Ask HN: What to do if you can't find programmers better than you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What to do if you can't find programmers better than you?

So you see all the time people saying you should work with teams that make you feel stupid, have better programmers than you, etc. With people saying once they don't feel like that they move to somewhere better. This sounds like something I want.

However I seem to move from company to company and never experiencing this. I've ended up in charge of all things technical twice. (Out of 4 jobs) I've just moved to one company that is well respected in the community, so much so when people hear I joined they often say congratulations. Yet still, I'm not getting that feeling that I'm surrounded by better developers.

So can you do if you want the challenge of working with really smart developers but seem to have bad luck in finding companies?

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Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a reputation for being a really good developer.

So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience. And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.)

Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it. Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get out of their way.

Double-check yourself first to be absolutely sure that your perceived level of expertise matches the reality. Sure, it's possible you're the best programmer you've ever met, but double-check.

Well there are a lot of companies that currently hire only the best of the best. Try working at companies that have notoriously difficult interviews. I've heard MemSQL, Dropbox, Jane street capital, D.E.Shaw and Palantir are a few of them. These companies tend to hire more competitive programmers (top coder, ICPC etc), who usually have very high IQ. Now, these may not be the best all-round developers but they'll definitely be among the smartest.

Find harder problems to solve. I'd expect you'd then be surrounded by smarter people.

Venkatesh Rao wrote a good article on this recently.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/05/dont-surround-yourself-...

I thnk it's to better to join big companies like google, ibm, oracle, etc.

I'd be wary about that advice. Sure, the companies you mention have elite teams of super smart people, but they have lots of programmers as well, so many must be average. End up in the wrong team and nothing changes (except, you get a good pay and a good name to put on your cv).

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