When hiring for a "hot" technology

I ran across this article, which outlined a manager's thought process when deciding whether to overpay some entry-level developers due to skills in a particular technology:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3921006/Should-Younger-Developers-be-Paid-More.htm

When going over the pros and cons of hiring these developers, the author failed to look at the fact that these entry-level developers with skills in mobile technologies are still just entry-level developers.  Many of the skills learned in the course of programming are easily transferable from one medium (web, desktop, mobile, etc.) to another, and these skills are usually best learned through experience.  So what else could the manager have done?

I think this is a perfect opportunity for the company to hire temporary workers.  These workers could be paid relatively large amounts of money without needing to worry about having over-paid employees on the payroll when the supply for mobile developers catches up with demand.  This has the added bonus of making the salaries more justifiable to existing employees, since it is reasonable to pay your current employees less salary in exchange for more stability.

What other options do you see available?

The value of technology certifications

The subject of technology certifications comes up quite frequently in many of the discussion boards that I've visited that are either job- or technology-related.  The responses are almost always varied, some arguing that certifications should be avoided because they won't get you a job or because they don't test useful knowledge, while others arguing certifications are desirable for the knowledge gained and increased opportunities made available.  There is a bit of truth in each argument.

Unfortunately, most people asking about certifications on these discussion boards are asking because they are looking for the certification(s) that are virtually guaranteed to get them a job.  These don't exist.  The certifications that I have encountered test for specialized knowledge in a particular area but don't test for skills that are needed to do a job.  I think the test writers believe that anyone with specialized knowledge is bound to have the more general day-to-day knowledge, but the result is that the job market is flooded with certified "professionals" with little more than book knowledge.  Because of this, most certifications are looked upon with suspicion by a significant number of people in the industry.

On the other hand, getting a certification can get your foot in the door into a company, especially if the company has an incentive to hire certified employees.  A certification can show that an employee was motivated to learn the details about a particular technology, which can only be a good thing in an ever-changing field.  An employee should take advantage of the closer look provided by the certification and expect to prove that the certification provided more value than memorizing a bunch of facts.

For the same reasons, employers should look upon employees with related certifications more favorably than those without, but it cannot be the sole, or even primary, determining factor in choosing the right person.  An employee with a small amount of knowledge who can apply that knowledge in solving a wide variety of problems is more valuable than one with a large amount of knowledge but who can't utilize it in a meaningful way.  Certifications usually merely only test for the amount of knowledge, not the ability to apply it.

So in the end, certifications hold some value for the industry, but they seem to have fallen short of their goals.  In a future post, I will suggest a way to design a certification exam that would be more useful to both the certified and the talent evaluators.

Hiring good programmers - Part 2

In Part 1, I outlined some problems with common practices in hiring programmers (or anyone else for that matter).  What can the hiring manager do about these problems?

I would start by defining the tasks the position requires as honestly, realistically, and specifically as possible.  This isn't as easy as it sounds.  For example, many openings that I've seen for programmers require someone who can complete code "on time, within budget, and bug-free".  If a company is having trouble finding programmers who meet these requirements, what is the problem?  Yes, skill deficiencies in the programmers themselves can cause any or all of these issues.  But so can poor requirements, poorly controlled scope creep, poor communication, etc.  What exactly is the need?

A better approach might be identifying which aspects of the finished product are most important.  A programmer trying to be one of the first to create a game for a new mobile system might be more focused on time and budget than bugs.  To contrast, programming for medical devices would require much more focus on creating bug-free software.  Along with this, be aware of any road blocks within your company preventing programmers from getting work done.  Do the programmers frequently get poor requirements?  While improving the requirement gathering and documenting process, I would focus on getting programmers with enough of a business sense to be able to extrapolate missing information from the requirements.  Are projects frequently under time pressure?  Then finding programmers who can get work done quickly should be a priority.

Once the tasks have been defined, I would then break each of the tasks down into Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSA).  For the sake of example, I'll start breaking down a few of the tasks and KSAs needed for a completely hypothetical mid-level ASP.NET developer position.  This position might be for a mid-sized company looking to add onto a web application designed to track inventory within a supply chain looking to add a developer to a team that can handle simpler tasks to free up some senior developers to work on other projects.

Tasks:

1. Creates reusable, maintainable, reliable components in C#
2. Tracks down bugs with little assistance from more experienced developers
3. Integrates third-party components into web applications

Task 1 could be broken down into the following KSAs:

1. Working knowledge of Object-Oriented Programming concepts
2. Experience creating effective unit tests
3. Makes intelligent decisions as to when a component should be broken down into sub-components

Task 2 could be broken down into the following KSAs:

1. Can read and understand code in C#
2. Can read and understand documentation
3. Can refactor poorly written code into more usable/readable components
4. Can write unit tests to reduce the amount of time testing through the user interface

Task 3 could similarly be broken down into the following KSAs:

1. Can read and understand third-party documentation
2. Can integrate third-party code into a larger application as seamlessly as possible
3. Can anticipate problems with third-party components and comes up with reasonable work-around solutions

A real KSA breakdown would include many more tasks and KSAs, but hopefully you get the idea.  Now that the needed KSAs have been identified, it is time to identify the important ones.  Reading and understanding C# and documentation are common KSAs, as is seeing how small pieces fit into a whole, and writing effective unit tests.  Not found is the need for keeping up with the latest technologies or understanding large-scale structural issues.  (Keep in mind this is a hypothetical position - these skills may be needed in other ASP.NET positions depending on the company.)

