It is not often that my first impression of a candidate (after the first five minutes) changes significantly during the interview process. So it would make sense to do those five minute interviews as Seth suggests.

Actually, I do remember one person we interviewed very thoroughly, or at least for a very long time. Initially I was against hiring him, but in the end he won us over and we ended up hiring him. It turned out he was indeed a poor fit for our team, and he didn’t stay with us for long. That kind of taught me a lesson – but now I’m thinking I’ve been interpreting that lesson incorrectly: I thought the lesson was that I should interview even harder and even more thoroughly, but probably the correct lesson is to trust your first instinct and not even try to be thorough.

The first law of bad management: If something doesn’t work, do more of it. This kind of applies to interviewing as well.

When hiring you are the one in need (the applicants are, but the good ones don’t *need* your job) so treat them well. Giving feedback quickly is a must.

I also like your point about internships and local universities. That’s how I got hired and how we got one full-time employee and one intern. Internships are a must in my opinion and both the intern and the company benefit from them (cheap labor and great experience).

Certainly I don’t want to start a “developers don’t care about money” meme. Developers should get paid well, and should get a bonus just as handsome as the executive managers.

Where does the statement “money is the one thing the greatest developers care least about” come from? It strikes me as something ideologically tinged: the kind of statement that employers would pay the McKinsey group to issue to justify paying developers peanuts.

Why don’t we start the meme that “corporate executives care the least about money?” and that they should be wooed by free massage therapy and being able to bring their dogs to work?

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

most of the jobs ARE boring

This is probably true. But, maybe you can make those jobs more interesting? Turn the job into a game of improvement (of processes, tools, code quality, test coverage, efficiency, what have you) to make things exciting. Create something to strive for, something to excel at. Not everyone gets to work with the next big thing, but at least you can try to do an awesome job and learn something in the process.

Coding exercise in the interview: yes, you should definitely do that.

I completely agree with you about the importance of turnover. Retaining the top talent is not something you can do separately. It it a side-effect of a healthy organization where people enjoy working.

This is interesting to me because let’s be honest, most of the jobs ARE boring. Odds are, you’re not going to end up working on anything cool or exciting. There’s a really good chance you’ll end up working with legacy/bad code, not even new development.

Phone screens are great, but even better is to do some actual coding during the interview.

Also more important than recruiting is retaining top people. Turnover is a killer and I’ve yet to work at a company who has put any real effort/plans in place to retain top talent. I’m talking more than just annual raises (which aren’t always given).

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

In Finland, we actually have a union for developers (well, knowledge workers in general). It can help, but it won’t turn ignorant managers into good managers. It’s really kind of solving the problem from the wrong end.

The company that I’m working for is flirting with financial disaster, so I’m looking to move on.

I found an amazing number of job listings at firms that want to hire good developers at rates from $10-$15 an hour, often with no health insurance. It’s just ridiculous. I think of my brother-in-law, who makes $80k a year filling potholes for the government. This is somebody with no education and no unusual skills. Maybe software developers need a union too.

I’m coming to think the only way I’m going to get respect as a software developer is to go into business for myself.