Doesn't surprise me. Booking.com has been searching for Perl developers (or people willing to learn Perl) for ages[0], which makes it clear that Perl is important for the company.

At the same time, I suspect not many developers have an interest in learning Perl or working with Perl on a day to day basis. Booking.com seems to have a hard time finding said Perl devs.

[0]: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=booking.com...

But they want you to relocate. That's why they're having problems finding a developer. How many people want to leave their country/city/family/friends for a job?

This is 2014, not 1985. Let them work remotely.

As an employer, they have quite a bad reputation ( http://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1mkdl4/what_exactly_is... )

I'm sure they would find quite many candidates if they were willing to offer premium compensation.

When there is a talk about shortage of skilled workers, it is really about shortage of skilled workers willing to work for average or below-average compensation.

I thought you were exaggerating, but their listings are titled

"Software Developer - willing to learn Perl"

They really are having trouble finding perl developers.

Best thing to do - you do not need people who already know a language, just good people who want to learn.

> just good people who want to learn

"just", right? Booking.com must be doing a massive palm right now. Why didn't they think of that...

Their backend is in Perl. I saw recently a talk from one guy working there.

It seems they donate for perl 5 development. Nothing for perl 6 ?