Building a team
Not long ago I was honored to presented for a second time on a great on-line conference IT-Brunch. This event was devoted to finding, hiring and keeping right professionals for your team. Here is the slidecast for my presentation (in Russian) where I try to draw analogies between software teams, FC Barcelona and army recruiting.
Here are some highlights:
- Job market for developers suffers from the lemon problem on both sides: there are not only many less competent developers, but also there are lots of crapy developer jobs. Every day makes it even harder for a good developer to find a decent job, and vice versa.
- When you set out on a journey of building a team, first think about what you plan to achieve with this team. Winning school championship is very different from selling girl scout cookies: different goals, different teams, different approaches to building them.
- Make team part of the hiring decision.
- Hire for a specific position, not a generic job description.
- Look for new team members in the company first. And, as a consequence, do not be afraid of letting people go to other teams.
- Be honest on the interview: do not promise a candidate something, which will never come true, simply to get him in.
