Thursday, May 15, 2014

Why is it so hard to find Delphi developers?

Delphi is fu^Hracking awesome! There's no question about that. Sure, it could always get better, but it says something that WideOrbit has a very successful application (or three) written in Delphi. Managing billions of dollars... OMG, did he just say the F-word? ;)

But why is it so hard to find Delphi developers in the US?

I know for a fact that there are lots of active Delphi developers in the US.

Are Delphi developers totally happy in their jobs? Well paid, not wanting to move. Settled down with the best job and tool around?

Are Delphi developers in general heads down in code all day and not on LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter? Some maybe, but far from all, and the ones that are won't respond to this post anyway... ;)

Or is there another reason? Am I spamming people too much with open Delphi reqs? :)

Do you have a Delphi project? What's your recruiting secret? (like you'll tell me) ;)

Thanks, and make it a great Delphi day,
Anders

46 comments:

  1. There are so many hot areas for programmers (mobile app, webapp, big data). For these areas there are enough free develop tools and resource available. Why people will bid their whole career on Delphi, an extremely expensive commercial development tool? Market decides the trends. No offense, I also speak Delphi, but I am hired as a Java developer.

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    1. I know you said Java, but believe it or not, it's even harder to find JavaScript guys than Delphi guys.

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  2. I think we all know the truth - no free edition of Delphi causes lack of new devs...

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    1. I have a .NET background and I develop in Delphi since more than 2 years , and , If i must start my own business (something like creating my own software in my garage) , it's totally obvious that I have a lot of better choices to start my business : SharpDevelop for .NET, Python, Eclipse , ......
      All are free and can produce business quality app.

      And PLEASE, don't tell me "but lazarus" .....

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  3. You have no future using Delphi nowadays as a developer. Nobody writes Windows applications anymore. That's the truth. If you wanna be competitive on the market you must use other development tools which most of the time are cheaper and better. Me too started as a Delphi developer, now I'm using Java most of the time.

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    1. That is a myth. Clearly WideOrbit is hiring Delphi developers and writing Windows applications. Line of business applications are still dominantly running on Windows. The best Windows application development tool is Delphi.

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    2. Wow, this is nonsense. Windows applications, and native ones at that, are no less significant than they were 20 years ago. We compete in the UK in a sector with over 500 other software companies, and they are all producing Windows desktop applications.

      Of course, web applications are just as significant, but in my (plentiful) experience, the web application is used as a nice front end for easy use, whilst the Windows application is used as the management tool behind it, used for setting things up, reporting, etc.

      And when you're writing enterprise-level software, they want server based functionality and the ability to do things like scheduled tasks. You can't do that in a browser.

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    3. Sorry but just like most Delphi developers, it seems that you are mixing business logic with GUI. Browser is just a front end, all the business logic should be in the server, especially in the enterprise software. You don't implement the functionality of scheduled tasks in a browser. It may sound harsh, but Delphi is not the primary nor the secondary choice of server side software development.
      I agree that Delphi is being used in some legacy applications. But for the new projects and development, it's not even being considered as a option.

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    4. "Delphi is not the primary nor the secondary choice of server side software development. " I guess Linas got a point. Embarcadero stubbornly consider Delphi as a "desktop GUI generator" only, as if it Windows was still Win 3.x and no Windows servers. In the past 25 years a lot changed for Windows developers, but Delphi developers mindset didn't. Look, for example, at how lame is Windows services implementation - it still calls APIs that were obsolete since Windows 2000. Most sever features are out of reach when you install a $2500 "enterprise" tool, and you have to do most of the plumbing yourself if you want to write a "modern" Windows application. That's also true for high-end desktop application, that does more to show a TDBGrid connected to a remote database thanks to the DB client.
      "Power developer" are driven away from Delphi because lack of focus on "power applications", "RAD" developers are now mostly coding web frontends with one of the tools available. Delphi is in a "no man's land" where it appeals to very few new developers.
      News about the new compiler being slower in floating point code and still lacking a modern codegen taking advantage of the latest CPU instructions and architecture doesn't help at all... and let's not talk about a memory manager still inadequate for heavy multithreaded applications.

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    5. WTF? Delphi does mobile, web and server.

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    6. And does all the three very so-so. Web? They attempted several ways, and all of them failed. No one really uses Delphi as a web application dev tool. Server? Delphi Windows services use still a Windows NT4 implementation. No frameworks for AD integration. No help to build a MMC snap-in. No libraries for security. Totally unaware of latest Windows sever technologies. Datasnap is joke, especially from the security point of view. As kmorwath says, the MM is not good for heavy multithreaded server applications. SOAP implementation is partial and outdated, because the now everything should be JaSONized. Messaque queue are something foreign to Delphi developers. Etc. etc. Yes, WTF...

