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Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#71

Post by scarface74 »

late2part wrote: post #61
Spooky23 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people like that are better in leadership roles. Knowing a little about a broad scope of things is very useful in those roles.

Managers that can't do are generally shepherds. Only sheep follow them. Yes, it's good that managers can know a lot about a broad amount, but they should be skilled enough to dive fairly deep and realistically be expected to jump into anyone's job. Otherwise, you're hiring an administrator or a non-technical manager. And there's a place for that, but not one I want to be near.

I see nothing wrong with a manager who is technical but can't take a deep dive into the code.

A manager's role could be to decide strategy, priorities, budgets, inter team communications, working with the customer etc. the biggest thing I want from a manager is to hire good people and to trust them with the "how". My manager decides the "what" and "when". He leaves it up to his team to decide the how.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#72

Post by scarface74 »

dilap wrote: post #50
cauterized wrote: post #15

I've never had a hire go wrong for technical reasons. I have hired, participated in hiring, or inherited several developers who had to be let go for reasons related to attitude or soft skills. Some examples: - a guy with an alcohol problem who would disappear for a week at a time or come in to work sloshed - a junior developer who had major problems with authority, mixed with bizarre paranoia. He refused to take dire…

The perfect code guy doesn't sound so bad.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...

People who are Smart but don’t Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. They would rather mull over something academic about a problem rather than ship on time.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#73

Post by samblr »

late2part wrote: post #60
samblr wrote: post #30

In interview what appeared to be a potential-hire's strength - became a real nuisance when we hired him. We wanted someone who could do both android and iOS. He was a senior, had enough to showcase and plenty to 'talk about software architectural things'. It turned out, he was jack of all trades (python, java, objective-c) but he really-really struggled at designing software but he could talk through people and walls…

Sadly, in some places, it's not what you know, but who you can bullshit. Why didn't you guys fire him? Why did you just let him stagnate until he quit?

Office was in a small town, plenty of work/projects at hands and no resources.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#74

Post by scarface74 »

brogrammernot wrote: post #38
pcurve wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than hiring someone as contractor first, have a trial run for 6 months, what do you think is a good way to minimize issues like this?

Re: trial run. I do not suggest this. I'm not a world class developer, but I'm a good one, maybe great depending on the day but I had 3 offers to be contract to hire and I refused. You may save yourself a bad hire, but more than likely you will do so at the cost of missing out on hiring a handful of good ones. If I'm interviewing with you and you don't trust me enough to make me an employee from day one then why shou…

I will only take a contract position if that's the only way I can get a job doing something I know academically -- I studied the technology and did a side project -- but don't have any on the job experience.

Basically, a resume builder

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#75

Post by wanderr »

lj3 wrote: post #52
wanderr wrote: post #13

If you hire enough people, eventually you'll have a bunch of examples for this question, unless of course you never make mistakes. Pretty much everything you can imagine can go wrong and probably more. Hiring anyone is always a risk but it's one you can't avoid, nor do I think that the interview process should be so tough as to have lots of false negatives to prevent those bad hires; better IMO to have a reasonable f…

> Developers who fail to check their own work, or do it so hastily they don't notice glaring mistakes, or who are rushing so much they don't / can't follow a simple spec. You would actually fire somebody for being unable to keep up with a deadline they didn't set? In my experience, this is mostly the result of management placing too strict a deadline on too junior a dev. It's a mentoring moment, not a firing one.

None of these are things that directly lead to firing (aside: deadlines shouldn't just be handed down to developers, and deadlines shouldn't be so rigid there's no room for mistakes), of course you try to mentor and provide guidance to correct. But these traits are regrettable in a hire because in my experience these are the most difficult to deal with or correct even over a long period of trying.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#76

Post by blablabla123 »

late2part wrote: post #65
blablabla123 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lack of technical expertise is a problem sometimes, but it >can be nurtured. Lack of personal skills is a huge problem >in an office environment, and is much, much harder to >nurture. But neither of these are regrettable in-and-of >themselves. That's actually a cool attitude. When looking the first time for a full time job 7 years ago I was astonished how static employers seemed to perceive skill - at least in Germa…

Have you ever gone and quickly learned it and called the recruiter/company back?

