Over the last few months, we have been recruiting developers, and we’ve started to get a sense for the type of developer who is a good fit for our team. These attributes probably apply for developers at most web startups, so I wanted to share them with you.
Before I get into it, the most important thing to know is that technical skill is a threshold requirement. The assumption is that any person who is a fit for our team will have the relevant technical experience to do the job.
Beyond that, here’s what we look for in someone as a good fit…
Passion
One of our goals is to create a team of amazing developers, and
one of our beliefs is that nobody is the best in the world at something
they don’t care about deeply. So, we look for evidence that the
developer is passionate about computers and really loves programming.
Examples of this are things like open source activity, cool side
projects, non-mainstream programming languages, etc. (Any programming
experience before college is a good indicator as well.)
Motivation/Self-Directed Worker
As a small company, we don’t have layers and layers of
management. This is great, because it creates a terrific work
environment. However, it also means that even individual contributors
need to be able to get a project to completion and can work without
being prodded.
Agile
We are team of passionate developers that implement the most modern and
progressive web and software development practices. We are an
Agile/Scrum shop that embraces iterative development, test automation,
continuous deployment and DevOps. That’s not a fit for everyone, so
people with that type of experience tend to like it here.
Cheezburgler
Working at Cheezburger is not like working anywhere else in the world.
(Honestly, it’s a little bizarre.) So, we need to find people who
understand our culture and we look for evidence that the applicant is
either a Cheezburger user, a fan of our sites, knows about our sites or
has read the dev blog. Basically, did the applicant write a cover letter
specific to us or in some other way show that they care about working
at Cheezburger? Or, are they just blasting out their resume to any
company with an open chair? Instant bonus if their cover letter is
written in lolspeak. (Just kidding.)
Start-Up
Cheezburger is doubly unique: not only do we have our own, special
culture, but we’re also a small, startup. Startups are entirely
different beasts than major corporations, and the experience doesn’t
always translate.
Consumer-Facing Web Sites
There are as many types of software developement as there are flavors of
ice cream, and we happen to work on a specific type: a high-traffic,
consumer-facing web site. Yes, a person who has been working on desktop
apps can work on web sites, but the environment is different. We’ve
found that people with previous experience in this environment tend to
be better fits.
Hard-core
Great developers love challenges and love working on hard things. So,
we ask this question: have they done anything that other developers
would think of as hard? This doesn’t mean they have to come from a job
where they only coded in assembly, but a little bit of assembly
experience does improve the code a developer writes even when they are
coding in a high-level language.
Different
There is strength in diversity, so we don’t want a team of carbon copy
robots who all know the same tricks. We want a strong fabric of
developers who each bring something to the table to make us better as a
team. So, we ask, is the candidate different enough from the other
people on the team to help give a broader more open perspective to
development? Does this person add experience and capability to our team
that we don’t already have? Do they have some skill or experience that
helps us round out a weakness?
Source : http://www.scottporad.com/2011/05/17/round-peg-square-hole-how-to-know-if-a-developer-is-a-good-fit-for-your-team/
