Look, I've been a tech lead for 8 years and I'm tired of reading bullshit articles about programming language "analysis." Here's what actually happened when we tried to scale our team with Rust, Go, and C++.
Every tech blog tells you about performance benchmarks and memory safety. Nobody talks about sitting in hiring manager meetings explaining why you've spent $50K in recruiting fees and still can't find a second Rust developer. Nobody mentions the look your CFO gives you when the CI bill triples. This is the reality check nobody provides.
The Great Rust Hiring Disaster of 2024
We posted a Rust position in January 2024. By March, we'd gotten exactly three qualified candidates. THREE. In a major tech hub. Meanwhile, our Go posting got like 50 applications in the first couple weeks.
The Rust candidates we found? They wanted $190K, $220K, and one guy asked for $275K plus equity. For comparison, our Go developers were happy with around $140K-160K, maybe $165K for the senior guy. Do the math - that's around 40% more, could be higher. CloudDevs reports similar Rust salary averages of $150K+, though in practice we saw higher numbers. Levels.fyi data confirms Rust engineers consistently command premium salaries at major tech companies, with Indeed's 2024 analysis showing national averages from $130K-200K+.
Our GitHub Actions bill tripled after moving our core service to Rust. What used to be 90-second builds became 8-12 minute nightmares. That's real money - we went from spending like $120/month on CI to... I don't know, $750? $800? Something that made me swear at my laptop. Rust's compile times are brutal, and the Rust team acknowledges this impacts developer productivity. GitHub's developer blog discusses Rust's growing adoption despite compilation challenges. Matklad's post explains why Rust's design choices make compilation inherently slower than languages like Go. Anyone telling you otherwise hasn't managed a CI budget.
Go: Boring but It Actually Works
Here's the thing about Go - it's boring as hell, and that's exactly why it works for most companies. We hired 2 Go developers in 3 weeks. They were productive within days, not months. SignifyTechnology's 2025 analysis shows Go roles often pay 15-20% more than Node.js, but way less than Rust. CloudDevs analysis shows Go developers averaging $50-70/hour ($100K-145K annually), which matches our experience. The Go Developer Survey consistently shows high developer satisfaction ratings.
Our Go microservices restart in under 2 seconds. Memory usage is predictable. The tooling just works. go mod tidy, go build, go test - done. No fighting with complex dependency management or waiting for link-time optimization to finish. Go's toolchain design prioritizes simplicity and fast compilation.
The learning curve is a joke. I took our Python developers and had them writing production Go within 2 weeks. Try doing that with Rust's borrow checker and you'll be debugging ownership issues forever. MIT's study on Rust learning curves shows significantly longer onboarding times compared to simpler languages. Stack Overflow's 2024 survey shows Go consistently ranking high in developer experience and ease of learning.
C++: Still King When You Need Every CPU Cycle
C++ is a necessary evil in specific domains. Our trading system needs every microsecond, so we deal with the complexity. But let's be honest - C++ development is miserable unless you're doing something that genuinely requires maximum performance. TIOBE's 2024 index still ranks C++ in the top 5, but mainly due to legacy codebases and specific performance-critical domains.
Finding C++ developers isn't as bad as Rust, but finding good C++ developers who understand modern standards (C++17/20) is harder than people think. Half the candidates we interviewed were still writing C++98-style code. ISO C++ Foundation surveys show significant fragmentation in C++ knowledge across different standards. Stack Overflow's developer survey consistently shows C++ developers reporting frustrations with the language complexity and tooling.
The tooling situation is better than it used to be, but you're still dealing with CMake, which is basically a form of professional torture. Conan package manager and vcpkg have improved dependency management, but it's still nowhere near as simple as go mod or even cargo.
The Build Time Hell
Real talk on build times:
Rust: Clean builds take 8-12 minutes for our ~50K line service, sometimes longer on bad days. Incremental builds are better (2-3 minutes) but still painful during active development. Corrode's optimization guide explains why Rust's type system makes compilation slow. Our developers spend more time waiting for the compiler than writing code.
Go: Maybe 30 seconds for everything, sometimes faster. Full rebuild from scratch is under a minute. Howard Johnson's build analysis shows why Go compilation stays fast even for large codebases. This actually matters when you're iterating quickly.
C++: Depends entirely on your project size and how much template metaprogramming you've inflicted on yourself. Our trading system takes 6 minutes for a clean build, but at least link-time optimization is optional.
The Training Reality Check
Go: Took our team maybe 3 weeks to get comfortable, could have been less. The language is small enough to fit in your head. Most productive language choice we've made. Stack Overflow's 2025 survey shows Go consistently ranks high for developer satisfaction.
Rust: Still ongoing after 8 months, honestly might take longer. Two developers gave up and asked to transfer to other teams. The borrow checker breaks people's brains, especially if they're coming from garbage-collected languages. Community discussions consistently confirm this learning curve pain.
C++: If your team knows systems programming, they'll adapt in a month. If they're coming from JavaScript or Python, budget 6 months minimum and prepare for frustration.
When the One Expert Quits
This happened to us with Rust. Our lead Rust developer quit in June 2024 to join a blockchain startup (they offered him something like $300K, maybe more with crypto equity). Suddenly, we had a critical authentication service that nobody else fully understood.
Spent something like 3 months and around $15K in consulting fees getting another developer up to speed. Could have been more - I stopped tracking after the third invoice. The consultant charged $200/hour and wasn't always available. That's the "bus factor" problem with specialized languages - when your expert leaves, you're fucked. The Crypto Recruiters report shows Rust developers commanding premium salaries in Web3.
Go is the opposite. When our Go lead left, any of the other three developers could take over. That's the difference between a mainstream language and a specialty one.
These aren't abstract concepts. Every decision we made about language choice hit our budget, timeline, and team morale in measurable ways. The numbers below show exactly what these choices cost us in 2024.