Didn't try that yet. But that would only work for microscopic node js libraries. I mean when someone asks you: "are you proficient with SuperAwesome ORM XYZ?" Apart from the fact that the person on the phone probably won't even know what an ORM is, it's not possible to learn an API by heart in 5 minutes. ;) (I doubt it's desirable but that's another thing.)

I understand the desire of people wanting to have competent hires who get up to speed quickly. But that is just going in the completely wrong direction and likely costing such companies tons of money because they need to search longer/spend more on a dev.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#77

Post by scarface74 »

zepolen wrote: post #14
dougireton wrote: post #3

Developers who insist that their favorite technology is the best vs. what's the best for the task at hand, what technology will the team as a whole be successful with. Developers who don't have empathy for less experienced team members; who can't/won't mentor well.

Meh, takes me back to a couple years ago when the MEAN stack was all the rage, I was pointing out flaws/problems which would arise from: - Mongo not having a schema, relations - Angular having a fundamentally flawed update system But of course the argument was that 'MEAN is what everyone is using, its easy to find MEAN developers'. Sure, if you mean it's easy to find kids who learnt how to make apps, via a MEAN stack…

I'm relatively new to Mongo and I've only used it in C#.

But a few points:

I would only use Mongo as a backing store for a micro service. All access would be through one service that enforced business rules, data integrity, and would be responsible for exposing business objects/aggregate roots.

App servers are a lot cheaper/easier to scale than database servers. By keeping all of the logic in the business tier, it's a lot easier to scale/load balance.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#78

Post by wanderr »

kungtotte wrote: post #53
wanderr wrote: post #13

If you hire enough people, eventually you'll have a bunch of examples for this question, unless of course you never make mistakes. Pretty much everything you can imagine can go wrong and probably more. Hiring anyone is always a risk but it's one you can't avoid, nor do I think that the interview process should be so tough as to have lots of false negatives to prevent those bad hires; better IMO to have a reasonable f…

Don't you think the first one can be a result of imposter syndrome and not wanting to risk looking like a fool for asking for help? If they feel like they ought to be able to figure it out on their own, asking for help suddenly is a big hurdle because they think that their colleagues will judge them for it.

Definitely a possibility, but whatever the reason it drastically affects performance so it's something that needs to be overcome. Also if the company has a strong culture of openness and collaboration, examples of everyone else constantly asking for and receiving help, even the most senior developers, should quickly allay those fears of looking like a fool just for asking for help if you pay attention to what is going on around you at all.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#79

Post by philmander »

eropple wrote: post #45
philmander wrote: post #31

I've regretted hiring a few developers who have been apathetic about the actual software product we're making. I am sometimes too optimistic about a technically proficient candidate sharing these traits, during the interview process. After hiring they are depressingly unexcited about delivering a new feature that promises business value, significantly improves performance etc. It's just work to be done.

> After hiring they are depressingly unexcited about delivering a new feature that promises business value, significantly improves performance etc. It's just work to be done. Well...yeah, it is just work to do, because it's just a job. Turn it around: why should they be excited about something they have no meaningful ownership (and I don't mean a few tenths or hundredths of a percent) in? If the co-founder who owns f…

I'm not sure what to make of that.

Assuming the product isn't genuinely boring, is it the norm then that developers without a direct financial incentive in the growth of the company should just be drones who type code in exchange for a salary?

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted hiring a developer?

#80

Post by late2part »

blablabla123 wrote: post #76
late2part wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever gone and quickly learned it and called the recruiter/company back?

Didn't try that yet. But that would only work for microscopic node js libraries. I mean when someone asks you: "are you proficient with SuperAwesome ORM XYZ?" Apart from the fact that the person on the phone probably won't even know what an ORM is, it's not possible to learn an API by heart in 5 minutes. ;) (I doubt it's desirable but that's another thing.) I understand the desire of people wanting to have competent…

Maybe. Or you could invest the short time you said it takes to come up to speed, do that, and call them back. You'd be much more valuable to them and should be able to get a job more quickly with higher value to you.
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