What to Consider Before Hiring Ruby on Rails Developers

It is a common perception that finding a skilled Ruby on Rails developer is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Some people believe that Ruby is dead. While it does trail behind Python and PHP, Ruby is still ranked 14th as the most popular programming language, with 7.1% of respondents operating as Ruby on Rails developers. Despite its stable popularity, there is still a relatively small pool of Ruby on Rails developers, especially in the United States.

Why Ruby on Rails?

Many people confuse Ruby on Rails for a language when it is a framework and ranked as one of the best backend frameworks at that. Despite its small talent pool, Ruby on Rails (ROR) is very developer-oriented and well-liked by developers and the startups and enterprise organizations that utilize it. Many companies that prefer Ruby are big players such as Airbnb, Hulu, Kickstarter, Shopify, and more to build highly dependable web apps at scale. Ruby effectively allows smaller businesses and startups to compete with larger firms.

Speed and Efficiency

There are several pros and cons of Ruby development, but for the purposes of this article, we will share a few of the pros. Ruby on Rails is built for speed with a lean code base. Time is money, so the longer development takes, the more costly it can be. A lean code base allows developers to work quickly and efficiently because it requires less code with the functionality remains the same. Less tedious coding will enable developers to focus on other areas, such as improving solutions.

Cost Savings

Cost efficiency is a huge benefit for companies, especially startups building apps. Ruby on Rails is open-source, so you won’t have to pay a license cost, and development updates take place more quickly. Additionally, the speed at which Rails websites can be built means you’re spending less money on building and maintaining them.

Flexibility

The Rails framework is flexible and adaptable to updates applied to websites. Additionally, Ruby allows you to remove elements and redefine them as needed. The ecosystem is highly flexible and interacts easily with technologies and frameworks like AngularJS. This factor allows developers to separate app layers and use multiple technologies.

Scalability

Scalability is the goal of every business, regardless of size or industry. Even if you’re a small business now, you could expand quickly and must have the resources to react. Without the ability to scale up or down, your app will ultimately fail to respond to traffic peaks or seasonal ups and downs of use. Ruby on Rails is a scalable technology that adapts to traffic spikes and reacts accordingly.

Now that you know the value of working with Ruby on Rails, it’s time to hire a skilled team of ROR developers. Read on to learn more about what to consider before hiring.

Determine Your Budget

Knowing your budget is vital in determining the type of developers you want to hire for your project, more specifically, the country you will be hiring from. Opening up the pool of applicants to the global market gives you options for just about any budget.

Where to Find ROR Developers

At first, it may seem tough to find applicants, let alone skilled ones. When searching the global market for skilled Ruby on Rails developers, you’ll want to look for the countries with the best talent such as Ukraine, the US, Poland, China, India, and the UK. Sourcing overseas allows you to find someone in an extensive budget range.

If you're searching for a global, remote, and distributed team of ROR Developers, we can help. Drop us a line. We can do the work for you and connect you with up to 5 companies within 72h that match your need – all for free.

Types of Staffing Solutions for ROR Development Teams

Outsourcing

Outsourcing allows you to expand your team globally. Many startups and SMEs outsource RoR development because it's inexpensive and an all-in-one solution. We know it can be hard to trust an overseas, remote team, so you want to ensure you work with the right developers and a skilled project manager to ensure the projects succeed.

There are many benefits to hiring an outsourced team, including custom software, increased revenue, and more internal capacity to focus on other business objectives.

To receive the highest quality of work, read more on the do’s and don’ts of managing an outsourced RoR development team.

Outstaffing

Outstaffing is the process of hiring RoR developers through third-party vendors abroad. Outstaffing requires you to supervise and control development, allowing flexibility for team adjustments. It may be useful in certain instances, but it’s not scalable. Additionally, there can be communication issues and hidden costs such as buy-out fees if you wish to employ your temporary team down the line.

Offshoring

Offshoring refers to opening up an office overseas and hiring developers to work from that office. This option could potentially work for long-term projects and collaborations if that is your goal. However, getting going requires a lot of upfront time and cost investment.

This should help you make a decision when deciding between outsourcing vs. offshoring or outstaffing.

For startups and SMEs, outsourcing is going to have the lowest barrier to entry and be the most cost-effective strategy for your app development with Ruby on Rails. If you’re building a web app and looking for an expert team of Ruby developers, check out our list of Top Ruby Development Companies.

Testing a Ruby on Rails Developer

When deciding what team to outsource for your next Ruby project, you’ll want to make sure you can test the developers on several different skills.

A good Rails developer will know the basic syntax of Ruby and should have a good grasp of object-oriented programming. It is also necessary for them to have knowledge of flow statements, hashes, loops, arrays, symbols, sorting, procs, blocks and lambdas.

Additional skills to inquire about are their front-end skills, knowledge of databases, SQL, NoSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. Your RoR development team should be familiar with integration, HTTP protocol, REST, Haml, ERB, app configuration, WebServices, ActiveRecord, unit testing, and Cucumber testing.

By asking your prospective team to share past projects with you, indicating their experience, you can get a good sense of their skill level to ensure they are the right fit for your project.

RoR FAQs:

Q1: How much do Ruby on Rails programmers make?

According to Stack Overflow’s recently released annual Developer Survey for 2022, you can see that Ruby has increased from a median of about $60,000 in 2013 to $90,000 in 2022 worldwide. Additionally, Ruby on Rails developers could potentially earn between $83,000 for those starting out to $115,000 for those with 15 years of experience.

Q2: Is Ruby on Rails still in demand?

Despite the fact that RoR has been here for almost 15 years, it is still evolving to meet the needs of businesses. With greater memory use and schedulers, the latest Ruby On Rails web application is faster. This brand-new feature makes it competitive and up-to-date.

Nevertheless, according to Stackoverflow, RoR is on a decline from 9.3% in 2017 to 8.3% today based on the preference between developers and businesses alike.

Q3: Why is Ruby on Rails dying?

It is a common misconception that RoR is dying. These myths are based on rumors about slow performance and scalability issues. The truth is that when inexperienced developers write bad code in RoR it majorly affects the performance.

The framework has mature, which means stable, refined code; and maintainable web applications, even if no longer written in a trendy framework. Chasing technology trends isn’t always a good idea. Instead of improving business operations, a change to something more popular can actually yield adverse results and increase overhead depending on the structure of your project.

To be the most successful with a project, you need skilled developers who are experienced at building apps on Rails.