This session addresses the challenges of attracting developers to use PHP and sequentially recruiting them in companies and teams where Drupal is the framework of choice. With ten years of experience in growing and onboarding engineers (from 0 to 70+), I would like to share our practices that I believe will need to be applied community-wide and in developmen teams to ensure a sustainable talent inflow for the next generation of contributors to the Drupal ecosystem.

Is PHP still an attractive career option? Do PHP developers earn as much as Python or NodeJS developers? Many conversations today revolve around the popularity of PHP compared to other languages and how that reflects in attracting talent. Applying some stoic philosophy, let’s focus on the things we can control.

In this session, I will explain the strategy and tactics that we have developed over the last 5 years in our team. I will go through the three main things:
• First, you need to reliably find people that can become great developers.
• Second, you need to inject your required skills and experiences directly into their veins, fast.
• Third, you need to make this a process that runs like a machine all the time.

I believe these tactics will be helpful for companies but also in the context of the Drupal community, which will need to start building new talent for the next decade. Drupal can drive the growth of PHP.

Session (20 minutes)

Experience level of the audience

Beginner