Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

Re:Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer? by spawnthink on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @07:17AM (#26633251)

Thank you for sharing your experience. I thought about cutting the process short like you suggested and live with the chances of bad hires but: 1. How do you avoid having a bad effect on the current team when they see churn like that? 2. College results could work for junior hires, but senior ones? Rely on feeling about their previous work experience?

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Re:Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer? by muzani on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @11:13PM (#26643129)

1. Churn is bad, but it's a red flag that goes away. I think how you deal with bad hires matters more. Pushing the burden to the rest of the team (i.e. not firing) or bullying them into quitting is what hurts teams more. There's also a morale hit to having someone do the job of two people while waiting 4 months to hire someone else for the role.

2. For the most part, you just need someone who can do the job. Most people applying for seniors could; it's just a question of how fast/accurate/stable. For the most part, expected salaries tends to correlate with their ability.

Many of the bad hires I've seen were "cheap hires"; they applied for senior positions but were often paid half as much as a senior just because they were from a poorer country.

One guy had more ability as a researcher, less as a developer (he'd get things done very, very slowly, but produced well crafted code and was able to tackle the hardest problems). One guy was a great programmer but had personality issues, often getting into fights. Another scored highest on all the tests, but worked 12 hours/day and got nothing done. So I'm not sure assessments help in filtering most of these problems.

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