Trouble Finding Experienced Magento Developer

My company is trying to bring all of our Magento development in-house. Right now we are working with an agency that is managing all of it and our website is the final piece of the puzzle that we do not currently fully own with our in-house development team.

I’ve had a posting for a Senior Magento development position where I specifically state that I’m looking for someone that knows Magento inside and out, knows how to create customizations, and more or less be able to build new functionality as needed.

Obviously, they would still be supported by the agency until we can more fill out our team, but I would be expecting this candidate to know enough that we can start bringing the code in-house and manage our deployments and eventually become a team lead.

However, during the interview process I have a small coding test in PHP and while all these candidates sound experience in Magento and is able to speak to things they’ve done and various projects they’ve worked on, they almost always fail to code fluently in PHP. I personally have 10 years of experience in another language and when first given this test myself, I was able to solve it in 15 minutes with a polished solution in 20.

Am I overvaluing how good of a PHP developer this particular role needs to know or should I be looking for a PHP developer first and then see if they have Magento experience?

submitted by /u/Imaginary-Thought506
[link] [comments]