How I Hire Developers

Some of my entrepreneur friends have been asking me:

how do I hire good developers?

Show of Hands

Students

Employed in a company / agency

Freelancing

“in between jobs” AKA bums

The Mindvalley Tech Hiring Pipeline

(right side is too long to fit in this space)

Technical Test Interview

Technical Test: Choose Two out of Three

2048

Game of Life

URL Shortener

2048

application design

code coupling

frontend skills

integration and decomposition

Game of Life

application design

algorithm efficiency

programming paradigms

code clarity

URL Shortener

application design (esp MVC)

devops (deployments with db)

working with SQL / ORM / persistence

edge case / collision handling

If your tests pass, you proceed with the interview

I don’t really interview for skill inasmuch as for

attitude

I’m looking for someone who

strives for excellence

is always curious

thirsts for learning

Questions I ask in an interview

Do you participate in open source projects? How about side projects? Do you have an app on the app store? Do you have an app on the web? Do you blog?

Questions I ask in an interview

Have you joined and won any competitions (not necessarily programming)? Do you play sports? Do you run marathons / sing / dance / paint / etc?

Questions I ask in an interview

What's your favorite programming language? What was your favorite before that? What made you change your favorite?

Questions I ask in an interview

What do you think is the coolest technology right now? Why do you think it's so great?

Questions I ask in an interview

What is the biggest mistake that you've done so far, and what happened after that?

Questions I ask in an interview

What do you think makes a good software developer?

I ask a few more questions depending on the position

I’m hiring for

More senior developers will get questions about their

previous work and the like

I’m looking for developers who can solve problems

But more importantly, I’m looking for someone I’d

love to work with everyday

The Mindvalley Code of Awesomeness

-Stephen Covey

If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't

require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them.

Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is

internal, not external.

How do I hire developers?

I look for people who love what they do and don’t mind getting paid for it