS to learn FLEX � when someone wants to learn something they will.

3.) Find someone who WANTS to BE A FLEX DEVELOPER � it gets old listening to someone compare Flex to the technology they came from. - Flex is Flex.

- Eric
# Todd July 13, 2007 8:34 AM

This is all very true. This is often very similar to what I look for in developers. Technologies come and go, but passion, idea generation, and intelligence do not. I've gone through this type of transition before, trying to find Python programmers or what not. I found that I could get a developer with good OO skills, good computer skills, up and productive in way less than a week. It usually took me giving them a couple hour tour of language, some tool options, the code base, and then giving them an OPML file of several useful blogs for reading about it. If you take someone who is intelligent, passionate, wants to learn the technology, they'll pick it up within a couple of weeks. Heck, for me, coming from .NET and Java, I learned ActionScript in about 15 minutes, what the FlexBuilder IDE is all about in another 15. Now, the hard part, learning all the specific APIs, spread out amongst all the libraries, Flash, Flex, AIR, etc...
But nonetheless, in less than a week I had what looked like a resonable application forming.
Look forward to seeing your guys at the AIR tour in Boston.
# guya July 13, 2007 9:11 AM

Another team that had ZERO Flex experience, ZERO,
http://blog.guya.net/2007/07/13/hostlynx-20-serious-flex-app/
# Anonymous July 13, 2007 8:18 PM

Totally, programmers are programmers--the language shouldn't matter that much. There is a lot to be said for people who know the Flash player too... but people can learn this.

An interesting way for developers to look at this post is that you shouldn't really sell your skill as "flex developer" or "flash developer" but rather as a developer.

Phillip Kerman
# DannyT July 15, 2007 6:39 AM

Another idea for larger agencies is to pull in smaller agencies as and when needed. An agency with 100+ employees could easily afford to get a ready made team by partnering with an agency of 1-20 employees, you then get extra resource and less comittment than hiring and training a group of individuals.
# FlexHacker July 15, 2007 1:08 PM

Sergo:

Do you still trust in so many peoples that self-proclaimed experts (or by using dummy friends recommandations in social networks)
and others thats "firmly believe that it's relatively simple to move from JS + HTML to AS + MXML" after playing with first samples? ; )

Being certified give you trusted credentials from the editor (not friends or your personal evaluation).

Sorry for you that you've worked with lamers but this is your personal experience ...

Now, i agree that certification is not a must and real world project are even better. I also agree with eric feminella comment.
# Anonymous July 17, 2007 7:31 AM

Nowadays if you learn one oop language, it pretty easy to understand another oop language. All you have to learn is the basic syntax and have the api pages handy.
# Darth Sidious July 19, 2007 1:39 PM

At the Galactic Empire, one of the things we did is instead of trying to scramble a team for fresh... we relied on the skills of our existing developers.

Technologists are expected to keep up with the industry. So we progressively introduced Flex into our EMS (Empire Management System); by leveraging existing skills to maintain current applications while infusing new technologies like Flex to progress the application while allowing the developers to learn this new technology.

As a result, the Empire is able to continue its stranglehold on the universe with the latest in UI advancements.
# Sergo July 24, 2007 3:22 AM

FlexHacker, does your Flex Hacker status is proven by some Adobe certificate or it is self-proclaimed or this is a title assigned by dummy friends in social networks ;)

"Being certified give you trusted credentials from the editor..." -- unless editor is more interested in getting money from certification. Not the rare case.

"Sorry for you that you've worked with lamers but this is your personal experience..." -- the opposite is true as well, i.e. your experience is only _your_ experience...

Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm "playing" with Flex for more then a year, so I saw more then one example. And my team of 6 persons has 4 Flex developers that initially has only Ajax background (plus server-side Java). So I may freely speculate about the topic, if you don't mind :)
# FlexHacker July 31, 2007 2:01 PM

Sergo,

Last comment for you because this is quite boring.

Not really disappointed because i started early with flex 1.5, 2/3 years ago, i am already flex certified and is currently working on a large B2C project ...

Bye Mr "Benevolent Dictator of Universe" ;)
# Rahul Mahurkar October 21, 2007 8:00 PM

Its a nice post. I agree with Ted that today's shortage of Flex developers can be met to a large extent, if get can get java, .net developers.
# Anonymous November 30, 2007 8:53 AM

Yes indeed at this time it might be hard to get a Flex developer for a reasonable price. But has always that will change, and one day you will only have to pay small budgets to get your Flex app's running.Bayanlara Ozel Ne Varsa...!

It's too soon yet, but prices will drop i guess...
# nethiz t�rk�e seo link dizini December 31, 2007 12:20 AM

extreme job
# Anonymous February 20, 2008 5:24 AM

But if you have AS2 experience,without priop OOP knowledge, is Flex for you?
# nn March 14, 2008 12:36 AM

price won't drop but demand will increase as AIR also release..more open source more demand

if you know AS2 and no OOP go learn OOP first because AS3 is all OOP and Flex with backend like Java OOP is must.
# Sergey May 17, 2008 11:10 PM

"But if you have AS2 experience,without priop OOP knowledge, is Flex for you?"
# Mahendra Sharma July 7, 2008 11:36 PM

I agree with the author, this is how the talent pool is created for new technology especially when the demand is high and supply is short.
I have created people in Ajax, PHP, Flash like this and my next step is to set up flex development center within my organization.

Stuff I am building:

Ted Patrick - Events & Community @ Adobe Systems

Note: This is the personal blog of Ted Patrick. The opinions and statements voiced here are my own.

How to find Flex developers!

23 Responses to “How to find Flex developers!”

Where to find me:

Latest

Lists

Links

Jobs

Archives