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When Hiring, Smarts Beat Skill Lists


By Allen Holub
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June 1, 2004 —  (Page 1 of 3)
During dinner after the last day of a five-day training session on object-oriented design, the manager who'd hired me posed an interesting question: How do you identify above-average Java programmers in a job interview?

To my mind, that's the most important question that any competent manager can ask. The days of the manager doing the work while the peons do his bidding are long past. The best work is done by a team of great programmers, with their managers making it possible for them to do nothing but program. Finding an exceptional Java programmer-someone who can work 10 times more effectively than an average programmer-is not easy, but it's essential.

Nonetheless, it's amazing to me how bad a job most companies do when they hire. I occasionally log in to the big job boards just to see what skills are hot at the moment, and I'm always shocked by the ads that I see. First, the ads often consist of marketing hype that doesn't accurately describe the work to be done. Since competent programmers typically want to know what they're getting into, that fact alone probably weeds out scads of qualified candidates.

Next come the laundry lists: compendiums of random, often mutually exclusive skills. I just saw an ad requiring Linux, Unix and Windows system administration, in-depth knowledge of Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase, mastery of C++, Java and Visual Basic, and an in-depth understanding of WebSphere, Apache/Tomcat and WebLogic.

This ad tells me a lot about the company: They don't know what they're building or how they're going to build it.

It is sometimes the case that you have to hire before you have a well-defined architecture, but in that case you need to be looking for smart people who can do quality design work, not a bunch of dilettantes who know a little of everything but can't do anything well. Some clown in HR will probably take this laundry list literally and weed out everyone who doesn't have the entire list on their resume, eliminating lots of excellent programmers who aren't willing to lie to get a job.



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