Hiring good programmers is tough (Score 1)

As someone who's interviewed, hired and fired dozens of programmers over the years, I can tell you there is no sure fire way to pick out a good programmer. Here are some very loose guidelines I've found helpful: good: - old timers with a variety of languages / os's in their background. I love to hire old c++/unix guys just looking for a break to try out java / soa. they invariably pick stuff up really fast, work hard, and know how to do basic programming stuff like debug, set up test environments, etc. - in decent shape. you can't say this out loud to anybody, but trim people tend to be be a productive programmers. i am not kidding. probably the same gene that makes people disciplined enough to exercise and eat right, makes them a hard worker who can turn out lots of code. - linux - anyone with linux on their resume, even as a hobby, gets a bump up in my books. you know they love fiddling with technology and can figure stuff out on their own. bad: - "working on my phd / masters / taking a course at night". translation - course work will take precedence over project work, and as soon as I'm done my degree, I'm outa here. - pony tails. I'm gonna catch it for this, but every guy I've ever hired with a pony tail has been a pain in the butt to work with. they're on a different plane of enlightement from you, won't take direction, and in general its beneath them to be working for you. the ugly: - those stupid canned tests with five lines of code asking you what is wrong with the above code fragment. i've had guys bomb these tests who were awesome programmers, and guys ace those tests who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. completely useless imho.