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Comment by kahawe | Hacker News Reader

The problem with these countless articles telling you the "super-über-top-secrets" how to a "hacker/guru" is that the small companies who would heed such advice have much better ways of finding great people available to them - while the (big) companies desperately needing this type of advice are far from being able to implement it any way because they have way too much process to struggle with.

How to hire a "hacker" or at least a great fit for your team? Make sure you offer a great place to work, make sure your people are happy and pay and treat them well - word of mouth from "hacker" to "hacker" will be ten times more valuable than anything some nameless derp wrote on their blog and it will ultimately work very well towards building a team that fits and sticks together.

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Aww, thanks for the constructive criticism!

Despite your comment, I think we're kind of getting at the same point - if you have a great place to work and focus on building a team that works well together, you're going to have more success as opposed to hiring someone with X years of Ruby experience just because they know how to code. Focus on cultural fit, the technical stuff can be taught.

Signed, nameless derp

Constructive criticism: I am not sure yet another "how to hire a hacker" article is really all that necessary because there is no shortage of similar advice and I think all the characteristics typically listed in those articles how to identify and pick that one über-hacker with pinpoint accuracy are not really that much better than the pre-dotcom-bubble myth of selecting the one with the geekiest tshirt, simply because there is too much you do not and cannot know or predict or foresee in that situation. So common sense should dictate you are much better off relying on qualified recommendations from your people because they know more about the person they recommended, maybe they have even worked or studied with them - this gives them much more insight than you could possibly hope to get in your first encounter with that person, no matter how smart and elaborate your "detection mechanism" is. And this saves you a lot of time and money.

But on focusing on cultural fit, we certainly agree.

- another nameless derp

Fair enough - as someone else pointed out in the blog comments, there's not a lot of "actionable" items in this post short of seeing if people work on side projects, which in itself isn't an indication of someone you should hire.

Word of mouth however is a pretty reliable way of finding solid developers provided you start with a good developer or two to begin with, and is a great way to build your team and culture - odds are if your team is recommending someone, they'll fit in with and extend the culture your company is going for. We saw an example of this when we opened our Vancouver office - after a few key hires we were able to attract a lot of talented developers who fit in nicely.

Kind of OT but... Are you still around Saskatchewan at all? We met many years ago, I ran power for ArcticLan and TCU in maybe 2003-2004? Always interesting to see other Canadian prairie folks around here :)

Yep - had a two year stint in Vancouver but moved back last year. Good to hear from you! Drop me a DM on twitter if you're around :)

I get the impression you haven't read the article - it's about how to choose a developer, not how to attract one.

It's also funny to hear one nameless derp giving out advice while saying you shouldn't hear the other ;)

At least I am just rabbling anonymously for my own peace of mind and not to establish myself in any way or to polish my cv/application when the hr drones google me or for whatever other profit-oriented reason most blogs really are created in the first place.

The "choosing" part was included in my suggestion, you let your people recommend someone and you give that person a chance and it will become very apparent very quickly if they fit well or not.

I would've hoped the lack of advertising, missing link to my linked in profile or resume, or lack of any sort of "donate" button would've established that I'm just doing this because I have a personal interest in writing and software development. Hell, my real name isn't even on the site!

But yes, thank you for your critical feedback.

I realize I might have singled you out too much for what I personally generally dislike about the "blogosphere"; I am sorry for that. It was uncalled for. It is not a bad article and you obviously have all the right intentions, if anything I do find the topic a bit boring in the sense that it does pop up here at least weekly and I have no hope any of this will ever reach the typical HR drones who should actually learn something from this anyway.

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