Tips for recruiting great developers | Hacker News Reader

Tips for recruiting great developers

improvingsoftware.com

80 pointsArturSoler27 comments

20. Have something cool to work on. Top talent doesn't want to rewrite your java accounting system (again).

Maybe if they get to use the tools they think are best for the job. But then you have a maintenance nightmare finding someone who can think at the same high level.

a maintenance nightmare finding someone who can think at the same high level.

Bring someone in to mentor 2 or 3 others. Have them act as a software toolsmith for the others. Also have in the plan the transition to the rest of the group.

Software tool-smithing is often very interesting work, which lets your uber-programmer stay an arms length away from the boring corporate programming. However, you still get to benefit from his high-level skill. Also, the transition to others, if done right, focus his intellect in the direction of "how to make things understandable."

If I get to rewrite it in Clojure, I would.

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

I feel you on that and actually had it on the list on my draft version of the post. However, in the final version I decided to limit my tips to things the manager likely had some control over.

What applications the team is going to work on is definitely a factor for how attractive a job is, but it really isn't something you can easily change just to get new people in.

If you're starting a new company, though, you might actually want to consider solving a problem that good hackers would find interesting, in order to better recruit them.

Another tip is to read your job ad and ask what a cynical person may read between the lines. Particularly if there is some standard boilerplate that the HR process tends to add.

During my last job search I was amazed how many companies had ads that told me that I didn't want to apply there.

For example?

Some great tips (especially 14.) many of which we already use when hiring.

I would add 'Introduce the interviewee to the team and try to emulate their future working environment'.

Talk to the interviewee like you talk to the existing members of your team, ask them questions that presume they're of the same calibre and attitude. If someone doesn't seem comfortable with your workspace, communication methods, and discussing high level technical concepts during an interview that's typically a sign of a poor fit to your company's culture.

So far, the only recurrent pattern I've found is this: the best way to recruit great engineering talent, is to include great engineering talent on your founding team.

There are start-ups that begin with marketing/business development folks creating an idea and hiring others to implement it, but usually these places aren't technology companies staffed with top talent -- but are rather shops operating in a niche market, staffed with people who had nowhere else to go (which isn't always a bad thing: it makes these people much more determined to succeed).

"Top talent" joining such a company would be in for a disappointment: they'd find themselves both underutilized (not being able to use their talent and skill) and yet overworked (with tedious tasks).

(I've underwent this experience myself which had left me rather jaded: I was no longer at all interested in working for/starting start-ups and advised others not to as well. Fortunately realizing this "kinds of start-ups" dichotomy changed my attitude for the better).

  13. "Ignore your instincts...consciously decide to go harder 
  on the people [you] like and easier on the ones you don’t"

that doesn't sound like ignoring your instincts!

Haha.. quickly followed up buy #14. "Go with your gut".. I could see what he was trying to say, but there is a problem with 13 and 14.

Ignore instincts during the interview. Trust instincts when you are down to the final decision.

It does if you accept the premise that your instincts will cause you to go easier on the people you like. For example, if you get the impression the candidate really knows their stuff, you might be tempted to skip over a bunch of questions because you assume they would get them right anyway.

If you have to pick only one, I think #15 should be it.

I think #4 is also very important.

Here in Brazil, globo.com hired a stellar team, apparently from a couple years at FISL (kind of OSCON for Latin America)

I found my current job through LinkedIn, and it was definitely a plus to be able to see the structure of the organization, and what the people that I would be working with have done in the past.

Actually pretty good tips.

amen to #10.

1 tip for writing anything on the Internet:

1. Turn off that annoying snapshots hover-over-link-and-see-a-screenshot crap.

This one also appears to break my control-click to open in a new tab. Extra bad!

127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com

127.0.0.1 snap.com

127.0.0.1 www.snap.com

127.0.0.1 kontera.com

127.0.0.1 kona.kontera.com

127.0.0.1 www.kontera.com

127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com snap.com www.snap.com kontera.com kona.kontera.com www.kontera.com

http://hackernewsfeed.com/ actually worked well for this article, since it grabs the content from the rss feed I didn't have any problem with ads. Some articles don't give full content though..

Thanks for the tip. I didn't realize that was such a turn-off for people who read blogs.

Found the setting and disabled it for this blog.

Also, props for #8: "Don’t expect to pay median salaries for top talent." I've repeatedly had this conversation with CEOs / hiring managers during the interview process: you want to pay median / 65th percentile salaries for 90+ percentile employees?

Two years ago I actually told the CEO that he was basically trying to hire a really smart person who sucked at math, and I wasn't interested. He was a little shocked, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the company's stated desire to hire great talent while not paying top of the market salaries...

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