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  4. I've been working to hire developers a few times, both Delphi developers and .NET developers. I've found they were both as hard to hire when you are trying to hire good ones. The reality is you are trying to hire senior developers with a specific skill set, and that is tricky, no matter what the skill set.

    At a previous place I worked management decided that there were more .NET developer than Delphi developers, so the decision was made to write the next project in C#. Two C# consultants were added to the team. After we got to know them we discovered they actually had more experience as Delphi developers than with .NET, but they believed there were more C# jobs than Delphi jobs, so they updated their resumes. Of course the project complexity spiraled up significantly with the use of .NET instead of Delphi (as seems to happen when tools are selected for the wrong reasons.)

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  5. It's just many Delphi developers are not worth of hiring, believe me. A lot of them are ageing, with outdated skills (they can't develop beyond Windows 95 - they *still* write applications as if the target OS is 95), all they care of is some new GUI widget. They are happy to write their outdated database frontends, usually using some low-end db engine, and still looking for a dBase/BDE replacement. But most of this type of development moved to web solutions or the like. Today, native applications means more complex ones for more complex tasks. Something beyond the reach of the average Delphi developer.
    This, and the several, continuos mistake made by Embarcadero took Delphi off the radar of most good developers. The goold old ones migrated to other tools, more advanced, better developed, higher quality and lower TCO, and better accepted by customers.
    If you need Delphi developers, you have to train them yourself. And it's better if they learned to develop for Windows *without* Delphi. Otherwise what you get is someone just able to cobble some controls on a form and hope they work...

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  6. I can't comment on the US, but here in Ireland there aren't enough actual Delphi roles to keep people in the market, think I've seen one hybrid role advertised in the last year. I give up Delphi work 3 years ago simply because I wanted to change job (and wanted to for a while) and had literally no where else to go.

    As kmorwath alluded to, when we were hiring back in the day, I was often shocked at how bad some of the senior guys were because they'd built a career on dropping components and scripting events together. It became more pronounced as it became harder to get people.

    And with all respect to Jim, most of the work here is now web related in some way or other, and I doubt the US is any different. I'm sure WideOrbit is a cool company, and I still think Delphi is awesome, but relatively speaking it's only a drop in the ocean now...


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    1. A few years ago there were a whole lot less options for development. Today the number of options is huge, which makes both hiring people finding jobs harder.

      Despite the efforts of many, no one technology is the best. It is a great thing there are so many technologies to choose from.

      I've found most good development jobs are filled through networking and less on general job postings. This is especially true of the Delphi jobs I've seen. I had a friend who is a Delphi developer who just got laid off and he said he was surprised how many people were beating down his door to interview him, despite not seeing any Delphi jobs in the local paper.

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  7. As kmorwath sad one of the big problems is that Delphi comunity is mostly made of older developers. Many of them didn't go with time so they still mostly use their "outdated" skils. And I must say that I'm sometimes shocked by other pepole knowledge or mainly lack of it.
    And there are verry few new developers starting with Delphi. Main problem to this is its high price. Which newbie developer would be prepared to pay 200$ for starter edition before he will even know if Delphi is a suitable development enviroment to him?

    Another dificulty is quickly changing language. Delphi language had quite some new features aded to it which means that many Delphi developers haven't got the time to bursh their knowledge on new features and are therefore a bit more reluctant on accepting new jobs as they are afraid that they won't met the required criteria.

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  8. Hello,

    here in Germany I tried to find a training place to Delphi programmer, but something it does not seem to give.
    With the end of Turbo Delphi, interest in Delphi broke new.
    If someone asks me, "Is there Delphi also free?" I reply: "Free Pascal and Lazarus." While Is Too bad, I know Delphi since I'm on a PC10 for the first time came into contact with it, but embarcadero is not interested in a large quantity of Delphi users (so I feel).

    Greetings from Germany
    Heiko

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  9. Maybe I think simplistically, but Delphi as a vertical tool was in the last 10 years not so competitive:
    - language/IDE was clearly behind, as of today we can say it fights VS 2005 SP1 with WPF
    - the community is too small to matter, meaning that entering in Delphiland you have to pay expensive components.
    - Java and .Net and ObjectiveC for their mobile targets offer free IDEs (or less than 10$).
    - Pascal/Delphi is not specified (yes, it is before OOP) so it means that you go against two incompatible specifications and they are worse than Java vs Android VMs or Mono vs .Net and you cannot fix your unspecified behavior. The single way is to buy a new IDE every X months

    I am a .Net developer now and I love IntelliJ IDEA Community with Kotlin. As an opensource editor I've got a free Resharper from IntelliJ (which is years ahead of Castalia for example) and both communities (.Net/Mono and Java ones) are inclusive and friendly.

