Hiring devs is perfectly fine if you don't look for F# skills - just hire generally smart people, and allow them 1-2 weeks to get comfortable with F#. Make them just solve problems from project euler or something.
For those who have already done functional programming, they wont take more than 2 days to start getting productive. For those who have written a lot of code, it will take them ~2 weeks to pick up functional thinking.
Anyone who is still uncomfortable with F# after 1 month - well that's a strong signal that the dev isn't a fast learner.
Additionally, I've never had anyone reject our job offer because we do F#. I'm sure a whole bunch of people might only be looking for python or javascript jobs, but that's fine because I'm not looking for them. I always have more people who I want to hire but I can't due to budget constraints.
Source: direct experience - I run a pure F# company with a team size of ~80.
For those who have already done functional programming, they wont take more than 2 days to start getting productive. For those who have written a lot of code, it will take them ~2 weeks to pick up functional thinking.
Anyone who is still uncomfortable with F# after 1 month - well that's a strong signal that the dev isn't a fast learner.
Additionally, I've never had anyone reject our job offer because we do F#. I'm sure a whole bunch of people might only be looking for python or javascript jobs, but that's fine because I'm not looking for them. I always have more people who I want to hire but I can't due to budget constraints.
Source: direct experience - I run a pure F# company with a team size of ~80.