Ask HN: Do companies avoid hiring programmers who would rather do indie dev?
And if so, how can they tell?
Act stupid. Get that job. Be silent in meetings and pay attention to the words that circulate around.
These managers find its risk to hire someone who can figure out what bs These play with their boss.
That sparks my interest. Could you elaborate on what constitutes a brilliant developer from your perspective?
The other person will say “I will do these 5 things by next Friday.” And then next Friday all 5 are done. And they repeat this week after week after week.
Give me the second person every time.
This is why defining terms is important. For me, a rockstar is a developer who is just further along, who likes to program in their own time, who reads Hacker News, and builds projects on the weekends. Within 5 years, that person will be much further ahead than the rest and will spot pitfalls, security, and performance issues simply because they have encountered them before. However, sharing that information could lead to that person being called a "rockstar" and problematic, hampering "progress".
A more enlightening question is "what is a rock star" in my mind. A rock star is a dev who truly believes that they are the smartest person in the room, who looks down their nose at any work they didn't produce, who is only really interested in things that they think make themselves look better rather than things that will actually help produce the best end product possible, who insists on using the whatever latest shiny thing is in fashion over less shiny but more appropriate approaches, and so forth.
Someone recently left my team who was a rock star in his own mind. He claimed to know it all, and would go on and on about how everyone else should do their job. The reality was that he didn’t understand the complicities of the issues, any time a team was involved he would try to delegate everything away, anytime there was an issue he was the first to finger point, any time something was difficult he would quit while making excuses that it was not his fault, he only knew one language/framework and saw no reason why anything else would ever be needed/wanted… I could go on.
I’m sure he might sound great in an interview, as he loved to talk himself up and talk about how amazing he was and how stupid everyone else is. In the real world, he was a toxin within our team and no one was sad when he left.
I’m not sure how one would separate a true “rock star” from a delusional wannabe in an interview, other than having a well tuned BS meter.
Let's consider a developer who is interested in programming and has a lot of experience. If the team is going down a path that the developer knows will lead to issues, or if the developer tries to help because the team is not as strict and it's leading to outages, that developer may be perceived negatively.
However, the developer is able to find security issues and potential bugs during code review, objectively providing significant value to the team.
This developer could be labeled as having a "rock star" attitude, while in reality, they are trying their best to ensure there are no security, performance, or outage issues.
The interviewer's fear is always the same: that if I take the position, I'll be leaving shortly in order to start another venture. I explain (and point out in my work history) that isn't the case. I don't take permanent positions with the idea that they're temporary. If I wanted a temporary position, I'd do contract work instead.
I don't know if this aspect of my work history has ever cost me a job, but if so, it doesn't matter. I land jobs anyway.
Real programmers hiring more team members see side developments as a strength, they only want their work to get done.
Assuming you're like the rest of us and have material needs and bills to pay, it's not even a lie. :)
I have been on 2 teams where a member had a 'tech' side business. They spent each seemed to spend 4 to 8 hours a week on their side hustle, while supposedly working at their job.
I currently have a co-worker (we do not work on a team together), who has a side business with his family doing indie games, but I have never seen him work on it at work.
A full time programmer, even one who sticks around for 8 months or so, is far better than a contractor. There's also the possibility they hang around for years.
Someone who's doing indie work on the side, well, they're upskilling themselves at least. And they're more likely to be incentivized by more time off or less work than they are by more money, so it's not always bad.