How to Find Crappy Programmers

原贴地址：http://www.codeanthem.com/blog/2010/04/how-to-hire-crappy-programmers-the-job-post/

I read plenty of articles about how to recruit great developers , but what if you are only interested in the crappy ones – what then?  Perhaps you aren’t willing to spend good money to make money, or you just think getting work done is overrated.  Whatever the reason, this series of articles on Crappy Programmers will do the trick.  Welcome to the first installment: ‘How to Find Crappy Programmers’.

The job post is your potential programmer’s first impression of your company, so make it count with these offputting features:

1. List a String of Acronyms for Technologies

No matter if the person writing the post or doing the interviewing has any idea what they mean.  All that’s important is that they were used in your code base at some point in time.   There’s nothing developers love more than playing buzzword bingo in job posts. 

JMS, XML, J2ME, AJAX, SSRS, SSIS, JSB, WCS, JSTL, HTML, DHTML, XHTML, MOSS, SOAP, BO, WPF. 

You get bonus points if the technology is over ten years old.  Don’t worry if it seems like you’re filling positions with checklists, developers like having years of their work marginalized into a neat little box.

2. Put an Arbitrary Number Next to Each Skill

It’s important to pay people based on the years of experience they have, not their talent, proficiency or overall competency.  To that end, be sure to put a number next to each skill that represents some number of years.  A job posting for a Technical Lead might then look like this:

10+ years total in the IT field
8+ years with Microsoft technologies
5+ years with relational databases, like SQL Server
3+ years with C#
1+ years with WEB technologies

Then you don’t have to consider anyone with less years of experience, even if their skill level is higher.  After all, since the person is older, they will fit in better with the other old managers.  Don’t actually mention age though (that’s illegal) – the proper career terminology is “culture fit”. 

Plus, since they were already well into the workforce while most of the current technologies were created, they have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, like PowerBuilder.

3. Say Nothing Positive About the Position

We’re all very desperate for a job “in this economy” and you did say that the multiple positions would be “filled soon”.  Don’t waste space talking about what sort of projects you might work on, what the team environment is like, how the developers work together or anything technically appealing whatsoever. 

By completely ignoring what a developer looks for in a job, you’re letting us know up-front the sort of don’t-care attitude at the company.  This sets the stage and limits developers asking for things when they come on-board, like non-broken chairs or licensed software.

Agile is for hippies.

4. Use Euphemisms for the Negative Aspects of the Job

Obviously, if anyone knew what it was really  like to work here, no one would take the job.  After all, that’s why our other developers have all left and we’re constantly hiring.  Clearly we will need to lie, so here’s an easy translation matrix:

What the Job Post Says	What it Really Means
Standard work hours are 40-50 hours a week	We expect developers to live in their tiny tiny cubes 24-7
This is a support position	We don’t allow our developers to have a life outside of work
You will work closely with the PM, DBA and QA	Our environment is highly political, riddled with ridiculous rules made by people who don’t understand software, and we get very little done
This position involves working with our real-time application	I don’t know what real-time means but it sounds good
Great opportunity for growth	Only a desperate person would deal with this shit
Job candidate must be resourceful, responsible and able to work well under pressure.	Our corporate culture is basically the ‘Lord of the Flies’

5. Require Resume to be in Word doc Format

Requiring resumes to be in the proprietary and platform-specific Word .doc format, instead of .pdf, .html, or .txt formats, is a nifty little test early on in the hiring process.  You want to make sure that your developers are adept at jumping through HR hoops, even on technical matters. 

We do not want our developers to have any basic principles in their work, or to have a keen understanding of interoperability or usability.  We also like it when recruiting firms paste their logo at the top of our resumes and add lame summaries – our resumes were too much about us that.

This is a special treat for Java/UNIX developers.

So there you have it, folks. By following these simple steps, you are well on your way to hiring crappy developers. 

But wait, some good developers might still slip through this cover, so stay tuned for our next installment of the Crappy Programmers series by subscribing here .

from → Hiring Programmers