Thank for the very detailed and well considered response.

As I mentioned in the article, there is no right or wrong answer to the question – only my preferred response. Technical aptitude is indeed very important, just like it is important to know your scales in music. Two of the greatest and most innovative guitarists in the history of Rock Music were also known for not being superb technicians. The two I am referring two are Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. As innovators and people who were major influence in their field, there are few very few that can be considered to be in the same class. Neither Hendrix, nor Page were exactly slouches when it came to the technical elements, but there are many people who can from a technical perspective, play as well and even better.

Indeed in creating brilliant software, as in creating brilliant music (both arts with technical skills required), a certain base level of technical proficiency is definitely required. Technical proficiency does not, however, beget creativity or problem solving ability. The likelihood of building an entire team of creative geniuses is virtually nil, so you will only be able to find one or two whom you will be able to convince to join your team. But it is not just the Rock Star innovators you should be looking for. You need diversity of thought and experience. I too am a programmer, and I have worked with many languages and technologies. The more of them that I use, the more similar they all seem. The vocabularies and syntax of the various languages are both small, and very similar to each other, so as you say – this part is easy to learn. Yes it takes years to master the class libraries of .Net or Java, but in truth, most applications use only a small portion of their respective frameworks. So therein lies one of the pitfalls of technical interviews: If you ask a person technical questions about specific parts of .Net, C#, Java or whatever, you are testing only two things: 1) Have they worked with that portion of a framework that as you say is so large that no single person can understand all of it or – 2) You are testing their memory for rote recital of arcane bits that the IDE helps them with as they type, or that they can easily reference in online help or on the web. You need to do some of this in order to establish a baseline capability, but beyond that baseline ability, these two things are in no way related to a person’s ability to write brilliant code. This is why you need to figure out how they think, and how they solve problems, including prioritizing things, being able to rationalize why, dealing with the context by asking questions of you, and so forth. This will give you clues as to how they will use their knowledge, and this is the most important thing you want to know about your prospective hires.

Thanks again for your terrific feedback!

Michael

I am finding it hard to agree that technical aptitude is not high on the list when hiring. I am principal developer in an agile team that uses Java and .NET . This has led me to be involved in and responsible for hiring suitable candidates.

I should also say I consider myself a developer; someone who utilises the best suitable development tool for the job at hand. These days developers are “java devs”, “C# devs”, “.NET devs”, “PHP devs”, “Web devs” and so the list continues. If we just consider Java and .NET, it is highly important to me that if I am hiring a .NET dev, they should have excellent .NET experience. Syntactically, there’s nothing in it between Java and .NET, but a decent knowledge of the underlying base class libraries takes years to master. Never mind that the .NET framework advances at a rate such that even experienced developers find it hard to keep up to date; LINQ, Lambdas, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, C# 5.0. I would agree that if you are experienced, you can cross-train much easier as you understand the core concepts.

Besides the core frameworks, you also need to have a good knowledge of patterns and practices relative to your chosen development language. If I’m hiring a silverlight 4.0 developer, secondary to core silverlight development, I would expect them to understand patterns used as standard, for example MVVM, IOC (MEF) and a few others.

The same applies if I was hiring a Java dev. There is also the trivial aspect of IDEs; Visual Studio vs. Eclipse. So for a relative junior / intermediate there is too much to learn, if you are after a creative talent that is a dev resource. Sure they may have great ideas, but who will implement them? You’re hiring a dev resource remember. Never mind produce architecture. There may be exceptions, but is it worth the risk at interview stage? If your company has 3 to 6 months to allow your new starter to get up to speed, then it’s a different story.

In an agile environment I find communication hugely important. It is too well known that requirements communication is hazardous to an agile sprint. This may be requirements changing, or miscommunicated. If there is no decent communication, projects are doomed.

Hard work is important, but if you are creative developer you will think outside the box to come up with ways to avoid hard work

Shawn

Thank you for your comments. I’m glad you enjoyed the article.

Agreed… skill comes from experience, and experience comes from trying things and making mistakes. In retrospect, perhaps the best quote I could’ve used might have been from Miss Frizzle, the teacher on the Magic Schoolbus: “Take chances, make mistakes, get dirty.”

Michael

Summing up where I am at I remind myself that “If there is nothing new under the sun, then the freshness may come from the way old ideas are re-packaged. Having the skill to understand how things can be linked together comes from in-depth experience and many trials.”

That you for the support in this vision that your article brings.

Tom.

Michael

Michael