About two weeks ago, I posted a vacancy in the monthly “Who’s hiring” thread for our legal drafting SaaS company.

To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect. There were a few anecdotal stories that talked about a “hiring filter”, i.e. that the amount of available Clojure-developers was small, but that the quality of those developers tends to be very high when compared to other languages. I also assumed that our 100% Clojure(Script) stack and our completely remote working policy would help. At the same time, I realise that we are a small company in the legal sector, which many developers probably (incorrectly!) do not associate with cool work.

So I was hoping for a few interesting reactions, but the amount of reactions that I actually got, was far, far better than what I had expected.

• In total we got 27 reactions, in a matter of a few days, from all over the world.
• None — literally none — of the reactions were a mismatch. Of course some developers were a better match for us than others, but based on the CVs, I could have hired every single developer that applied. We honestly had a hard time choosing.
• For about 60% of the reactions, the accompanying email or cover letter went into specific detail as to why the developer in question would be a good match.
• Only one woman replied.

Our company exclusively consists of lawyers (we all worked at these large law firms in our previous life), so we can only compare these results to a recent hiring process for a lawyer, where we applied equally flexible hiring criteria (remote, anywhere from the world, having credentials or experience in a relevat legal subject matter), and got the following results:

• About 15 reactions.
• 12 out of 15 had no, or only limited, relevant experience.
• Limited cover letters.
• A nice mix of gender.

And please take into account that, unlike what I guess many developers think, “legal tech” is seen as very hot among lawyers nowadays.

So if any company, or investor, is doubting Clojure based on the talent pool, I can assure you: a non-issue.