Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

What do you look for when interviewing developers. It’s a question that every manager needs to consider when hiring new staff and there are always a number of questions to ask, on both the technical and cultural aspects. I am not going to talk about the ‘culture fit’ (gratuitous HR terminology) here at all and the only technical aspect under consideration in this post is to do with how much effort I can see the candidate putting into self improvement and what level of interest they have in their profession.

How it works.

The idea behind ’semi invested’, revolves around only being interested enough to do the absolute (or close enough to) minimum in self development, or in harbouring a belief system that requires personal growth be the responsibility of the anyone else but yourself. I am not making excuses here for employers who do not invest in the their staff’s growth through training, but I don’t believe that it’s entirely the purview of the employer to be responsible for individual learning and growth.

So what is self development and how does it manifest? I usually start the quest in understanding how career invested developers are by asking, what was the last programming book you read? And quickly followed by when did you read the book? Here is a more complete list of questions that I ask (under interview and from time to time with staff) to get a feel for how much thought is going into self improvement.

How to find out.

• What Technology or Development newsletters do you subscribe to?
• Whose blogs do you follow?
• What magazines do you buy?
• Which Podcasts do you listen to?
• Which Webcasts do you watch?
• What user groups do attend?

When I get a positive answer to one of these questions, it can quite often lead to a good discussion as to where the perceived and or real value is in utilizing the content found on or in the method chosen and how each individual turns the exercise into a positive learning experience. If I get a negative response on all fronts and that is to say that the individual in question apparently has no interest and invests no time in the professional world around them (given that they proffer no alternatives), then it’s generally a pretty short interview.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy (who said that?)

Now if I sound as though I am being a little harsh on your average Joe or Joanne developer, well then so be it, I make no apologies. Its my goal to ensure that I have encouraged my teams to be as interested as possible in what they and their colleagues do for a living and my experience tells me that groups of ‘invested’ individuals flourish together and grow into great teams and this leads to great software.

Well it looks like some members of the DotNet Community have decided to take a nutty very strange and unusual position of biting the hand that feeds, by posting a petition of signatories to a VOTE of NO Confidence in the Entity Framework (soon to be released).

Three questions arise from this:

Do I disagree with their main assertions?

Simply the answer is NO, I do NOT disagree with any of the points made in the assertions on the petition. In fact I believe their contribution, in dispensing opinion based on real world business experience to the development community is enormously valuable and to be considered seriously by developers where it’s appropriate. However I am not so sure about their skills in diplomacy.

Why do I think this is nuts strange?

Microsoft know very well what the position of this collection of people is and the thing that stuck out to me as being “off”, was the title of the exercise and even perhaps the method. Firstly, using a petition denotes a protest more than it does a community warning or announcement and secondly, the title of the petition “Vote of No Confidence”,  I think is less than diplomatic and sounds a little desperate.

What will the Founders think?

I will be interested to note how this plays out with the contribution of the Data Programmability Advisory Council (the fathers of DDD) who oddly enough are not signatories of the petition………

As a software development manager and now CTO, I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about how to converge two very important ideas and blend them harmoniously. The ideas:

• create a great place for developers to work, one where they maintain a keen and genuine excitement about their profession and look forward to the daily challenges and comradery that great success stories in software delivery can produce.
• Build a vibrant software development consultancy that offers it’s clients great commercial options and results; and help drive great concepts into great business outcomes.

Can these ideas co-exist successfully? Absolutely they can and what’s more they are mutually enabling. Over the years I have held positions as a senior developer, Software Development Manager and CTO, and I always try to take the attitude of developing an environment that I would have liked to work in as a developer myself. Three main things I have found to make for great developer working environments are:

• A commitment to developer career growth through training.
  • This does not have to be via third party training providers. With the right investment of time and good technical leaders and teachers, it is very possible to implement valuable training programs internally.
  • ITR have just recently committed to a training program modelled around the ‘code camp’ style of training becoming so popular today.
• Team Development Projects.
  • Encouraging an environment where even the smallest projects are attended by more than a single developer. This isn’t always possible, however setting it as a goal can help under circumstances where your team is very small.
  • Developers (good ones IMHO) are attracted to the idea of working in teams and not silos.
• Expose your team to best practices, good design principles and tools & exciting new technologies.
  • Developers love to use new tech! Just make sure it doesn’t come to the detriment of your clients / projects.
  • Developers also love to know that they are using tools, methodologies and practices that have value in the community and that their career opportunities are improving with ever developing new found skills. Trying to trap developers into an environment where they become pigeon holed and get no opportunity to grow doesn’t help you retain good people; good environments retains and breeds good people.

All this can lead to happy developer employees who stay and grow with your business and afford you the ability to attract some talented people via recruitment into the bargain.