How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy?

I love HN and the crowd here. It's by far the absolute best online community I've ever been a part of.

That being said, the arrogance displayed in many of the comments on this thread and others like it is one of the things I dislike most here. There's this pervasive attitude that hackers > businesspeople, and while it's ridiculous for a business guy to think he can hire a programmer (or be of much value to one), you never see articles about how hackers are helpless without business people or how a hacker would have no idea how to hire a marketing or sales guy (and shouldn't even try).

Maybe I'm overreacting because I'm one of those who straddle the line, but this kind of arrogance serves no one.

The blogger explicitly quotes PG as saying

"In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he’s a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren’t. Then they’re mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company, but without the advantages.

So how do you pick good programmers if you’re not a programmer? I don’t think there’s an answer. I was about to say you’d have to find a good programmer to help you hire people. But if you can’t recognize good programmers, how would you even do that?”

And then goes on to say he disagrees with PG and then provides some "indicators" that business guys can use to guide their search .

The thing is, a "business guy" is in no shape to judge any of these "indicators" accurately even if we grant that these are valid (which I don't).

. How would this hypothetical business guy recognize "passion for programming" (one of the "indicators" for recognizing programming excellence the author mentions)?

Let us see what he says

"Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they’re doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator. Can you get this guy to excitedly chat up a technology that he’s using, for a whole half hour, without losing steam? Then you might be onto a winner."

Yeah right!!! This reminds me of some managers I know who'd make these kinds of judgments and reward the most technically inept members of the team because they "excitedly talk your ears off". Most of the talk would be technically incoherent but how would they know? all they detect is the "passion".

The rest of the "indicators" are similarly flawed.

PS the comments are hilarious too. I particularly liked "The above list is excellent (and it describes me perfectly). " :-D

I think this is the third time this article of mine gets up to the top of HN. The first time was when it was slashdotted and that's when I found out about HN. Second time was this past summer.

Maybe I should write an updated version of it...

On the other hand, I'd like to add a disclaimer for those reading this article for the first time:

I wrote this a year and a half ago. My ideas on the topic are clearer and can probably be better explained now. So it's worth considering that when you say "this blogger believes blah blah blah", "this blogger" does not exist anymore. I've moved on and if I write this article again (which I may well do), I'll be sure to make it far more convincing than I was able to 18 months ago.

Btw: My new blog, which you've probably seen recently, is http://danieltenner.com . If I post an updated version of this article, it will appear on my new blog, not on inter-sections.

The answer is obvious: the businesspeople should learn to hack.

My boss is a pure business guy. He didn't rise up from the ranks to become the boss; he's run multiple startups, and each time he's served as a "business guy," not a hacker.

Yet despite this he knows enough about every facet of his business that you can explain to him a subtle bug in our software or an algorithm involving frequency transforms--and he'll understand you. The power of this is incredible; while it takes a good amount of effort to be familiar with the technical aspects of the business, it gives so many benefits--from the obvious (the hackers trust you more and are more likely to give you the accurate lowdown on any situation or proposal) to the less obvious (you can recognize good hackers better).

Recently, he wrote a very complex threading patch that dealt with all sorts of race conditions for a program that, while part of our business, he had never touched before.

Being a "business type" does not justify being clueless about the technical aspects of your business.

This isn't rocket science, and programmers aren't special. Programming is a deep technical skill, just like many others, and the way you hire for those types of positions if you don't understand them is to rely on the judgment of others who do. These people helping you evaluate technical candidates don't have to be employees, by the way. They could be, but they could also be your friends, family members, advisors, colleagues from a former job, etc., etc. Just calling a programmers past employers and managers is a good start.

You can also intuit something about someone's technical skills by looking at the types of places they've worked for. Some guy who has hacked together fifty is likely not as technically skilled as someone who worked at Google and Facebook. That's not a full-proof test, obviously, but there isn't a full-proof test here, even if you are a programmer.

Three things come to mind (explanations follow):

1) Does the programmer _complete_ interesting programming projects in their spare time?

