Topic: developer

What is the ideal Senior Developer skillset?

John McCaffrey, Wednesday, November 11, 2009 @ 4:21 pm

We're currently in the process of interviewing candidates for 1-2 Senior, and 2-3 junior level Rails Developers, and I'm wondering about the skills that are most critical, and how best to identify the best candidates.

My normal interview process flows like this:

1. Quick Phone screen evaluating basic development skills, background, availability, personality
2. Basic coding problem (less than 1hr to complete)
3. Phone call to review coding problem, 'how would you handle X?' questions, etc
4. On site interview targeting: Communication, Communication, Communication, (and tech)
5. Final decision

Independent of the language they will be working with, I've found decent success with having candidates answer some standard dev questions, solve a basic coding problem, and demonstrate their ability to whiteboard a design.

The problem is that it doesn't scale. When we've opened up positions in the past, either Senior or Junior, there have been so many applications that its hard to contact them all. This leads to a reshuffling of the tasks and matching criteria, in an attempt to identify the 'best' matches, and 'filter out' the others.  So instead of calling each candidate first, we might simply reply to them with the details of the coding assignment. I've seen 40 people send the "I'm an extremely hard worker, very interested in your position and would do anything to join your wonderful company" cover letter and resume, and then get whittled down to only 10 candidates that actually submit the assignment.  (Note to applicants: 'showing up' is an important first step!)

I came across an interesting post titled '11 tips on hiring a rails developer' which mentioned some 'filtering' criteria to identify the best candidates

You can read the full description of each one, but there are a few of these that I wanted to highlight:

1. Don't use Monster.com or recruitment agencies.
2. Poach Talent from other companies!
   
3. Don't hire someone that doesn't know Rails at all.
4. Look for open source contributions.
5. A personal Rails blog is required.
6. A university degree is not important.
7. Be wary of holes in proficiency.
8. Avoid brand-name superstars.
9. Hire perpetually.
10. Have a company Rails blog
11. Special compensation.

So each of these tips is meant as a heuristic or proxy of the true underlying ability. Any time you are making generalizations you are going to miss out on a few exceptions, but hopefully you end up with what you are looking for.

Starting with the most controversial first, (#5) while I like the idea of giving a strong preference to someone that has a rails blog, and loves  Ruby, Rails, and Web Development enough to be opinionated and spend their own time ranting about it, I'm not sure I could make it a filtering criteria. Doesn't that seem a bit strong?

I feel the same about (#4) Open Source contribution. I think its great if they have it, but I'm not sure I would reject any candidates that haven't contributed to open source.

While I've met many systems administrators that (#6) don't have a degree, and are very good at their craft, I haven't really encountered many solid developers that don't have a degree. That's not to say they aren't out there, I'm just saying I've never encountered them, and I'm reluctant to use it as a filter. Do you think that there are many strong Rails developers out there without degrees? (I don't care if they have a CS degree, but I think I prefer that they have some kind of degree)

As it relates to (#1) and (#11), I know for sure that the economics of finding a candidate through your own network and contacts can be less expensive than the recruiter fees (assuming you find a decent candidate and don't waste a lot of your own time doing it), and if you are able to find someone directly, it frees up cash for such amenities as 'New Macbook Pro', 'RailsConf', and 'Fridge full of XXX'.

If I was in charge of everything

I really like what Andy Singleton describes regarding how his team at Assembla is organized and tackles Agile Development, and on the right project, I'd really like take his advice and try this one:

"Don’t interview. Just pay people to join a project, pull a task from the queue, and find out what they can do."

Anyways,  I'd be very interested in your thoughts regarding what makes for a Solid Rails developer, where you find them, how you keep them, and what you've learned.

(Oh, and if you know any passionate Rails Developers in the Chicago area, send them over!)

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