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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

It is nearly impossible to hire a good developer

[Sigh]

He's right. And it's getting worse. We have a bunch of open req's right now as we're staffing up a new project and you'd think with all the handwringing about the economy and how many great engineers are being laid off it would be easy, right? Nope. It actually seems like the quality of applicants has gone down since the last time I was interviewing people.

Out of all the people we've interviewed, there's ONE that I would say is a good hire (as opposed to just "can probably do the job with some hand-holding"), and the rest of the interview team is lukewarm on him. And this is after HR has screened out the bottom of the barrel and our technical phone screens have filtered out a few more. ONE person who's just a "nice to have" and there's a good chance we're going to pass on him.

If anyone here threatened to quit, at this point we'd probably chain him to his desk :-)

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It actually seems like the quality of applicants has gone down since the last time I was interviewing people.

Many companies didn't need to lay people off, but used the financial crisis/recession as an excuse to clean house.

Last time around, you were interviewing people who were leaving because they wanted something better. This time around, you are interviewing a lot people who were forced out.

You are in Minnesota. I know loads of great developers who left Minnesota because interesting and well-paid programming jobs were nonexistent.

Minnesota is polarized - there are a lot of independent developers and a lot of Fortune 500 programming jobs. Not a lot in between.

I've hired a dozen programmers here in my day, and so it is definitely possible to find good developers. But you really have to know the right communities, user groups, etc. to find them. Of course, I expect that isn't MN-specific.

Are you opening to hiring someone who is not on-site? You could always fly them in for a few days each month to get in face time. This could really open up a stream of high-quality applicants.

At the same time, it's also pretty damn hard to find a decent job...

Yeah, it is strange. Looks like a job for an ambitious economy phd student - explain how it's possible that a market exists which is a "market for lemons" on both sides :)

There are obviously lots of people looking for work, so I am guessing the real issue is not that there aren't competent people out there, but how to spot them...

> "It actually seems like the quality of applicants has gone down since the last time I was interviewing people."

Makes sense. As another poster brought up, the market has more laid off people right now than voluntary job seekers. Not only that, keep in mind people (even highly employable ones) are playing things more conservatively given the economic climate - many of the good engineers don't even hit the open market before they're snapped up through their own network.

You don't have contact information in your profile, and I didn't find it easily on your blog. I'd love to hear details about the positions that are available.

Thanks for the reminder; I've practically abandoned that blog due to lack of time to play with LEDs. I thought I had email addy in my profile, have to check that.

Basically, if you have a technical degree (I think HR drops that requirement if you have 20 years experience) and show up for an interview with a robot or other automated mechanism you built yourself from scratch (yes, I work with a few people, self included, who've done just that), I'll go all out to find a reason to hire you because that tells me you can probably learn whatever we want you to know on the job.

Lacking a robot: OK, I just deleted a bunch of "real" job requirements that we would claim we need. They don't really matter to me or the hiring team.

We want someone who's bright, who's somewhat personable and not afraid to talk or even brag about his/her accomplishments during the interview and who understands OO development and has at least passing familiarity with C++. Those, and at least a BS in a technical field, are the only really "must have" requirements.

You should be able to show during the interview that you can at least attempt to solve problems. We don't ask trick questions like how many gas stations are on top of Mount Fuji, we just want to know if we drop a pile of requirements on your desk, you can design and implement a solid solution to meet them.

You'd think that wouldn't be hard to find...you'd be wrong!

I know a robotics guy looking for jobs in Minnesota. Can I get some contact info or do you have a job listing?

i'm just getting into robotics lately via home projects. done C++ in the past but prefer C or Python. Unwilling to move to Minnesota but if a remote team member in Colorado could work feel free to ping me and we can talk more.

x2 on the remote and even on the Colorado.

Is the job interesting? Stable? Are you running things?

'Cuz I like hard problems and can write beautiful code in a dozen languages all along the spectrum from Fortran to Perl, C++ inclusive. Skim my HN comments if you want to verify that I've got a head on my shoulders, or send me an email and ask me to brag. I'm in the market for a job in Denver, Colorado, and the location's about the only part that's not negotiable.

Thanks for the interest guys, but the job is coding for a large, very expensive machine. No way to do this remotely.

darn. best of luck! if you ever get something that can be done remotely and ideally involves C/Python embedded dev, feel free to ping me

Basically, if you have a technical degree (I think HR drops that requirement if you have 20 years experience)

Perhaps this is part of why you're having so much trouble...do you really think that the equivalent of a 4-year "technical degree" (of any kind?) is two decades of experience? I bet there are scores of people out there who have only several years of solid technical experience who know way more about getting shit done than the average recent grad. Just my .02

Just curious. Would my robot land me a job? Not that I'm looking at the moment, but any company that accepts robots as resumes is worth remembering...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMZkd8YMgzw

We've seen the same, you would have thought with the financial crisis there would be loads of talented developers with investment banking/trading experience on the market. Nope, the good ones stayed put and the accumulated deadwood was purged, the people who were hired in the boom time just to fill put headcount who never should have been in the industry in the first place.

My sympathies are limited tho', those guys were handed a golden opportunity to get the skills and experience after they were hired. But if they'd taken it, they wouldn't be back on the market now...

Got any details on your positions?

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