2) Can the programmer explain something mildly technical such that you, the business guy, can understand?

3) A test: push the programmer a bit. Act as if you don't understand something and be a bit rude. If the programmer does anything except listen to you and patiently try to help you then he/she is no-hire.

Explanations:

If the programmer doesn't complete interesting projects in their spare time they don't have enough passion for programming.

If he/she can't explain something clearly it's highly likely they can't communicate with business folks effectively in general hence they're not going to be effective at the job.

There's a lot of angry programmers. If the programmer becomes visibly annoyed or angry during an interview you've found yourself a no-hire. Angry programmers destroy morale very quickly.

That's my opinion on how to find "good" programmers. Keep in mind the percentage of "good" programmers who will be a good fit for your business is small. This is where respectful drilling of technical matters is appropriate. This part of the interview is completed by a _technical_ employee. Remember that lots of good programmers can fail technical interviews because they just don't know the particular technology.

I am certainly not a good programmer, and using this logic, you might hire me. So your list isn't perfect; however, I suspect that it's pretty good. The basic problem is that it won't distinguish between people who are really enthusiastic about computers and genuine good programmers. The difference between these two groups is probably really obvious in a field like chess (lots of people who are enthusiastic about chess are still terrible,) but it might be harder to notice in a knowledge-based field like programming.

I've been both on the programming and business side, and done a little hiring. Pretty much the only indicator I can always apply is projects done outside of paid work.

I start with the usual "reverse a linked list" stuff or easier, go through education and work experience, play the whole game, but the thing that really does it for me is that he learns erlang in his free time, or has a self-made javascript game on his home page (if he's a web developer) or whatever. It only has to be completely non-paid non-contracted work. Then of course I look at the source code, but the decision is already half made.

There is a much longer list of things that disqualify a candidate. Anything Entreprise, any formal certifications outside college, personality (yes, I discriminate. I like working with people I like working with, apparently). But a checklist for a good programmer, I doubt it can be applied successfully.

edit: * entreprise = using oracle for mom&pop shops, not working in big companies. Sounds obvious, but it's sadly too common mindset to use the most expensive/complicated solution instead of the cheapes/simplest, to the point that just hearing "entreprise" turns me off.

If you know a good technical person you trust, ask them to help. If you don't, go make some technical friends.

I've been helping screen technical people for friend's companies for a while now. My friends trust me to determine if someone is the right fit for the role, technically. I'm too busy on my own projects to work for/with my friends full time, but I can spend an hour or two doing phone screens, interviews, reading resumes, etc... Some of them even pay me for it:)

There's no magic formula that lets you (a business guy) figure out who's great, who's really green, who's full of crap, etc... It can't be done. You have to rely on a web of trust, using your friends.

The bit about a good programmer knowing a lot of unrelated technologies is entirely off-base, IMO. Better to specialize in one area and be the best you can be at that than spend your time learning a lot of technologies you will never use, just for the sake of knowing them. I do think knowing more than one language is a definite plus, but keeping them all related makes perfect sense (a web stack, a java stack, etc.).Even great programmers who are infinitely passionate about what they do aren't going to enjoy every programming language out there, just by virtue of it being a programming language.

There's one test I recommend to my semi-technical fellows:

Give a small practical problem to solve and see what the other person comes up with. For instance you could ask prospective employee to hack together a small app or a script to do something or anything you can understand and think is solvable with technology.

The great part of this test is that most of the time slackers just don't even attempt it. For those who give a shot, you can look at certain behavioral patterns using your softskills. For a non-techie judge, you won't be able to analyze the quality of design but the end result also says a lot.

I think the list is helpful and the comments suggesting that non-technical folks have no chance to hire good hackers seems to be contradicted by facts. FedEx and Walmart have amazing technical systems and have become industry leaders because of them, but both were founded and grown by business folks. Disney, Bank of America, and most of the other Fortune 500 have retained their positions by building strong technical organizations largely from scratch. Good sales people, ops folks, and hackers are always going to be hard to find.

