Identifying passionate programmers
I'm hiring a programmer, how can I differentiate the good programmers from those good programmers who have a real passion for their work ?...
hiring
Do you or your company hire testers?
are you hiring employees just for testing or is it done by your developers? if you hire them, what are your experiences? what is the ratio of them to your developers? what kind of testers do you hire? do you use college grads or do your testers are masters and as good as your developers? do they make a huge difference for you and in ...
What do I look for when hiring an Operations Director?
We are a small (20 people) yet growing Internet Agency and we have decided it is time for a operations director. Most of the heavy lifting operationally has been handled by the Tech Director and one project manager (who is moving out of project management into product development) What personality type is best? Should they have a tech...
What kinds of code would you want to see in a portfolio?
Is there anything that a potential employer look for in any portfolio, or is it mostly job-specific? ...
How to bring a new hire up to speed on an existing project?
My boss hired a new dev right out of CompSci onto a project with a fair amount of technical debt. It will be my task to get this guy up to speed and making a decent contribution ASAP. Any suggestions on how best to do this? Any first hand experience on how precisely not to do it? My instincts are to do some code reviews on code written ...
Finding the right Consultant
We're trying to find a consultant to help us deal with problems that we're experiencing with our framework selection. How can we tell if a prospective consultant will provide the experience and knowledge we need? Our particular framework is Seam, but any experience on selecting a consultant is appreciated. ...
Hiring a Freelance Graphics Person
Say I'm a one-person programming shop, and I need to get some graphics for an application: icons, backgrounds, etc. What are some of the things I need to know before I hire someone to do that stuff for me? How have some of you been burned when doing something similar? ...
Tips for hiring good testers?
Hi all, We're looking to add a few good testers (err "qa engineers") to our team. It's been my experience in the past that the "10-1" rule for developers (good devs are 10 times more productive than mediocre devs) is even more prevalent for testers. Most testers I've worked with found a decent amount of issues, but there's a few stand...
How do I find and hire a good intern?
We are in the process of looking to bring an intern on board. For the record, it's a paid part-time programming internship and we would like them to be local. We always struggle on where to look for a good intern, someone who is passionate about programming, likes to be challenged, has a good (their young, so it doesn't need to great ....
What process do you use to recruit programmers?
What process do you use to recruit programmers? we have a multi stage interview process... Pre interviews... Resume review..... then if they are interesting :- stage 1: come have a chat, talk about what you have done, discuss the position, dig a bit into they approach software development stage 2: Coding Test Stage 3: Generally disc...
Perks for new programmers
I intend on hiring 2-3 junior programmers right out of college. Aside from cash, what is the most important perk for a young programmer? Is it games at work? I want to be creative... I want some good ideas ...
What employers expect from new developers?
In somewhat a response to Perks, what do employers/managers expect from new developers? ...
How important is having BSCS as minimum requirement for new programmer hires?
I've been in an ongoing debate with our IT HR folks about the minimum requirements for mid- and entry-level developer/programmer positions. I contend that with the right aptitude and attitude, good programmers and engineers can come from a variety of backgrounds, including the "school of hard knocks" route. My HR peeps want to throw aw...
If a candidate for a full time dev position runs another company, is this a problem?
We have a candidate for a full-time development gig (contract to possible perm) who runs his own small business with 7 employees and lists himself as CEO. He's technically strong and his rate is reasonable for his skills. I understand he will not be here in 3-4 years, but if we need someone for 1-2 years should this be a red flag? W...
what is the best way to hire a consultant to help with an open source project?
I develop an open source Ruby On Rails project as a part of my job. However priorities at my work shifted and the project is now postponed for about a month. I know that that there are people who would like it to be finished sooner I would want to keep it going and willing to find money to pay for it's furhter development. I would prefe...
What kind of damage could one do with a payment gateway API login and transaction key?
Currently, I'm in the process of hiring a web developer who will be working on a site that processes credit cards. While he won't have the credentials to log into the payment gateway's UI he will have access to the API login and transaction key since it's embedded in the application's code. I'd like to be aware of all the "what if" scen...
What do you think about using the Project Euler website as a candidate profiling tool?
I've read a thread around here about people using FizzBuzz to filter out completely clueless candidates for programming positions. To be honest, I find it hard to believe many candidates won't pass that (although i CAN believe it), but one way or another, even for a very simple first filter, it seems like that bar it set too low. I rec...
Testing HTML/CSS/Javascript skills when hiring
When hiring a front-end developer, what specific skills and practices should you test for? What is a good metric for evaluating their skill in HTML, CSS and Javascript? Obviously, table-less semantic HTML and pure CSS layout are probably the key skills. But what about specific techniques? Should he/she be able to effortlessly mock up a ...
What is your definition of a Entry Level/Junior/Mid/Senior Developer?
A friend of mine working with an offshore team asked me to provide my definitions of the various stages of the developer life cycle. What did Entry Level, Junior, Mid Level, and Senior developer mean to me, and what were my minimum expectations from each level. Whats your definition? When would you change someones job title in you...
Identifying the right engineer
I've spent quite a lot of time searching for the "right" engineer for a testing/development position. It's a very high-stress, high-visibility environment with changing priorities and tight deadlines. The associated responsibilities have been somewhat neglected for several years and upper management doesn't understand the process and p...