The Beam it Forum

Open discussion within the BEAM community 

 

Interview Tips and Tricks

  • Always do your research on who you are interviewing with, what is their background and is there any commonalities you can discuss?

  • Research the company in lots of detail, find out more about what they do, their history and who they have in their team

  • Build a question list before the interview, ensure before you leave you have every question clarified to make your decision easier

  • Show your passion for Erlang and Elixir. Have you done work outside of your role with the Beam community? Do you have any white-papers or a Github profile to share? 

  • Pick examples of projects you have worked on and revise these before your interview. Ensure you have clear examples to discuss when asked. 

A good article read is via Kamil Lelonek here; https://blog.lelonek.me/how-to-find-an-elixir-job-db4c836890

Elixir vs Erlang

Elixir vs Erlang: What are the differences?

  • Elixir: Dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications. Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain;

  • Erlang: A programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability. Some of Erlang's uses are in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance. OTP is set of Erlang libraries and design principles providing middle-ware to develop these systems.

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A good article to read on this topic is here from Kerry Doyle; https://searchapparchitecture.techtarget.com/tip/A-concurrent-programming-faceoff-Erlang-vs-Elixir

Hiring Trends throughout 2021

The Elixir and Erlang stack makes up about 2% of the global development needs that organisations have and there is currently 180.6k active listings for Erlang and Elixir roles. Elixir has a thriving community continues to grow, with fantastic events such as ElixirConf in Europe and in the US, EMPEX, Code Elixir LDN and Gig City Elixir, as well as Meetups all around the world, with the demand for Elixir/Erlang online courses rising 6% in 2020. 

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A good way of tracking these trends is an article here by Stacktrends; https://stacktrends.dev/technologies/programming-languages/erlang/