With this information, you can design questions for interviews.  Since we need to identify people with an understanding of creating reusable, maintainable components, here are some questions that we might ask:

• If you are asked to fix a method that has a return type of an object and returns a due date if the user is valid and 'false' if not, how would you go about doing so?
• If you have some functionality in one of your classes that is needed by another, what is the best way to move that functionality to the new class?
• If you are using a third-party library to send information from several different ASP.NET pages to a third-party store, where do you put the logic?

These questions are all specific and are all targeted to certain tasks I would need the interviewee to perform.  I have my ideal answers for each and can evaluate the interviewee consistently.  It is important to ask several questions that get to the same point because of the possibility of miscommunication or misinterpretation on either side.

It is also important to evaluate employees by watching them do work that is representative of the job they would be hired for.  I might run into someone who can talk about different technologies or approaches fairly well, but when they get to doing the job, they fall short.  I would take a similar approach to designing the test as I would designing questions; I would identify important KSAs and create tasks that would require them.  Taking this one step further, I also like to break down my tasks into three categories: tasks that every person ought to be able to do, tasks that require skills that are "nice to have", and tasks that I don't expect the candidate to complete.  This way I can get a deeper sense of the understanding a candidate has for particular skills.  A candidate who can complete some of the tasks in the last category will have an advantage over those who don't.

Finally, you may be wondering about how to determine cultural fit.  Unfortunately, cultural fit is tough to pin down and therefore it is difficult to create good questions to get at it.  To make it even tougher, many of the questions that could be asked to ascertain cultural fit open the door to discrimination lawsuits.  I don't have any good ideas here.  If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to leave a comment.  I'm certainly open to ideas.

Hiring good programmers - Part 1

One thing that I've struggled with, and I know I'm not alone in this, is how to accurately decide if someone will be a good programmer for a company or not.  Traditionally, companies will first screen resumes, looking for particular experience, skills, etc.  They will next have a phone screen to further weed out candidates.  Finally, the candidates will be brought in for a face-to-face interview.  How effective are these methods, and what can we do to be more effective?  In Part 1, I will outline issues with common current methods of evaluation, and in Part 2, I will suggest an alternative.

What about the resume?  Many companies will pre-rank candidates (either explicitly or implicitly) based on the quality of the resume and the information presented on it.  There are a few problems with this.  First, I don't have a reliable source handy, but I recall hearing that 50% of people lie on their resume.  50%!  Couple with the proliferation of sites (such as fakeresume.com) that are intended to give advice to people who want to get away with lying on a resume, and it's tough to know which resumes to trust.  Second, many of your potential employees will have hired a professional resume writer in order to get your attention.  Great resume?  Is it because they are a detailed worker or just hired a great resume writer?

What about a degree?  Most of the jobs posted on the major job sites for programmers ask for some sort of technical bachelor's degree.  This certainly should be a consideration for an entry-level candidate.  However, in observing a number of people in a number of different industries, I've come to the conclusion that the benefits of the quality or type (or even presence) of a degree decreases severely after about 1-3 years of experience.  For experienced candidates, the ability to learn new concepts and apply those concepts in new situations becomes a much more important asset than the quality or source of their original education.  Putting it in another way, does the candidate have 10 years of experience, or 1 year of experience repeated 10 times?  In fact, I might be more inclined to hire the person with the poor quality of education who somehow managed to become a good programmer, since they have the proven ability to learn and apply concepts in less than ideal circumstances.  (Or maybe I just think that because I'm a self-taught programmer.)

What about the interview?  A lot of good information can be gotten from an interview, but a lot of misleading information can be gotten here, too.  I'll speak more about interviews in Part 2, when I actually start talking about methods that can help you find good candidates rather than merely eliminating bad ones, but I will mention here that you should always be aware of the implications of what you are asking even if the legality of questions weren't an issue.  As an extreme example, I read an article on BNET that quoted a hiring manager saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that they hired someone based on the answer to this question: "If you would be a character from 'The Wizard of Oz', which would you be and why?"  What can you learn from the answer, assuming you get one?

1. The interviewee thinks well on his or her feet and handles the unexpected well
2. The interviewee has an active fantasy life and empathizes with characters easily
3. The interviewee is a huge 'Wizard of Oz' fan
4. The interviewee trusts you that you know what you are doing, even though you are asking a question that seemingly gives you no insight into his/her ability to do your job or him/her insight into their fit into your culture, making him/her a likely "yes person"
5. The interviewee does not have the ability to sense when something is or is not a waste of time and would be a poor choice for leadership positions

You could legitimately make a case for any of the five.  #1 is definitely a plus for your company, #2 may or may not be, depending on the position, culture, and point of view, #3 is completely irrelevant, and #4 and #5 would be considered negatives for most positions out there.  I can't see how the interviewer in this case learned anything worth knowing from this question given the uncertainty involved.

Finally, many companies have some sort of programming exercise as a part of the interview processes.  Even a poorly designed exercise will likely separate the completely incompetent from the competent programmers.  For example, what does having the programmer show all the prime numbers from 1 to 100 show about his or her ability?  You may need someone who can think mathematically, but you may not.  Here again, the best designed exercises will have specific goals and will not be some generic problem designed to eliminate the worst programmers.

In Part 2, I will demonstrate some methods for getting at the heart of the job position which will hopefully make it easier to scan resumes, design interview questions, and design programming exercises.