    I was a Delphi developer "by force" as I had to maintain a big Delphi project (withouth being Delphi programmer) and when I needed performance I rewrote the code in Java: two commands in Maven (I was helped a little by a Java developer), 2 pages of code. This tool as development tools cost involved was more than 1500$ dollars of difference (Delphi XE3 + PDF component vs Java Runtime + free PDF components).

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    1. Delphi *is* expensive for what it offers. Sure, there are those who don't want to pay for software, and any price > $0 is too high for them.
      But there are people willingly to pay for tools that make their job easier and customer happy. Unluckily Delphi fails to deliver enough for what it costs. There are the quality issues, there are the lack of features for server-side development as Linas and kmorwath say above, there is the lame support for non-Windows platforms due to Firemonkey, and so on.
      It's difficult to justify the actual Delphi price for a beginner - because it doesn't open much job opportunities -, and even for a seasoned developer, because there's little value for what you pay, if your needs go beyond the database frontend and the simple portable mobile app.
      The foolish six-month release cycle and upgrade limitations don't help either, they could force some actual users to upgrade more often and get SA or whatever is called now, but it's an higher barrier for other users - and the lack of support for older version is another issue you perceive as an higher price, "what, I spent $$$$$ four months ago and now the product is already unsupported despite the bugs I find??"
      Embarcadero put itself in a lose-lose situation. It needs more users, and because of the so-so state of its main product the only way to get more would be giving it away for free, or almost, because it's not appealing enough to have people pay for it. But it can't, because many of its actual customers would switch to the free one as long as it's powerful enough, and it would impact revenues substantially, and there are not much more revenue streams.
      IMHO the only way to survive it's making it a niche bur very appealing product for some types of development, but it would require an high-quality, powerful product, and they went the opposite direction - trying to save on development investment and expanding the product well beyond what they are able to manage hoping that "quantity" could be more appealing than "quality". But most developers aren't keen on paying for "quantity" alone.

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    2. You asked what I wanted to prove:
      - on the original post he asked: why is hard to find Delphi? And my point was simply that: having various opportunities in life, you will pick options that will improve your future skills and Delphi doesn't provide this (at least for now). This comparison for me stated why people don't buy into Delphi in my mind.
      - the comparison of Delphi and Java (as a C# developer) is simply a comparison of two foreign languages/communities for me. Delphi required a fairly expensive IDE and some (expensive) components, when Java needed a to ask little help of someone and some free components (which are accessible at least granting a bigger community). So if I (or anyone) have a problem at hand and a new career prospect, what would you chose: Delphi or Java, it is likely people will choose Java.

      As a note: at least in the last 4 years of .Net programming I was working only WPF, no WinForms. (ofc this is my personal experience, around the world it may vary)

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  10. Speaking for myself, I don't want to move. I also enjoy overseeing projects from identifying a need all the way through retirement too much to step into a code writing focused role.

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  11. Most Delphi developers are older and more established in their communities. Getting one to move Hoover (or Meridian, MS in my case) for a Delphi gig is going to cost about 2x a San Francisco salary.

    But they would gladly switch companies for a remote position. Start offering remote opportunities and watch the resumes fly in.

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  12. I can tell you from personal experience that the reason why this highly experienced Delphi developer is "hard to find" is that there are few to no Delphi positions. The few that do exist want to pay too little and usually want devs onsite. I have NEVER seen a Delphi position that pays what I currently make. Ever. Usually they want to pay 70-80K, which is ridiculous.

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  13. I absolutely agree, we would gladly switch companies for a remote position.
    I myself am a senior delphi developer. Sure I develop using other languages as well, unfortunately you cant stay in business when you don’t know thinks like Java, net C++ or php or whatever. But delphi is my language of choice.

    Currently I'm working remote from my own office. And that works perfectly well. Satisfying both me and the company I'm working for.
    Unfortunately, the project is almost finished and I will have to seek new opportunities. So, if you are interesting in a remote senior delphi developer, please let me know. You can see some (not all, I'm bad in keeping my portfolio up to date) of the stuff I have done here:
    http://www.maxlogic.eu/portfolio/

    I totally disagree with some opinions made here about extremely poor skills of the older delphi developers.
    I'm maybe not “old”, but I'm developing since around 15 years, and I'm keeping up with the new stuff as are all of my co workers and friends.
    I agree that some developers, from all the languages, sometimes are so confident in their jobs, that they stop evolving. But anyone, that is a developer in his soul, will keep learning new stuff, will read the new books, will try out new features and new solutions and technologies. That is the fun in that job. This is why it never get boring.

