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Hiring and getting hired
Hammett is talking about how hard it is to hire good people. A part of my job used to be verifying candidates' technical abilities for our company's Head Hunters division. Getting people is easy, getting good people is so damn hard it is not even funny. I saw a lot of really bad programmers ( I still fondly remember the one who couldn't reverse a string but had 2 years ASP.Net experience ), but I saw very few good ones.
In fact, I can think of three people who were good. Were good means, we should hire him now, because if he walks out the door we are going to lose it. I don't really have a good answer for that, because the good developers are going to be busy all the time because they are good. And the bad will float around making a mess of any decent hiring process.
On the other hand, when I wanted to get a job a while ago, I had the depressing experience of going through eight or nine interviews before I found a place where I would feel comfortable. One of the funniest one was being asked to solve a problem, and after solving it, trying to explain how it worked for ~15 minutes, because the interviewer couldn't get it. At the end, it was mentioned that he expected me to use recursion there, and I solved it in another way, which completely threw him off the loop.
I took the job at We! because I had the very pleasant experience of being interviewed with people that were much smarter than I was and were pleasant to work with.
I wish that I had some advice about this issue, but unless we would face another bubble bursting, it is going to be very hard to find the good guys.
Comments
Ayende, I think lots of your writing is decent and sometimes good, but almost all career, hiring or leadership/management articles ends up in you bragging about your own skills (most often by telling how bad all others are) - tone the self-pompous down two notches and your content will be much more of a service to the readers.
Keep up the posting!
Regards,
Jonas
Jonas,
Thanks for letting me know.
I don't think that I am bragging, but I can understand how it can be interpreted that way.
Having just run thru this process myself, I think that the last point you made (about We!) is VITAL. If you're not surrounded by people smarter than you, you will find yourself a "lone man in the desert" and, of course, you want to have a good time doing it. :)
David,
Yes, and the problem with deserts is that you tend to die out there.
Beside, I was at a desert for two and a half years, I can't stand the sight of sand anymore.
David beat me to it, but I'll say it again - one of the most important thing to look for in a new employer is that there are smarter people than you working there... unless you want to totally stop (or at least stunt) your technical and/or professional growth. If you want to succeed, surround yourself with winners!
I say SCREW JONAS!!! You're awesome, brag about it if you need to but this didn't come across as bragging at all!! My prediction is that Jonas is possibly...a tad jealous??
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I CALLED IT
This topic gives me good food for thought for an upcoming post. Thanks.
Don't take Justice to serious, he saves the best and most sincere kudos for people with a hairstyle better than him. :)
The funny thing I've noticed: Companies go through all this effort to hire good people, but very often don't bother to do anything to RETAIN them. It like that after hiring a guy, and giving him his cube/office/workstation the company assumes that nothing more needs to be done.
<shrug />
@Steven.
I've learned that lesson the hard way... Actually, in my case, all the people smarter than me have left. It's kind of lonely. I can only satisfy my craving for technical and profession growth with open source projects for so long...
It's well past time for me to have moved on to new challenges too...
This is an interesting post and as a technical manager I can tell you that the hardest thing is verifying that someone has the chops to do the job. It is very hard from just an interview to determine someones true potential. One of my employees had a real hard time selling himself to me almost to the point where I didn't want to take him on, but I gave it a chance and he turned out to be a very quick learner. On the other hand another was nothing but a salesman telling me how he basically invented the internet and eventually his lack of skills ended his employment.
I can tell you that as a manager...when I see talent I do everything in my power to keep those people. I think money works, but morale and a deep understanding as to what the employee wants both long-term and short-term help retain them. Though it can be tough to keep people challenged when there is a lot of grunt work to do, but I always try to throw something interesting at them.
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