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How Do You Find Programming Superstars?
Joe Ganley writes "You are a programming superstar, and you are looking for work. I recognize this happens relatively rarely, which is part of my problem. But stipulating that it happens, how do I, as a company looking to hire such people, connect with them? Put another way, how do you the programming superstar go about looking for a company that seems like one you'd like to work for? The company I work for is a great place to work; we only hire really great people, we work on hard, interesting problems, and we treat our employees well. We aren't worried about retention or even about how to entice people to work here once we've found them. The problem is simply finding them. The signal-to-noise ratio of the big places like Monster and Dice is terrible. We've had much better luck with (for example) the Joel on Software job boards, but that still doesn't generate enough volume." What methods have other people used to find the truly elite?
Unfortunately, software development is one of those things where you can only judge talent if you have talent.
:-), do you use any open source projects? Interview those guys. Open source is a great way to get to know someone -- you can review their code and documentation, and you also know that programming is something they love. People who are involved in open source typically love programming (otherwise, why do it?).
Assuming you already have a couple good guys on staff (but how do you know they are good?
True. One of the smarter people that I know never finished his degree. He got bored and left school to start a successful company. However, its unlikely that his resume would ever go through an HR dept filter. The CTO or Principle Engineer would call him personally and make an offer.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I would say in 3 ways. One, stop calling them superstars. To a programmer, the world superstar implies massive overtime with little compensation (aka we want someone who loves programming so much that they won't worry about the fact that we under pay them and over work them). Two, do some research on job requirements. Don't list idiotic buzz words as requirements when the package is something a programmer could pick up in less that a day working with it. The best way to get people to completely glaze over your job posting is to list so many technologies that they are bound to be missing one or two. Third, treat them and pay them what they are worth. If you want a superstar programmer, be willing to pony up. I read something a few days ago here on Slashdot that said Facebook and Google were competing for new grads and offering salaries in excess of 110K to new grads. If that's the treatment those companies give them, what do you think someone with experience and "superstar" status probably thinks they deserve? If you can't give them the money, make up for it with benefits and ability to progress or become a partner in the company...Bottom line, be realistic, and they will take you seriously. A programmer can detect a job that will probably be bad from a mile away just by reading the description.
While you can market to wazoo, and you should, following the advice of others, here, you'll always only be half right, because talented people first and foremost recruit other talented people and solicit other talented people for work.
So go to the experts at your current job, the people you REALLY respect, and ask them if they know someone. If they say no, then they're probably LYING, and you just don't have enough to draw their friends. Try to find out why, and fix that. Then those same people you asked will begin suggesting people.
If you don't have experts at your company, cast your web out to all the experts you know, and offer to pay people what they're worth. You may have to pay enough to relocate someone. That can get expensive. Say you'll do it.
This is in conjunction with the advertising of the job, not in lieu of it.
...and be prepared to hire telecommuters, even in other countries. All of our software guys at Slim Devices (now Logitech) found us through our open source projects, and to this day every one of the telecommutes. The stratum of talent you gain access to when you are reaching the people who are so excited about the technology that they'll work on it on their own time.... unbelievable - forget about Monster.com, this is the way to do it!
I have to say that I've had some people hired away from me to go to Google, and they have been hiring the people who can quote chapter and verse of some coding standards doc. But they haven't been my superstars. They have been "A" players. But not "superstars". I'll qualify that in one second.
:)
The superstar is more than just somewhat hard to come by.
First, they are only going to be 1 out of every 100 programmers you work with. And that is only if you are lucky, and if you are good at hiring. If you hit job boards, you aren't good at hiring. (with apologies to the job board advertisement that is almost definitely above this post
Second, they can almost never identify themselves. Lots of people THINK they are the superstar. But then they get very little actually accomplished. These are the people I've lost to Google. But the superstar does much more than just know the tech details. They actually get stuff done. And their code really really works. And it is highly reusable. And they change others around them. The always make sure the best tools are in place, and they get others to use those tools, not just themselves. In this sense, they are also quite good leaders, although most do not want to manage large teams (and you'd be wise not to have them do so).
I've probably worked with 1000-2000 programmers in my lifetime, and I think I would give only about 10 of them the "superstar" status.
The superstars produce 2x to 10x what a very good programmers can produce in the same amount of time.
As far as finding and hiring them, the biggest problem is that they are very rarely on the market. So job boards are a bad place to start.
Just about all (maybe even 100%, actually) of the superprogrammers I've hired have come from friend referrals.
Go to your current employees, and give them very big checks if they can attract other programmers to your firm. Make sure this is worth their while (ie: $10,000 or more for bringing in someone). This will almost always be your best bet to find these guys.
I find you....
Seriously.
I haven't had to 'look' for a job (i.e. interview with more than one company) since the early 90s. I have a network, and if I want to change jobs, I ask the people I respect the most (and who I think have respect for me) if there is anything out there. (Changed job 5 times due to corporate changes such as mergers, acquisitions and startup failures.) Usually my income went up, but I took a cut in pay for the last one because the company appears to be that much fun to work for.
