Where do you find good developers?

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Permalink Reply by Rastin Mehr on October 3, 2009 at 2:24am

Local BarCamps, DemoCamp, or other unconferences are where all the true hackers hang around. By hacker I mean the true super star developers.

Look for the people who actually develop projects on their own for fun, and can't stop talking about their projects. They are the ones' who are constantly pushing the limits and produce high quality work.

Another point though, true super star developers make 2-3 times more on their own and very likely won't be avilable for a fulltime job, however they are quite happy freelancing or collaborating as long as you work with them on equal and mutal terms and let them take credit for their contribution too.

Judge them by the genious of their work and not by how many enterprise clients they've had in the past. Especially in the web development world, the more cutting edge a technology is, the less likely they are used by the enterprise clients becuase they are always behind the game on the web.

From what I know many true hackers would rather work on an interesting small business project rather than a boring enterprise project.

Open up your channels on Twitter, facebook, blogosphere, LinkedIn and you'll start finding these hackers through your networks. These people cannot stop bragging and publishing GPL code via their blogs and social web outlets. You need to be doing this throughout the year.

Another tip, you can't recruite the super stars, you can only attract them. Keep your team dynamics, projects, and work ethics attractive, and these people show up and introduce themselves to you.

Permalink Reply by Rastin Mehr on October 3, 2009 at 7:35pm

"We've tried craigslist also, but with mixed results"

Good developers may look for jobs on Craig's list when they are finaincially broke, but as soon as they save up some cash, they'll stay away from Craig's list. In fact they hardly ever mention they looked for business on Craig's list, it is not good for their brand and image.

Another good approach is also to hire a hacker to help you hire hackers. They can see things that you won't

Permalink Reply by Jen Kramer on October 10, 2009 at 10:52am

Start a Joomla user group. Talk to your local community college or university about integrating Joomla into their curriculum, and talk with them about teaching it there.

When you start teaching Joomla in your local community, it takes off like wildfire. I speak from experience.

The best part is when you have Joomla students, you know which ones do their homework, turn it in on time, and do good quality work consistently. You know exactly who to hire when they're out of your class. It correlates exactly with good workers -- I have yet to see any inconsistency there!

Rather than trying to hire people to work for you, you might consider hiring freelancers more frequently/consistently. If a freelancer knows they can count on you for one project a month, they will make room to take that on (especially if they get paid on time and in full).

As a freelancer, my best working environment is to always partner with a firm like yours. You go do the marketing and land the clients. Then all I need to do is build. I try to do this with a number of firms, rather than always chasing business. It works great for me.

Jen

Permalink Reply by Rafael Diaz-Tushman on October 10, 2009 at 5:49pm

Everyone, thanks for these comments. They really help. @Jen: I look forward to meeting you tomorrow and hearing your talk at JoomlaDayNYC on Monday!

Cheers.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 18, 2009 at 6:50pm

Rafael, will you please open a new discussion for this topic in the Businesses Group if you want to continue discussing this topic, and then link back to this discussion? We are closing the forum on the home page to simplify.

Thanks!