This is like a football coach asking how to recognize good players. If you are asking, you probably shouldn't be working on something where programming is central to your success.

It's pretty hard (even if you are a great programmer). If you are looking to find a great programmer who's available long-term, hire someone who's PROVABLY great and available short-term to do the interviews/search for you. Think Stroustrup or Stepanov if you are looking for C++ programmers. RMS or Steele if you are looking for Lisp programmers, etc.

For every good programmer I know, I know many more who are total bozos who claim to be great and are thought by some to be great.

The obvious answer is to hold a bake off. Narrow down the programmers to a set you want to try out (for this you can use rough measures - SAT scores and experience listed on resume). Give them all a few days to implement a non-trivial part of the app you want built. Then hire the best.

This is better than just hiring an MCSE, but, having dabbled in open source software, I've seen a lot of WTF-worthy code written by people who would fulfill all of those criteria (well, I couldn't honestly say whether you could hold a conversation with them).

Is there any such thing as a headhunter who is also a hacker? That would probably be the best solution for the MBA-types, short of taking a few years to learn to hack themselves.

You don't. You can't. As PG wrote in "Great Hackers":

I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.

If I weren't technical I would go to a local university. I would contract someone who is well published in something with a combination of math and computer science to screen my hires for people he would consider for his lab, and assume that from there I could tell the difference.

This will probably not make it above the noise in the thread but I think the following would be useful:

- You would ideally have at least one person who you trust who is a coder who you can show source code samples, previous work, etc., for a quality assessment.

- Previous business references are valuable, as only so much of the overall usefulness of the person comes from raw coding ability -- there may be other habits, personality characteristics, etc., that (good or bad) might influence the decision.

- I highly recommend starting out a new coder with a simple contract project so that you can assess her ability to communicate, work toward a goal, etc. You should probably pay whatever the coder thinks is fair, b/c this is not a bidding war exercise. You mainly want to see about work habits, style, compatibility with the existing team, productivity, etc. By doing this you are giving both parties (yourself and the programmer) a chance to feel each other out and determine if it's a good fit. This can even be done as a part-time project while the programmer is still employed elsewhere, reducing risk for everyone involved.

- Things like blogs, open source contributions, etc., are nice, but I think of them as a hobby and unless you're thinking of hiring one of the few very well known luminaries in a software community, the fact that your prospective hire has a blog is probably not all that indicative of superstar qualities.

- Character traits like tinkering are great too, but just because someone is focused on a main task and doesn't tinker with each new thing that comes along doesn't mean she's somehow a worse programmer than the tinkerer who writes something in every new framework, etc. I have known great coders with both characteristics and I think the bottom line is that good coders know what's out there and can easily help you evaluate it for your business, even if they didn't spend the past 5 weekends hacking out a side project in erlang -- unless of course you truly end up wanting to use erlang, at which point their side project was a great investment that cost you nothing. However, most skilled coders could read up on erlang and catch up in about a week, so we're not talking about all that much overall productivity.

- I'd beware of coders who prefer highly complex solutions to problems -- in a business scenario sometimes a less elegant, easily understood solution is ideal.

- I'd beware of coders who are unwilling to adapt to your demand for quality. Perhaps you don't need 3000 lines of test code for an internal whiteboard app. It's good to find a coder you can trust to make the right call, but some are very unconcerned with your budget and timeline and may not realize where the rubber meets the road from a business perspective.

Any hire is going to be a relationship and hiring a coder is not too different from hiring a business person. You need to establish trust and confidence. Frank and clear communication is key to this. The coder should not think of you as a "suit" and you should not think of her as a geek. Ultimately the reason anyone is getting paid is because it's a business and that requires judicious use of tradeoffs.

> How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy?

Simple. Ask someone who knows. If you don't know anyone who knows, you might want to reevaluate whether you should be getting into the tech industry.

As for the arrogance thing - look at Brin/Page, Ellison and Gates, etc. - all hackers. When a "business" guy's achievements in the hacker space outdo these hackers' achievements in the business world, be sure to let me know.