People who are truly superstars are probably working at a job they like and you won't be able to budge them *unless* you have an open pocketbook or something 'Google-like' that would appeal to someone who can get a job anywhere. Or something has changed (or their patience has just run out) and in a month or two will have another one through people they already know.
My suggestion is if you want a superstar, start networking with the people YOU know and respect the most. Maybe your network and a prospective employee's network will connect somewhere. That's how I got this one. A guy I know knew about this job and let me know about it because he thought it was something I would be interested in and knew that my company was going through an acquisition and thought I might be looking.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
A 'superstar' programmer will find the job he wants with the salary he desires and get that job. A local company is well known for finding top flight programmers. They held a $10,000 programming deathmatch challenge. The winner got the cash prize, and a job offer. Guess what, they were extreamly successful.
http://mozy.com/contest
What you have to be prepared for is the unexpected winner:
http://uphpu.org/pipermail/uphpu/2006-November/005608.html
It was so succesful they did a second take, check here for sample questions:
http://mozy.com/contest
There's a vast pool of trapped talent in rural areas in the U.S..
As an example, I spent most of my life stuck in Southeast Idaho. There's a surprisingly large geek population there, but not a lot of employment for them. Generally people wind up stuck in low-paying dead-end jobs doing whatever they can (first tier phone tech support at the call centers that constitute the majority of non-agricultural employment, or as IT for a cash-strapped school district that is distrustful of the internet for religious reasons).
Because you are living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have the ability to relocate yourself with the funding necessary to find a job somewhere better. The majority of escapees (including myself) that I know of actually LIED on their resume and put a friend's address on it in a more lucrative market, and then lived homeless/couchsurfed/hitchhiked in order to get to interviews. It takes a lot of guts to throw caution to the wind and do that, and there's so much potential talent out there that could be snagged if employers would just reach out and find people and offer an escape that doesn't involve so much uncertainty.
Most people within 20 miles of Silicon Valley/NoVa tech corridor, etc. have the physical support infrastructure to get a job already. The hidden gems will be found in places where geeks don't have that option. The best places to look are population 25k-75k towns which don't have a major metro area within a 150 mile radius, and a depressed economy that precludes local employment providing enough income for geeks to self-finance a move to the high-cost-of-living of a tech hub.
Actually, I did that a lot when I first got hired at my current company. I flunked a round of interviews partially because of my hot-headed attitude and MS bashing.
I did a 2nd round with a different group and kept the rhetoric to a minimum. But once I was in, I turned on the flame-thrower again. "I can't beleive you put up with this crap -- pine and sendmail will service 25,000 mailboxes on a 1 proc machine", etc. I would constantly compare the lame MS experience to some F/OSS experience. This was back in the 2000-2001 time frame. Was it annoying? yes. Did people listen to me? Yes. Did we switch to f/oss software? No. Did a lot of the software we used to do our jobs get better? Yes.
The company I did this at?
Microsoft.
I'm a Microsoft Employee, and I'm a QA engineer (tools & automation developer). You had better beleive that when one of us says "F/OSS kicks our ass at this", people here eventually notice and try to remedy the problem. (Clearly, there's great job security here
I agree with the generalities of your point. You need to pick and choose your battles. But one thing I'll say is -- if you're frustrated that MS products are so (in your opinion) inferior to some F/OSS (or any competing offering) product, MS is a great place to work. We take competition very seriously, and we need more people that are used to not rebooting, apps not taking down more than they need to, user separation, simple tools that are efficient and single-purposed, etc, to help us make better software. When I joined, there wasn't a linux compete team, a compatibility lab, etc etc. Now we have all of those things and there are people who actually study where we don't measure up.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
But make sure you have something interesting to let them work on, otherwise you'll lose them, probably to the banks where they will be paid at least six or seven times what you can afford - make sure your projects are at least that much more fun for them to work on. And never EVER EVER put a math/science person in charge of any sort of UI, no matter how good a coder they are. Seriously, don't do it!
I agree and I say advise every student that they should intern.
What businesses should realize is that students have a lot of energy but no experience and a lot of them lack the grit to finish when it gets boring.
A good seasoned program + 2 interns is a good combination. The interns do not argue with the good programmer all the time or try to put their "stamp" on the project. They just code a LOT and learn a LOT from the seasoned hand.
It is so sad, here in 2008, to STILL see companies pay $150 an hour to a consulting firm for recent college grads who lack any experience in thinking ahead 5 years.
I'm a good programmer- but there ARE superstars. I've known a few. They tend to be fanatics and don't work so well in teams. They write superior code, quickly. They are not so great on huge projects (unless paired with novices as above) because they get on each others nerves.
A good team needs one superstar with authority to decide things, a few solid programmers to catch the mistakes the superstar does make, and an equal amount of rookies.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.