Opportunity, Granted.
Readers,
In my line of work, it’s not overly complicated to find opportunity if you’re of a specialized, practical, skilled, motivated, and interested breed. On the flip side, it’s not easy to find that breed of person. Hiring a replacement software engineer to lead a team of talented individuals and young company to success has been nothing short of exhausting.
Information Technology is a broad field with enough facets to make anyone’s head spin. This age of information pushes us to want to know everything, but it also serves up more knowledge than we could ever learn. As a result, I am always running across those who specialize in certain areas of the IT field and have a great deal of crossover into others.
A PHP programmer who was once a system engineer, is an active member of an open-source Assembly project, and is evolving to become an Android and Java developer is the nature of so many resumes of this generation. I suppose I’m referring to the short attention spans that marketing has adapted to and parents haven’t, but how could we grow and love this industry if not for a consistent need for something new.
This quest for fresh perspectives and new creativity seems to drive us, but the one thing that transforms a great developer into a phenomenal developer is a honed ability to apply a sense of pride and elegance to their work. These are the developers who thrive on technology and produce great achievements by properly mixing all the colors on their palette. They are the craftsmen and craftswomen of the web that are striving for perfection today and have been peering in at the future since yesterday. They are also the developers that I spend months tracking down.
On a regular basis, I see the most misleading resumes. A developer appearing to hold every skill under the sun may have truly only scratched the surface of each sector they’ve touched or allowed their skills to sour and atrophy. These shortcomings are easily revealed by a simple questionnaire, but they’re disheartening none the less.
Obviously, hiring for this mindset is a different ballgame. As the wheel of innovation and evolution spins in the enterprise, I look for the evolving specialists who most recently match the company’s technology track but are salivating for the future. The company benefits from having driven team members that help it stay ready for the next best innovation before it arrives and by innovating before the past sets in.
Even when a remote few developers have a fresh skill set that they’re bolstering by example, a standard of quality, consistency, and prideful craftsmanship is almost always painfully lacking. I’ve seen too many crank-and-bank shops turn interested and excited software engineers into overworked and underdeveloped day-walkers. Even so, people are lazy in general, and quality craftsmanship is difficult to come by to begin with. Although, I do believe that it can be taught.
In much the same way a master blacksmith teaches their apprentice how to finish a cast to a shine or recognize when they’re about to be burned, an apprentice software engineer can learn the nature of quality and precision from a seasoned mentor. They can be inspired to generate quality work. Sadly, crank-and-bank shops, mass development studios, and Indian programming factories do not provide this structure for achievement.
With happy wholesome developers who have been able to make their mark in the industry with excellence, there’s nothing to loose. These team members who strive for perfection and beautiful elegance will push each other to learn, grow, and innovate to new expectations. Their heightened sense of the future will keep the ideas and research pouring in. Driving forces in the industry will inspire them to reach further.
Unfortunately, sound development staff is just the beginning of the puzzle. Even more challenging than finding solid software engineers is the task of finding a leader who is capable of supporting, encouraging, securing, and mentoring this genre of developer while keeping the best interests of the company in mind. The master blacksmith who can take on an apprentice and still deliver for the king is a skilled craftsman indeed.
Project management ideas that fulfill the expectations of both the organization and the developers are not simple formulations. When placed between a fast paced company and engineers striving for quality innovation, they’re even more challenging. A developer who understands as well as upholds consistency and quality, consumes new technology like a vacuum, is able to stay hands-on in the development shop, and is able to break into the hand-shake and eye-contact political world is the one in a thousand leader that we are only so lucky to find.
Hiring boards, technical communities, recruiters, and newspapers all seem to have difficulty reaching a hand in deep enough to snag these individuals. When they do, it often seems that they’re hardly holding on before the candidate is back in the pool of employed untouchables and heavily guarded by the organizations with which they dance.
Often times, the pool is lessened further when these leaders choose their own paths as very driven entrepreneurial business men and women who pursue their trade with a prowess second to none. When you’re finally exhausted from trying to find the best candidate possible, you’ll be lucky if you can outsource your projects to them and their skilled development shop at any less than $150 an hour.
There are lights at the end of the tunnel, but they’re few and far between. Investing in an in-house development studio is specialized and expensive. Shortcuts will not help, and the cascading effects can be disastrous. Finding a great leader is the first but most difficult step, and it usually takes one to know one.
~A