Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

From the submitted article: "'The best people are already working,' said Bhoopathy, who said he pays 'above-market' rates for the right people"

In light of the quotation from the submitted article in the first reply here, "The University of Michigan graduates 8,000 engineers a year," how does any one graduate from a state university engineering program show that he or she is one of the "right people" who is worth "above-market rates" to bring on board a start-up's team? The one hiring heuristic mentioned here is hiring someone who already has a job. Is there more to look for? What do people with the best talent do to show their talent? What characteristics are tech start-ups looking for to make sure they hire really talented developers?

Edit to respond to a reply below. I'm glad to hear from one of the interview subjects for the submitted story. I'm not a dev myself, and I am still learning about this industry as a matter of curiosity, having an immediate family member who IS a dev. Sure enough, he has an active personal project in development that he contributes to on GitHub and is deeply interested in learning and education. I was drawn to HN because of Paul Graham's essays on education, and my own work is in the content-development aspect of gifted education in mathematics. I rely on my other family member (also an HN participant) for technical advice when he can cram it into his busy schedule.

I was interviewed for that article (The quote re: The best people are already working"... was me).

We tend to prefer people who are 1- Open source contributors to projects that are related to what our project is about 2- Have active Github profiles. 3- Have a deep interest in learning and education 4- Are willing to put up with some experimentation (aren't afraid to rip out features and add new ones quickly) 5- Have worked for other startups

Finally, we start with contract positions before deciding to bring people on full time. Do you have any other suggestions to reach out to devs who fit the bill who are currently still employed? Much harder to find out details about if they're not on github contributing to open source stuff.

Not that I consider myself top talent, but I work as a mobile app developer with experience in building scalable backend systems.

My current employer is a small shop even though I got offers from a lot of companies who were offering to pay more. They enticed me by allowing me to work for lower pay so that I don't have to bust my ass every day.

I work a few hours a day and 8 hour days are rare. Telecommuting is also an option but I like to work at the office.

They also buy a bunch of ipads and android devices I can take home and play with.

This is much better for me than working at a different company at least 8 hours a day and specially in a startup environment where you have to work long hours to get a product out.

You're right and you belong to the group of devs that we absolutely wouldn't hire.

Sounds pretty rational to me for both of you. The important thing is whether someone can deliver the goods, not how long it took them or where they were sitting at the time. Most of my critical design work is done in the shower or laying flat on my back looking at the ceiling. Having the time to do deep consideration and reflection is a critical part of quality design work. Sitting and typing furiously in a loud open work environment next to sales guys screaming into their phones, secretaries flirting with management, and air conditioning blasting away may look more impressive, but never produces quality work.

Here's a question I would have for you if I were considering a job at your place:

   You want people who contribute to open source and are active on Github.
   That is hard to do is one's job is taking up most of one's time, or
   most of one's mental energy.

   What steps do you take to ensure that if I'm working for you, I'll have
   the time and energy to contribute to open source and be active on
   Github?

If you're working for him, he doesn't want you too active on github because that's a signal/flag to other employers and you'll be poached.

If it's really true that you screen out otherwise qualified developers because they don't use your favorite version control system, and don't give away free labor in your specific field, then I'm not surprised at all you can't find people.

As far as wanting to lure people away from good jobs just to take on a temporary contract position, that is amusing. Would love to hear about your fully paid relocation and signing bonuses to cover the cost of selling an underwater house in order to move to your city, also obviously those contract rates are actual going contract rates of $150/hr+ and not employment rates but we call it contracting for tax purposes rates of $75/hr, right? Probably not.

I get what you are saying, I really do. But having been on the other side of the table several dozen times, the correlation is really quite astonishing. I ask more for information than to make the ultimate decision and it has never been the deciding factor, but the correlation is undeniable.

What correlation? A correlation between github users and people you'd hire (or have hired?) Or something else?

Yeah... I'm just going to have to say that I've never considered current use of a specific favored version control system in someone I am considering hiring to be correlated to their design capability in any sense whatsover. And you know what, neither have you, you haven't really seen that either, so why would you even claim that? Who knows; people say a lot of weird things here sometimes.

Sorry, not clear, correlation between open source work and being hireable. Though having already switched to git is a pretty strong indicator, it's less clear to me that there's a correlation because so few people in the hiring pool have yet, so I haven't got a good sample yet.

And you can deny it all you like, but it's a very strong correlation. Like I said, I'm not using it as a determining factor, so it's not a tautology (i.e., a strong correlation if I really was using it as a criterion would be expected, not surprising). Yes, it correlates. I don't recommend it as a criterion, and yet, it won't lead you very far astray if you're in a hurry.

It may be helpful for you to review the meaning of the word correlation. I'm not sure you're quite using the right one. You shouldn't find it so shocking.

Oh how hilariously condescending coming from someone whose sentences aren't even clear enough to parse unambiguously. Look, you can flex your muscles and rant all you like, you have not stated clearly even now what you are really measuring because you aren't actually measuring anything. You are obviously a poser.

Methinks the commenter doth protest too much.

I read something just yesterday that claimed there were 11,000 computer science graduates in the US every year so (even if the figure I read was somewhat off) it seems like most of those Michigan engineers are not writing software.

I'd be interested to see more accurate figures if anyone has them handy. Here is the article mentioning the 11,000 figure: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187

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