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  14. You can hire me for $150/h but I'm not moving to Alabama. Full stack developer.

    Jason has the right of it in that you need to start using remote developers. I use oDesk and I have Delphi guys working for me from Vietnam, France, Macedonia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Algeria, and New York.

    Have one Delphi guy in your office interface with your remote developers and integrate their code. Training up a new developer in Delphi is also a good option.

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    1. This is the future. I'm seeing more and more companies do this. The key seems to be working with the developers directly and not through a consulting firm. Not sure why that is, but working directly with the individual developers always seems to work better.

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  15. Also, try hiring a Java dev. It is just as hard.

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  16. Do you want the short answer, or the long one?

    The short answer is the good Delphi developers are also good at C# and Java (even JavaScript/Perl/Python/ObjectiveC or whatever is hiring these days) and you are in a competitive marketplace.

    btw: I wouldn't hire a Delphi developer who is not able to look at a chunk of C# or Java code and know which end is up.

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    1. Mind you almost all the best C# and Java developers I know were also at one point experienced Delphi developers.

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  17. I have no idea what you're talking about here, Bunny. ;)

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  18. Small community and limited growth opportunities in Delphi have pushed out many of the better programmers and little reason for new skilled talent to seek it out. The ones that are left are often programmers that simply don't want to move on and learn yet another "future" language that isn't any better than the one they left or they are entrenched in an existing product. C# has been a nearly abject failure as MS cannot lock in one framework long enough for it to matter. I am thankful everyday we didn't port to Silverlight and are not knee deep in HTML5.

    That said many Java and C# programmers write overly complicated projects that are over engineered and have little knowledge of systems programming or resource usage. When we hire we generally stay clear of high level developers that have relied too heavily on a custom framework and focus on C programmers. It is MUCH easier to teach a solid technical programmer higher level coding than vice-versa.

    Just an opinion.

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  19. Come to think of it, the original question would be just as valid if you took out the word "Delphi". I personally know of several places that have had open reqs for Java developers for several YEARS and are even willing to train C++ and Delphi devs in Java to fill them.

    I think the problem is illustrated by a conversation I had with a neighbor kid who is highly intelligent. I suggested he get into software development and he quickly rejected the idea because "I don't want to sit behind a computer all day". He said he was going to pursue welding because he could make $25 an hour and be outside all day.

    America is losing the human capital infrastructure race that we once dominated so effectively. We'll be lucky if a few unfilled positions are the only price we pay for this.

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  20. Delphi is having the reputation (at least in my country) as dying in the best case. Most actually consider it dead and have forgotten about it since Delphi 8 was released.

    Indeed active Delphi developers are rare jems.

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    1. I've never been called a gem before, thanks :).

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  21. Relocation is certainly a barrier to entry.

    And are you sure you're getting the right message out? Software that manages billions of dollars is impressive, but from the ads alone, do people understand that WideOrbit treats its developers well, pays competitively, has some interesting and unique technical work, or offers the opportunity to work with some uncommonly smart people? The last two, in particular.

    Good developers have options. Are you making a strong enough case to catch their attention?

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  22. Thank you all for your insightful and helpful comments!

    I know for a fact that there are *lots* of Delphi developers out there. It's just a matter of reaching a couple with the right message.

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  23. If you would be ready to import Delphi talent from Third world then there are plenty. But your company is not ready to do any work for helping a developer getting H1 VISA.

    I think there is no scarcity of developers, only they are not located in the US! so think of importing them.

    HTH

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  24. "is not ready to do any work for helping a developer getting H1 VISA."

    Ever since 9/11, that is a very risky and very often non-economic way of trying to fill the void. And it does nothing to help in the long-run, since H1-B visas are temporary.

    I've known several cases where a project became dependent on H-1B's only to suddenly be without them at a critical juncture, because they could not get back into the United States after visiting their home. It often takes weeks to sort out this stuff and often the project manager has no idea where the H-1B even is. In fact, I know of at least one case where the H-1B holder was NEVER allowed back into the United States. He was prohibited entry for 7 years.

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    1. Surely this person did something wrong in the USA. People hired to manage the H1B people should be responsible and take conscience of the company's investment in you as a professional. Deserving of H1B must be correct, hardworking and above all responsible people.

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